2010年12月29日 星期三

Park Guell

Park Güell - Google 圖書結果

Conrad Kent, Dennis Joseph Prindle - 1993 - Non-Classifiable - 223 頁
. . . Inexpensive, compact (truly pocket-sized), with a wealth of information and some fascinating photographs, this is a notable book.



Park Guell

出 版 社:Princeton Architectural Press
書林書號:00578646
作 者:Kent, Conrad & Prindle

Park Güell (Catalan: Parc Güell; Catalan pronunciation: [ˈpark ˈɡweʎ]) is a garden complex with architectural elements situated on the hill of el Carmel in the Gràcia district of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. It was designed by the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí and built in the years 1900 to 1914. It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Works of Antoni Gaudí".

Contents [hide]

Origins as a Housing Development

The Gaudí Museum

The park was originally part of a commercially unsuccessful housing site, the idea of Count Eusebi Güell, whom the park was named after. It was inspired by the English garden city movement; hence the original English name Park (in the Catalan language spoken in Catalonia where Barcelona is located, the word for "Park" is "Parc", and the name of the place is "Parc Güell" in its original language). The site was a rocky hill with little vegetation and few trees, called Muntanya Pelada (Bare Mountain). It already included a large country house called Larrard House or Muntaner de Dalt House, and was next to a neighborhood of upper class houses called La Salut (The Health). The intention was to exploit the fresh air (well away from smoky factories) and beautiful views from the site, with sixty triangular lots being provided for luxury houses. Count Eusebi Güell added to the prestige of the development by moving in 1906 to live in Larrard House. Ultimately, only two houses were built, neither designed by Gaudí. One was intended to be a show house, but on being completed in 1904 was put up for sale, and as no buyers came forward, Gaudí, at Güell's suggestion, bought it with his savings and moved in with his family and his father in 1906.[1] This house, where Gaudi lived from 1906 to 1926, was built by Francesc Berenguer in 1904. It contains original works by Gaudi and several of his collaborators. It is now the Gaudí Museum (Casa Museu Gaudí) since 1963. In 1969 it was declared a historical artistic monument of national interest.

Municipal Garden

Gaudí's multicolored mosaic dragon fountain at the main entrance, prior to vandalism early in 2007

It has since been converted into a municipal garden. It can be reached by underground railway (although the stations are at a distance from the Park and at a much lower level below the hill), by city buses, or by commercial tourist buses. While entrance to the Park is free, Gaudí's house, "la Torre Rosa," — containing furniture that he designed — can be only visited for an entrance fee. There is a reduced rate for those wishing to see both Park Güell and the Sagrada Família Church.

Gaudí's mosaic work on the main terrace

Park Güell is skillfully designed and composed to bring the peace and calm that one would expect from a park. The buildings flanking the entrance, though very original and remarkable with fantastically shaped roofs with unusual pinnacles, fit in well with the use of the park as pleasure gardens and seem relatively inconspicuous in the landscape when one considers the flamboyance of other buildings designed by Gaudí.

The two buildings at the entrance of the park.
360 degree view outside hall of columns
360 degree view at the main entrance of the park outside the hall of columns.

The focal point of the park is the main terrace, surrounded by a long bench in the form of a sea serpent. To design the curvature of the bench surface Gaudí used the shape of buttocks left by a naked workman sitting in wet clay.[citation needed] The curves of the serpent bench form a number of enclaves, creating a more social atmosphere. Gaudí incorporated many motifs of Catalan nationalism, and elements from religious mysticism and ancient poetry, into the Park. The visitor was originally greeted by two life-size mechanical gazelles (a major euphemistic symbol of 'the young beloved' in the Hebrew strand of the medieval love poetry of the region), but these have since been lost during the turbulence of war.[citation needed]

Roadways around the park to service the intended houses were designed by Gaudí as structures jutting out from the steep hillside or running on viaducts, with separate footpaths in arcades formed under these structures. This minimized the intrusion of the roads, and Gaudí designed them using local stone in a way that integrates them closely into the landscape. His structures echo natural forms, with columns like tree trunks supporting branching vaulting under the roadway, and the curves of vaulting and alignment of sloping columns designed in a similar way to his Church of Colònia Güell so that the inverted catenary arch shapes form perfect compression structures.[2]

The large cross at the Park's high-point offers the most complete view of Barcelona and the bay. It is possible to view the main city in panorama, with the Sagrada Familia and the Montjuïc area visible at a distance.

The observant visitor will notice green birds flying around amongst the pigeons and sparrows. These are monk parakeets that have became a common species with a growing population started from some individuals escaped from captivity sometime in the 70s. Like the pigeons they nest in the tall palm trees. Another bird to look out for is the hummingbird that can be seen on some days, if you look hard enough.



******

Park Guell
Antoni Gaudi's Park Güell in Barcelona is among the most beguiling creations of early 20th-century Europe, with its spectacular maze of colorful ceramics and rustic stone spiraling up a mountain landscape.

The authors analyze the park's construction and landscape while addressing its social, ideological, and cultural background, in an "absorbing account of one of Gaudi's most popular creations. . . . Inexpensive, compact (truly pocket-sized), with a wealth of information and some fascinating photographs, this is a notable book." -- Andrew Mead, The Architect's Journal





Barcelona’s Other Architect, Domènech

Lluís Domènech i Montaner (December 21, 1850 - December 27, 1923) was a Spanish Catalan architect who was highly influential on Modernisme català, the Catalan Art Nouveau / Jugendstil movement. He was also a Catalan politician.

Born in Barcelona, he initially studied physics and natural sciences, but soon switched to architecture. He was registered as an architect in Barcelona in 1873. He also held a 45-year tenure as a professor and director at the Escola d'Arquitectura, Barcelona's school of architecture, and wrote extensively on architecture in essays, technical books and articles in newspapers and journals.

His most famous buildings, the Hospital de Sant Pau and Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona, have been collectively designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

As an architect, 45-year professor of architecture and prolific writer on architecture, Domènech i Montaner played an important role in defining the Modernisme arquitectonic (Art Nouveau / Jugendstil in architecture) in Catalonia. This style has become internationally renowned, mainly due to the work of Antoni Gaudí. Domènech i Montaner's article "En busca d'una arquitectura nacional" (In search of a national architecture), published 1878 in the journal La Renaixença, reflected the way architects at that time sought to build structures that reflected the Catalan character.

His buildings displayed a mixture between rationalism and fabulous ornamentation inspired by Spanish-Arabic architecture, and followed the curvilinear design typical of Art Nouveau. In the El castell dels 3 dragons restaurant in Barcelona (built for the World's Fair in 1888), now the Zoological Museum, he applied very advanced solutions (a visible iron structure and ceramics). He later developed this style further in other buildings, such as the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona (1908), where he made extensive use of mosaic, ceramics and stained glass, the Hospital de Sant Pau in Barcelona, and the Institut Pere Mata in Reus.

An interesting characteristic of Domènech i Montaner's work was the evolution towards more open structures and lighter materials, evident in the Palau de la Música Catalana. Other architects, like Gaudí, tended to move in the opposite direction.

Domènech i Montaner also played a prominent role in the Catalan autonomist movement. He was a member of the La Jove Catalunya and El Centre Català and later chaired the Lliga de Catalunya (1888) (Catalonian League) and the Unió Catalanista (1892) (Catalonian Union). He was one of the organisers of the commission that approved the Bases de Manresa, a list of demands for Catalan autonomy. He was a member of the Centre Nacional Català (1889) and Lliga Regionalista (1901), and was one of the four parliamentarians who won the so-called "candidature of the four presidents" in 1901. Though re-elected in 1903, he abandoned politics in 1904 to devote himself fully to archeological and architectural research.

He died at Barcelona in 1923.

Contents [hide]

Education and teaching career

Born in Carrer Avinyó in Barcelona,[1] he was the second son of Pere Domènech i Saló, a prestigious publisher and book-binder, and Maria Montaner i Vila, a member of a prosperous family from Canet de Mar, where Domènech i Montaner spent much time in his home/office, now converted into a museum.[2] After having studied physics and mathematics, he studied as an architect in Barcelona and at the school of architecture of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, from where he graduated on 13 December 1873.[1]

Having completed his studies, he travelled through France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany and Austria to gain experience of trends in architecture.

In 1875, as soon as the Barcelona school of architecture opened, he joined it, along with his friend Josep Vilaseca, as a teacher of topography and mineralogy. In 1877 he became professor of "Knowledge of materials and the application of physiochemical science to architecture". In 1899 he was appointed professor of "Architectural Composition" and project teacher. In 1900 he became director of the school of architecture, and betwen 1901 and 1905 he was substituted by Joan Torras i Guardiola, Domènech at this time being in Madrid as a deputy in the Congress. He returned to the post from 1905 to 1920.[3] His teaching career lasted 45 years, and he exercised a considerable influence on what was to become Modernisme in Catalonia. With his colleague Antoni Maria Gallissà he subsequently set up a workshop for advanced work on the decorative arts applied to architecture.[4]

Casa Fuster
Casa Navàs in Reus
Editorial Muntaner i Simón, now the home of Fundació Antoni Tàpies

Writings

Domènech contributed to the leading Catalan publications: La Renaixença, Lo Catalanista, Revista de Catalunya, El Diluvio and La Veu de Catalunya. In 1904, after falling out with Francesc Cambó, he ceased to contribute to La Veu de Catalunya and founded the weekly El Poble Català. He was also the author of many books, some technical works (Historia general del arte: arquitectura, 1886; Iluminación solar de los edificios, 1877) and some political and social essays ("La política tradicional d'Espanya", 1898; "Estudis polítics", 1905, "Conservació de la personalitat de Catalunya", 1912, "La Política tradicional d'Espanya: com pot salvar-se'n Catalunya", 1919).

In an article entitled “En busca de una arquitectura nacional” (In search of a national architecture), published on 28 February 1878 in La Renaixença, he set forth the guiding principles for a modern, national architecture for Catalonia. [5]

He was also active as a publisher. He was editor of the Biblioteca Artes y Letras, published by Editorial Domènech, the family firm, for which he also designed many book-covers, and which included the works of the country’s best writers and translations of the most important European authors of the time. Between 1886 and 1897, the Editorial Montaner i Simón published under his direction the monumental Historia General del Arte. Domènech also illustrated the first part, and it was continued by Josep Puig i Cadafalch.[6]

In company with his friends Antoni M. Gallissà and Josep Font i Gumà and with members of the Centre Excursionista de Catalunya, he visited Romanesque churches in several parts of Catalonia; in 1904, those of Pallars, Ribagorça and Cerdanya; in 1905, those of Ripollès, Gironès, Vallespir, Rosselló and Vall d'Aran; and finally, in 1906 he visited the churches of Empordà, whose style he dubbed First Romanesque. In this way Domènech collected material for his work on Romanesque architecture, and he provided the School of Architecture with an important photographic archive.[7]

Works

Sources

The Spanish Wikipedia was used as a source for this article.

References





Cultured Traveler

Barcelona’s Other Architect, Domènech

Lourdes Segade for The New York Times

Lluís Domènech i Montaner created the dazzling 1908 Palau de la Música Catalana, a jewel of Catalan modernisme, adorning surfaces and choosing stained glass to fill the space with light. More Photos »

IT’S sometimes hard to have a conversation about Barcelona that does not include the name Gaudí in it. The world is so gaga for Antoní Gaudí — the genius of Catalan modernisme (the Spanish version of Art Nouveau) whose early 20th-century buildings are virtual emblems of the city — that most of his modernista contemporaries go little noticed by tourists.

But if you’re like me, and don’t much like the structural theatrics and unbridled mannerism of Gaudí’s buildings, check out those of Lluís Domènech i Montaner (1849-1923), an under-sung hero of the movement. A journey to the three places in Catalonia where his buildings made a splash a century ago — including Barcelona — is made easier by following the Barcelona Modernisme Route, which was created in 2005. A guidebook and map of the route can be bought for 18 euros, or $23.50 at $1.31 to the euro, at several kiosks around the city, and can be viewed online at rutadelmodernisme.com.

Domènech is often hailed as the most modern of the modernistas, notably for his mastery of lightweight steel construction. Unesco, at least, doesn’t give him short shrift, having designated his most important buildings in Barcelona a World Heritage Site (just as it did with the works of Gaudí). Multifaceted and astonishingly productive, Domènech wore many hats. Besides being an architect and professor (Gaudí was his student at Barcelona’s School of Architecture), he was also a prominent politician and Catalan nationalist and a pre-eminent scholar of heraldry.

For architects, Barcelona at the turn of the 20th century was the right place at the right time. Nineteenth-century industrialization brought tremendous wealth, and between the Universal Exposition of 1888 (for which Domènech created two of the most noteworthy buildings) and the construction of the Eixample — the vast grid of streets laid out in 1859 to decongest the old city — there was a heady mix of civic pride and social ascension in the air. The rising middle class was eager to make its mark on the rapidly growing city, and the new modernista style seemed perfectly suited to this task, rife as it was with neo-Gothic motifs that linked the newly minted mercantile titans to Barcelona’s rich medieval history.

Robert Lubar, an associate professor at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, points out that, much more so than Gaudí, Domènech was influenced by the English Arts and Crafts movement of Ruskin and Morris. “He believed that ‘the complete interior’ served some kind of ethical purpose,” Professor Lubar said.

Domènech’s most “complete interior” is the 1908 Palau de la Música Catalana, a stunning concert hall miraculously shoehorned into a small lot at the junction of the old city and the new. Often likened to a conductor, Domènech knew how to get the best performance from the sculptors, ceramicists and woodworkers who executed his designs. Indeed, nearly every surface inside the auditorium has been adorned with color, texture and relief and, because the walls and ceiling are made almost entirely of stained glass, colored light.

Atop the balcony’s mosaic-clad columns, bronze chandeliers tilt like sunflowers toward the stained-glass sun that seems to float in midair from the ceiling’s inverted dome. The astonishing expanses of glass were achieved with the use of structural steel — invisible beneath so much decoration.

The other pillar of Domènech’s World Heritage status is the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau (Hospital of the Holy Cross and Saint Paul), set on 40 park-like acres at the northern edge of the Eixample. Heeding the latest theories of hygiene, Domènech envisioned a complex of 20 pavilions to ensure ventilation and access to sunshine. He ingeniously sunk the corridors and service areas of the hospital underground so that patients and visitors in the pavilions and gardens above would feel as if they were in a village — a fantastical one with myriad domes, spires, finials, sculptures and mosaics. Currently, the 12 pavilions Domènech built (his architect son completed the last eight) are being restored; some will become a museum of Modernisme and others offices for humanitarian organizations like Unesco. Until its scheduled opening in 2016, hard-hat tours are offered daily.

With the Modernisme Route’s map and guidebook in hand, you can lead yourself around Domènech’s residential structures in Barcelona, most of which are clustered between the Passeig de Gracia and Carrer Girona. You can stay in one of the grandest of his palatial homes, Casa Fuster, now a five-star hotel, at the top of Passeig de Gracia. In the street-level Café Vienes, you can sip Champagne and admire a vaulted ceiling and a forest of marble columns.

Near the port is the Hotel España, which, though not built by Domènech, had its restaurant, La Fonda España, renovated by him a century ago. It’s just been spruced up and shines anew with Domènech’s strappy wood and ceramic wainscoting, murals by Ramon Casas and a sculptural fireplace by Eusebi Arnau.

Want to see more? Eighty miles south, in the town of Reus, is Casa Navàs, another “complete interior,” which surrounds you the minute you step into the stair hall — a tiny indoor garden of flowers and vines wrought in mosaic, stained glass and carved stone. Throughout the house, the capital of each column features a different floral motif. Most of the rooms contain their original, exuberant furnishings by master craftsmen like Gaspar Homar.

On the outskirts of Reus, the Pere Mata Institute, a mental health hospital begun by Domènech in 1898, was meant to counter the tradition of keeping the mentally ill out of sight. Today you can visit one of the six pavilions, the one that housed “rich and illustrious men,” as the guide explains on the 90-minute tours. The sumptuously decorated men’s pavilion has a billiard room, grand salon and formal dining room. But lest it be confused with a typical men’s club, the delicate-looking leaded glass windows were reinforced with iron to keep patients in.

Upstairs, the rooms contain many of their original furnishings, including clever armoires with basins (and running water) built into them. There were also suites with office spaces (and secretaries) for those patients who still had empires to run.

About 50 miles northeast of Barcelona in the coastal town of Canet de Mar, one can see three charming structures in the space of about 100 yards. Domènech’s mother was from the region and he also had a home here, which is now a museum that displays his drawings and original furnishings. Across the street is the Ateneu Canetenc, once a cultural and political club and now a library.

Perhaps the most satisfying stop in Canet is Casa Roura, a little fortress of a house that is now a restaurant. The facade’s bravura brickwork creates a lively play of light and is further animated by turrets, parapets and gleaming roof tiles glazed in cobalt blue and canary yellow. The old double-height salon with its baronial fireplace is now the main dining room. On par with the rich architectural surroundings is the amazing lunch menu (13.50 euros) — especially the seafood fideua (like paella, but made with pasta instead of rice).

The tour ends where Domènech’s love of medieval architecture may have begun: at his mother’s house. (One of them anyway — the Castell Santa Florentina in the hills above Canet has been in the Montaner family for centuries.) Around 1909, Domènech expanded the original fortified stone house, deftly mixing his neo-Gothic riffs with authentic Gothic architectural elements like columns, portals and arcades “harvested” from a defunct monastery into a modernista masterpiece, one that quite literally spans the ages.

IF YOU GO

IN BARCELONA

For 18 euros, or $23.50 at $1.31 to the euro, a Modernisme Route pack of two guidebooks with maps and discounts for many sites can be purchased at special Modernisme tourist offices in Plaça de Catalunya, Hospital de Sant Pau and Pavellons Güell. Information: www.rutadelmodernisme.com.

Palau de la Música Catalana, Palau de la Música 4-6, (34-90) 247-5485; www.palaumusica.cat. A tour is 12 euros.

Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, San Antoní Maria Claret 167, (34-93) 291-9000; www.santpau.es.

Hotel Casa Fuster, Passeig de Gracia 132, (34-93) 255-3000; www.hotelescenter.es.

Hotel España, Sant Pau 9-11, (34-93) 318-1758; www.hotelespanya.com

IN REUS

Tours of both the Pere Mata Institute and Casa Navàs can be arranged on specific days through the Reus tourism office.

Reus Turisme, Plaça del Mercadal 3, (34-97) 701-0670; turisme.reus.cat

IN CANET DE MAR

Casa Museu Lluís Domènech i Montaner, Xamfra Rieres Buscarons i Gavarra, (34-93) 795-4615; www.canetdemar.cat. Entrance fee: 2 euros.

Casa Roura, Riera Sant Domènec 1, (34-93) 794-0375; www.casaroura.com.

Castell Santa Florentina is a private home but tours can be booked some Saturdays and by appointment. Riera del Pinar s/n, (34-609) 813-339; www.santaflorentina.com.

Making Architecture: The Getty Center

Making Architecture: The Getty Center

漢寶德先生數年前寫過The Getty Center 的游記
我讀這本敘事該館營造過程之書神游



Getty Center - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Making architecture: the Getty Center. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Trust. ISBN 978-0892364633. Brawne, Michael (1998). ...



Making Architecture
Making Architecture

Making Architecture

The Getty Center

Author: Preface by Harold M. Williams
Essays by Richard Meier, Stephen D. Rountree, and Ada Louise Huxtable
Year: 1997
Details: 176 pages, 10 x 10 inches
109 color, 149 duotone and 29 b/w illustrations, 1 color fold-out
paper
Publisher: Getty Publications
Imprint: J. Paul Getty Trust
Item# 978-0-89236-463-3
$55.00

"A winner for anyone fascinated with how these things take shape."
Buzz Weekly

"Winner, AIGA 50 Books/50 Covers of 1997"

"Honorable Mention, 1998 American Association of Museums, Museum Publications, Design Competition"

"Winner, 1998 Small Press, Book Awards"



This volume completes the documentation of the planning, design, and construction of the Getty Center begun in The Getty Center: Design Process. Designed by Richard Meier & Partners, the Getty Center sits atop a stunning 110-acre hilltop in west Los Angeles and is the new home for the Museum, the five Institutes, and the Grant Program that make up the J. Paul Getty Trust.

The book includes a series of essays by individuals who have had important roles throughout the course of the project. A chronology identifies the key dates and events in the design and construction process. Extensively illustrated with photographs by several accomplished photographers, site drawings from Richard Meier & Partners, and Robert Irwin's drawings of the Central Gardens, the book presents readers with an insider's view of the making of the Getty Center.

Harold Williams was the chief operating officer of the J. Paul Getty Trust during the planning, design, construction and opening of the Getty Center. Stephen D. Rountree is executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Trust. Richard Meier, the architect of the Getty Center, has received the Pritzker Prize for Architecture and, most recently, the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects. Several books have been published on his work. During her tenure as the architecture critic of The New York Times, Ada Louise Huxtable won a Pulitzer Prize for her criticism. Her most recent book is The Unreal America: Architecture and Illusion.

朱銘展新作《立方體》

穿越人間探索科學 朱銘展新作《立方體》
〈立方體〉是朱銘首次以雕塑來呈現科學精神的探索及科學問題的探詢。(兩廳院/提供)

記者趙靜瑜/台北報導

一 個立方體加上一顆白色的腦袋,藝術家朱銘昨天在國家劇院揭幕新作〈立方體〉,朱銘說,多年以來,他對於科學的好奇興趣未減,他認為人類自己發明了各種立方 體,限制了人們的行為發展,父殺子等亂象叢生,社會因而變壞。朱銘希望透過這個作品,讓外界思考如何調和自己創造的〈立方體〉所帶來的矛盾,甚至思考邁出 〈立方體〉的框架。

朱銘從一個基礎的形狀〈立方體〉為出發點,他認為在自然生態中各類動植物及生物物種都沒有立方體形式的存在,僅存在於人 類社會中。朱銘這次特別點出這次〈立方體〉是要談科學,而以雕塑藝術的形式來發聲,他舉例人類在房屋內成長,過世之後也被包裹在方形物體內,完全被限制 住,之所以創作〈立方體〉,朱銘似乎也是要提醒人們勇於突破與挑戰,不被自己的框架套牢。

中央研究院前院長李遠哲則說,大自然當中並非沒有立方體,有些細胞膜或是化學分子也都以立方體存在,立方體本身並無好壞,只是人類自己的觀點,才會造成許多

2010年12月28日 星期二

Japanese curator reinvents Busan Biennale

BY MASAYUKI NISHI STAFF WRITER

2010/12/29


photo"OOM," by Japanese artist Kiichiro Adachi, moved slowly along a circular track. (Photos by Masayuki Nishi)photo"Calm," by Chinese artist "MadeIn," shivered on the floor.photoLarge oil paintings of Tibetan children attracted many viewers. photoCroatian artist Sanja Ivekovic digitally altered photos of victims of the 1980 Gwangju Incident to close their eyes in her display at the Busan Biennale. On this day, people performed in the room.

This is the second in a two-part series of articles on major South Korean art festivals.

* * *

Artists from outside South Korea were prominent at the Busan Biennale this year.

In a darkened room, the walls glittered with stars as "Earth Baby," an installation by Japanese artist Tomoko Konoike, rotated. The large object, shaped like a baby's head, was covered with broken bits of mirror glass. It gleamed as it turned slowly in the dark.

At a beach, meanwhile, a huge shell-covered caterpillar inched slowly around a circular track. Called "OOM," the piece was by Kiichiro Adachi, also from Japan.

The curator for the biennale was Takashi Azumaya, the first Japanese ever appointed to take on that job.

"As I am Japanese, the number of works that struck me as amusing in Japan increased," Azumaya said.

"The first thing South Korean media and critics do is to compare (the Busan Biennale) with the Gwangju Biennale, one of the largest art events in Asia. But at Busan, I put my priority on entertaining people," he said.

"I could hardly believe they would appoint a Japanese artistic director, given the historical background (of the two countries). South Korea is taking on the challenge more boldly than Japan."

At the Gwangju Biennale and Media City Seoul (covered in Part 1 of this series), many photographic and video works alluded to historical and political incidents to urge viewers to think about heavyweight matters.

But the Busan Biennale, which closed Nov. 20, aimed to enchant visitors with large, unique works.

Chinese artist MadeIn's work, "Calm," consisted of a patch of rubble on the museum floor that wriggled and shook like something alive.

Other exhibits, matching the theme of "Living in Evolution," were similar in their allusions to life.

"I want everyone to feel that there is something more beyond an individual life," said Azumaya, who arrived in Busan in April. He also spent time looking for uncelebrated local artists.

Several exhibits proved very popular, including one that involved translucent, luminous fingers continuously tapping on a table as if playing a piano.

Another was a large, colorful oil painting that portrayed Tibetan children in precise, joyful detail.

"Japan should also try appointing a foreigner (to curate a show), just as the Busan (Biennale) appointed Mr. Azumaya," said Lee Yong-woo, chief executive officer of the Gwangju Biennale.

When Lee was invited to attend the opening symposium of the Aichi Triennale, which closed Oct. 31 in Nagoya, he emphasized the fact that "the Gwangju (Biennale) actively appoints foreigners."

This year, the Gwangju Biennale's artistic director was Massimiliano Gioni, an Italian in his 30s.

At the Busan Biennale, Croatian artist Sanja Ivekovic was entrusted with the sensitive task of portraying the memories of the bloody 1980 Gwangju Incident in which many demonstrators died in a military crackdown.

"The future of the Biennale depends on whether it can expand the scope of human exchange and participation while taking deep root in the region," art critic Sung Wan-kyung said.

The South Korean biennale events incorporated keen observations from people outside the country, among them a set of eyes from Japan. Leaving the interpretations of their nation's bitter history in the hands of foreigners is an attempt to gain an even wider and more open view.

2010年12月25日 星期六

Venture "Into the Dark" and hear more

Arts on the Air | 23.12.2010 | 15:30


The concept of the performance is to remove all other stimuli so that the audience are 100% focused on the music only with the hope that a higher state of concentration and appreciate for the music will be achieved.

Taking place in the former GDR broadcasting complex in Karlshorst, Berlin, Into the Dark is a performance by 10 musicians under the directorship of Sabrina Hölzer. Works being played include pieces by Kevin Volans, John Cage and Salvatore Sciarrino...the difference in this case is that the concert takes place in complete darkness with the 50-odd audience lying on specially made beds while the musicians move around the room.

Report: Neale Lytollis

2010年12月24日 星期五

“The Sound of One Hand: Paintings and Calligraphy by Zen Master Hakuin

Hakuin Ekaku - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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In this Japanese name, the family name is Hakuin. Hakuin Ekaku (白隠 慧鶴, January 19, 1685 - January 18, 1768) was one of the most influential figures in ...

Every so often we are shocked — shocked! — to learn that a great artist was not such a great human being. In these disillusioned modern times, we have learned to separate artistic and literary achievement from the artist’s moral character. We may admire the works of Tolstoy, Céline, Picasso and Pollock and overlook their failings as people. Still, the fantasy that spiritual and artistic evolution should go hand in hand is hard to give up.

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So it is refreshing to encounter an artist who was, by all accounts, a man of transcendent character who made commensurately wonderful art. Such a rare case is that of Hakuin Ekaku (1685-1768), the Japanese calligrapher and draftsman, who is regarded by those in the know as the most important Zen master of the last 500 years. It was Hakuin who came up with the koan “What is the sound of one hand?” to which popular imagination has added “clapping.”

Organized by the Zen scholars Audrey Yoshiko Seo and Stephen L. Addiss, “The Sound of One Hand: Paintings and Calligraphy by Zen Master Hakuin” at Japan Society presents 69 of his works. The first retrospective of his art to be seen in the United States, it is an enchanting show.

Hakuin was first and foremost a spiritual seeker and teacher. He began his formal training in Zen Buddhism at 14 and, after much restless travel and numerous experiences of enlightenment, returned at 31 to Hara, the rural village of where he was born, and he became the abbot of Shoin-ji, the local temple. From there his fame as a teacher, lecturer and writer spread throughout Japan. Monks and laymen came from all over to learn his spiritual practices based on meditation and study of koans, those seemingly nonsensical problems intended to open minds to the true nature of reality, unfiltered by habits of dualistic, abstract thinking.

Hakuin had no formal training in art, and he was 60 before he began to focus on painting. He was no dabbler, though. Art for him was another way to convey his teachings, and by the time he died at 84, he had produced more than a thousand works on paper.

His calligraphy evolved formally from relatively traditional blocks of text to characters made with three- or four-inch brushes that have the immediacy of modernist abstraction. His mostly brush-drawn imagery depicts older masters, landscapes, scenes of daily life and mythological visions with a relaxed yet exacting line and wonderful sensitivity of touch.

There is a gently humorous mood throughout that is reflected in, for example, a picture of sumo wrestling mice observed by a fat monk hiding in a big cloth bag. Portraits caricature revered teachers with gnarly, fiercely expressive faces rendered in crisp linear detail. There is little feeling of technical effort in Hakuin’s art. Delightfully free of academic conventions and sentimental piety, its aesthetic freshness matches its vitality of soul.

Some are complicated and extensively worked in accordance with complex symbolism. In one of the exhibition’s most beautiful paintings the serene, long-haired bodhisattva Manjusri, a spiritual benefactor drawn in flowing lines, sits in meditation next to a comically ferocious, recumbent lion. Wisdom keeps power in check.

Passages of verse enhance the poetry of many images. In “Vulture Peak,” sketchy boats bob on water, and a mountain just beyond has the profile of a giant vulture roughly brushed on it. Characters in the sky read: “If you look up, Mount Washizu” — Vulture Mountain. “If you look down, fishing boats along the Shigeshishi shore.”

“As if to say,” notes Mr. Addiss in the exhibition catalog, “ ‘It’s all in how you look and what you see, right here and right now.’ ”

On the other hand, you have to see beyond the surfaces of things. An old blind man with a cane who calls to mind Mr. Magoo confronts a one-eyed goblin and exclaims paradoxically, “I’m not afraid of you —/Since I have no eyes at all/You should be scared of me!” Spiritual insight trumps mere sensory perception.

Hakuin was a master satirist too. A monkey is caught in the act of writing on a wall, “What a strange, demented feeling it gives me when I realize I have spent whole days before the ink stone, with nothing better to do, jotting down at random whatever nonsensical thoughts have entered my head.” The charming text quotes from an essay by Yoshida Kenko, a 14th-century priest whose popular, worldly writings Hakuin considered unenlightened.

Deeper meanings underlie the most humble pictures. An image that Hakuin drew multiple times shows an ant on a grindstone. A haiku on the page reads, “Circling the grindstone, an ant — this world’s whisper,” hinting at a great truth in the inaudible sound of an ant walking. In a separate poem Hakuin elaborated:

An ant goes round and round without rest

Like all beings in the six realms of existence,

Born here and dying there without release,

Now becoming a hungry ghost, then an animal.

If you are searching for freedom from this suffering

You must hear the sound of one hand.

These are still resonant words. Take a break from the clamorous rat race of modern life. Just listen.

“The Sound of One Hand: Paintings and Calligraphy by Zen Master Hakuin” is on view through Jan. 9 at Japan Society, 333 East 47th Street, Manhattan; (212) 832-1155, japansociety.org.

2010年12月14日 星期二

For puppeteer, all the stage is a role

http://tairajo.com/jo.htm

For puppeteer, all the stage is a role

BY CHIHIRO OZAKI STAFF WRITER

2010/12/13


photoJo Taira among his puppets Sept. 24 in Tokyo's Nishi-Shinjuku district (Masaki Hayashi)

For nearly three hours, every performance that Jo Taira gives is more than just a one-man show.

In his unique puppet theater, Taira, 29, is constantly moving about on stage, manipulating the hollow actors that stand taller than him, singing, dancing and talking nonstop.

If the play is "The Wizard of Oz," Taira is Dorothy, the scarecrow, the lion, the witch--even the tornado. Once in a while, things get mixed up and he'll give the heroine a throaty voice, where he ad-libs lines like, "Hey, my voice is weird."

Not only does Taira create the puppets, he also works on the scripts, staging and scenic art.

"There are a lot of inconveniences, but I want people to see how I give my best on my own. Every part is so dear to me," he said.

Taira's fascination began as child watching traditional bunraku theater on television. He marveled at the ability to make the puppets seem alive, and even a bit magical.

Before long, he was inventing his own plays with stuffed animals, such as one about a bear that blows his nose endlessly. Another one he based on the folktale "Kachi-kachi yama" (fire-crackle mountain), but featuring a rabbit and a koala (instead of a "tanuki" raccoon dog).

The young Taira, who shied from group activities, discovered that he could express his feelings and mind freely through puppets. By second grade in elementary school, he had already decided on a career: a "kurogo" stagehand dressed in black.

At age 19, Taira made a move from Sapporo to Tokyo. Four years later, he received a silver medal from the Japan Puppet Theater Conference for his adaptation of "Kegawa no Mari," a love-hate drama centering around a male prostitute. It was a play in which no one under 15 was admitted.

Although Taira's plays once drew as few as three people, today, after 10 years, the seats for the 80 performances he gives each year are nearly sold out.

Taira also gives puppeteering exhibitions at elementary schools. After manipulating a puppet, one girl commented, "My heart raced because I felt as if I could return to my true self."

Just like Taira, there are kids who are heartened by the puppets. On Nov. 3, hoping to inspire many more children, he opened a 30-seat theater for his plays in Tokyo's Nishi-Shinjuku district.

2010年12月3日 星期五

Riding a Bike? Use an Airbag

Riding a Bike? Use an Airbag - ABCNews.com

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22 Oct 2010 ... A Swedish team invents airbag that springs into action when a bicyclist is hit.
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Riding a Bike? Use an Airbag

A Swedish team invents airbag that springs into action when a bicyclist is hit.

2010年12月2日 星期四

“On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century.”




Art Review

Squiggly, Tangly and Angular

Ed Ou/The New York Times

Visitors are seen through Mona Hatoum’s barbed-wire “Cube (9 x 9 x 9)” grid at “On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century,” the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.


As if in direct response to its overscaled, canon-cementing Abstract Expressionism display, the Museum of Modern Art is also giving us something quirky, speculative, physically light, a show called “On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century.”

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Visitors view a work by the Indian artist Ranjani Shettar, “Just a bit more,” made of hundreds of beeswax pellets linked by an openwork mesh of string, at the Museum of Modern Art.

Ed Ou/The New York Times

“Double O” by Zilvinas Kempinas, who is among those making the show less business as usual.

Ed Ou/The New York Times

A fingerprint’s ripples in Giuseppe Penone’s “Propagazione.”

The first exhibition is a pat march through old history; the second, a tangly exploration of undertraveled paths that intersect in surprising ways.

The museum does drawing surveys at regular intervals. The last one was “Drawing Now: Eight Propositions” in 2002, which focused on young artists and defined drawing quite conventionally, as work in pencil, ink or paint on a flat surface, usually paper. That show came at a time when figurative painting was being pushed very hard, and stylistic references to 19th-century academic art and contemporary cartooning were in favor.

The new survey reflects developments since then, among them a renewed interest in performance and abstraction, and a simultaneous embrace and rejection of digital media. Rather than narrowing a definition of drawing, as the older show did, this one loosens everything up.

Yes, you can draw a line on a flat surface using traditional tools. But you can also sculpture a line, or cut, dig, drip, sew, walk, dance or weave one. You can make a line bold or all but invisible, tiny or 16 miles long. You can draw it with a well-schooled skill or with no skill at all, hands off.

Given such options, any attempt to put a seal on a specific history of drawing is, to say the least, premature. “On Line” — organized by Connie Butler, chief curator of drawings at MoMA, and a guest curator, Catherine de Zegher, the former director of the Drawing Center in SoHo — is very much about history, specifically that of Western modernism, but lays out variant beginnings for it.

We get the standard MoMA beginning in the up-front presence of Picasso. But at least it’s Picasso at his most daring, when, in tandem with Georges Braque, he shattered the flatness of the picture plane and angled some of the pieces so they jutted out into space.

It’s hard to recapture how disorienting this must have felt at the time, though the inclusion of one of Picasso’s 1912 cut-cardboard guitars near the entrance to the show reminds us what the revolution once looked like. Suddenly we were seeing draftsmanship in the round, in depth, lines shooting straight out at us, like bullet trajectories. (MoMA has a show devoted entirely to these early guitar pieces coming in February; it could be, should be, great.)

Grouped around the Picasso object are other artists who did their bit to send 19th-century aesthetics into a tailspin. We see Malevich using drawn lines to stake out the fourth dimension, Umberto Boccioni turning lines into emblems of technological speed, Kurt Schwitters treating lines like beams and risers in architectural collages, and Kandinsky — the show’s title is from his writing — transforming lines into jazzy visual dances.

And high above all of them in the gallery, some real dancing is in progress, and a different beginning to a history of drawing as line is proposed. Projected on a floating screen is a late-19th-century film of a woman flapping and swirling the long silk sleeves of her dress as she performs a piece by the choreographer Loie Fuller (1862-1928).

Born in America, Fuller was a Folies-Bergère star and avant-garde darling who inspired artists to think of drawing not as static and finite but as action in space and lines as points in motion.

The fluttering dancer in the film, like some exuberant angel, offers a welcome break from the usual-suspects story of modernism, as does another work near the show’s entrance, an installation by the young Indian artist Ranjani Shettar.

Composed of hundreds of floating, hand-modeled beeswax pellets linked by an openwork mesh of string, it alludes both to the natural world (buds, stars) and to the Internet, and points to the networking concept of art in the exhibition ahead. Her piece also anticipates the increasing presence of women as the show progresses through the 20th century and into the 21st. If you wanted to choose a single route to trace, theirs is an exciting one.

Early modernism was a largely male preserve, and it is so here, though already in Malevich’s Russia we’re seeing the abstract textile designs of the great Lyubov Popova. And in the 1950s Georges Vantongerloo’s mystical twists of transparent tubing, suspended in a vitrine like marine specimens, are beautifully matched by Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s color pencil drawings, like scatterings of tossed-down thread.

In the 1960s and ’70s an “open sesame” time for art, sculpture sends organic lines out into space. We see this in Eva Hesse’s “Hang Up” with its escapee loop of metal cord; in Edward Krasinski’s blue cables leaking across the floor; and in the free-hanging, lopsided steel-wire grids of the Venezuelan artist Gego, born Gertrud Goldschmidt in Germany.

The grid was, of course, the signature form of those years. Ostensibly an emblem of order and stability, it often has a very different effect here. Gego makes a small grid from jigsaw blades; Mona Hatoum a big one from barbed wire; Cornelia Parker another from bullet lead turned into thin wiring.

And like Ms. Parker’s, a lot of drawing in the show implies or entails motion. For her well-known performance “Up To and Including Her Limits” (1973-76) Carolee Schneemann made wall-size crayon drawings while swinging above the floor in a harness, as we see her doing in a video. In a 1997 film the choreographer William Forsythe virtually ties his body into knots. In her filmed “Trio A,” Yvonne Rainer unfurls a series of everyday moves — the head toss, the walking slouch, the pick-up-the-dropped-key bend — then repeats them in the same order backward. (Ms. Butler contributes a lucid catalog essay, full of ideas, about the movement-line collection.)

Two Canadian artists — Françoise Sullivan in 1948, and Mimi Gellman in 2009 — drew abstract patterns with their movements through snow, while, in a hypnotic 1968 film, the Japanese artist Atsuko Tanaka, famed for her dress made of wires and electric bulbs, used a stick to inscribe huge designs of circles — a circulatory system — in seaside sand as a tide creeps in.

Viewers hungry for more conventional formats will find them, early and late, in work by Paul Klee, by Tomás Maldonado in the 1950s, and by the sublime Nasreen Mohamedi (1937-1990), one of several remarkable Indian artists here, others being Ms. Shettar, A. Balasubramaniam and Sheila Makhijani, who is currently making her New York solo debut at Talwar Gallery in Manhattan.

Their presence — along with that of figures like Zilvinas Kempinas, Vera Molnar, Karel Malich, Lotte Rosenfeld and Emily Kam Kngwarray — lifts the show out of museum business as usual. Unlike the roster selected for “Drawing Now” in 2002, which was almost entirely market preapproved, many of these artists are still trying to secure a place in the international scheme of things.

True, much of their art is ultralow key, though discretion can have advantages. When I visited “On Line” during museum hours, I found a good-size and attentive crowd and a notable absence of drive-by shutterbugs. It’s hard to photograph what you can barely see, whether apparent smudges on a wall (stretched wires wound with horse hair by the French artist Pierrette Bloch) or a big gray blur (waves of concentric ink lines rippling out from a single fingerprint in a wall drawing by Giuseppe Penone).

Although the show barely tiptoes into the digital realm with a few tame samplings, it at least points to it as a direction for further treks. And in general Ms. Butler and Ms. de Zegher have done what curators should do. They’ve dug deep into near-at-hand sources and pulled out little-seen material. (Most of the show is from MoMA’s collection.) They’ve introduced artists from outside, some of whom we can look forward to seeing more of.

In the process they’ve knocked given histories off of pedestals and left old hierarchies off balance. Maybe most important, apart from giving us stimulating art to look at, they’ve continued the job of writing women into art history, not as also-rans but as primary makers and shapers, and quietly but forcefully re-inscribing a political line now ineradicably drawn in the sand.

“On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century” is on view through Feb. 7 at the Museum of Modern Art; (212) 708-9400, moma.org.