Exhibition: ‘The Art of the Automobile: Masterpieces of the Ralph Lauren Collection’ at The Arts Décoratifs Museum, Paris

Exhibition dates: 28th April – 28th August 2011

Many thankx to The Arts Décoratifs Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the images for a larger version of the image.

Mercedes Benz SSK “Count Trossi”
1930
Ralph Lauren collection
© Photo Michael Furman

The notion of line in a car echoes that of the perfectly harmonious line of trajectory. The design is never far from this line, even in those coachworks designed without drawing boards, of which some of the most marvellous examples are seen here. It is interesting to see that in the French language at least, cars have taken on board the concept of ligne (or “line”), a word with many meanings. Yet the term ligne, taken in the sense that it is used nowadays in reference to coachwork, is classified by French lexicographer Littré within the sphere of fine art, and defined by him as: “the general effect produced by the coming together and combination of different parties of either a natural object or a composition.” The natural development of language thus shows us the relationship between cars and fine art.

Excerpt from the catalog, Editions Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris 2011

In 1970, Les Arts Décoratifs presented a selection of competition cars, “Bolides Design.” To compile the exhibition, a special jury was assembled, featuring designers Joe Colombo, Roger Tallon and Pio Manzu, and the artists Jean-Paul Riopelle, Jean Tinguely and Victor Vasarely, as well as Robert Delpire and François Mathey. The jury chose the models with the idea of the car as a design object, a work of art, showing that “art and technique, each at their own level, are the expression of man and his relationship with design.”

The Ralph Lauren collection can be seen from the same perspective. Patiently assembled over several decades by the fashion designer in a quest for speed and performance, it includes some of the most extraordinary jewels in the crown of European automobile history, with beauty as its common denominator.

Within the collection are some of the most elegant and innovative cars in automotive history, from the “Blower” Bentley (1929), the Ferrari 250 GTO (1962), the famous Mercedes 300 SL (1955) and the unforgettable Jaguar “D type,” whose shark fin blazed a triumphant trail at Le Mans in 1955, 1956 and 1957. But the grand tourer, the Bugatti Atlantic (1938) of which only four models were produced, represents the ultimate in luxury while showcasing the evolution of styles and techniques on the road. Each of these exceptional vehicles was designed as a masterpiece blending technological innovation and boldness of style.

For its first presentation in Europe, the Ralph Lauren collection will be put on display by Jean-Michel Wilmotte, who has opted for an intimate visual approach as these vehicles stand out both for their overall design and detail, as well as for bodywork, chassis and engines.

The kinetic and sound of the vehicles will be reproduced by means of several films and recordings. A seminar on automobile design will also be held during the exhibition.

Press release from The Arts Décoratifs Museum website

Mercedes Benz SSK “Count Trossi”
1930
Ralph Lauren collection
© Photo Michael Furman

Chassis number SSK 36038, currently owned by Ralph Lauren, remained unsold by the Mercedes-Benz factory in 1928, but was then sent out to Japan in 1930, before being brought back to Europe. This car was put together by the young British coach builder, Willy White, based on a design suggested by its aristocratic owner-cum-industrialist, Count Carlo Felice Trossi, himself a racing driver. The SSK, the archetypal Mercedes of the 1920s, built on a short chassis, is dominated by a colossal hood with a trio of exhaust pipes emerging from each side – a hood encompassing over half the car’s length with a radiator projecting out front as a windbreak. Its flamboyant rear end, dramatically tapered, adds a touch of civility to this extraordinary model, contrasting with the hieratic image of its front end. The supercharging gives the Mercedes SSK its fiery temperament, as well as the legendary noise of its seven litre straight 6 cylinder engine producing 300 CV and enabling a flat-out speed of 235kph!

Bugatti 57 SC Atlantic
1938
Collection Ralph Lauren
© Photo Michael Furman

According to Paul Bracq, “the Atlantic is a monument in the history of French coach building! More than any other car, it expresses a French-Italian look. An incredible sense of lightness is given off by this sculpture.” Powered by a straight 8 cylinder engine fitted with twin overhead camshafts and a compressor, this beauty is also incredibly fast, capable of reaching 200 kph. As the aluminium alloy used for the coachwork did not lend itself to shaping and soldering, Jean Bugatti was obliged to make the wings and roof in two parts and then assemble them with rivets. His talent lay precisely in the art of transforming this inconvenient technique into a stylistic advantage. Power and speed are suggested by the doors which are cut out of the roof and the ellipsoidal windows reminiscent of airplanes. Chassis number 57591 was the last of the four examples originally produced, a masterpiece embodying sport and luxury at their height – in short, the automobile exception.

Alfa Romeo 8C 2900 Mille Miglia
1938
Collection Ralph Lauren
© Photo Michael Furman

This racing model fitted out with a straight 8 cylinder 2.9 litre engine with twin overhead camshafts supercharged by two compressors is equipped with fully independent suspension and a four speed rear transaxle. The whole thing is perfectly balanced, resulting in the most extraordinary roadholding. The hydraulic brakes are an additional bonus, enabling it to outclass its rivals at over 185 kph. The Turin factory called upon Carrozzeria Touring to design a small series of four two-seater roadsters intended to take part in the 1938 Mille Miglia, the first example of which is the car exhibited here. Driven by the Pintacuda-Mambelli team, the car came in an incredible second under the number 142. The tear drop shaped wings add the final touch to this extraordinary car which is considered to be one of the most prestigious pre-War Grand Touring Alfa Romeos.

Ferrari 375 Plus
1954
Collection Ralph Lauren
© Photo Michael Furman

The Ferrari known as the 375 Plus was an extrapolation of the Type 375 MM, a model powered by a V12 engine with three carburettors, a gearbox with four speeds plus reverse that increased its engine size to nearly 5 litres, giving it more power and enabling it to reach 340 CV, and attain 250 kph. Because Ferrari did not have its own design department, the 375 Plus, an absolute masterpiece, was created by highly qualified, talented artisans under the guidance of Pinin Farina, Ferrari’s official coach builder. Only five examples of the Type 375 Plus were made, including a spyder version which won the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1954. Ralph Lauren’s car, chassis number 0398 AM – the last of the series – left the factory in 1954 and had a relatively illustrious career in Argentina, often driven by Valiente.

Jaguar XKD
1955
Collection Ralph Lauren
© Photo Michael Furman

In order to find a worthy successor to the brilliant Jaguar Type XKC, winner on two occasions of the Le Mans 24 Hours, the aeronautic aerodynamicist Malcolm Sayer came up with a non-conformist vehicle. The D-Type has a long hood with no radiator grille, opening away from the block and a slender, extremely graceful rear, easily recognisable thanks to the highly original fin that extends the driver’s head-rest, providing greater stability at high speeds. With the classic straight 6 cylinder 3.4 litre engine, the D-Type, built on a monocoque structure, also has disk brakes. The “long-nosed” version (only 10 examples of which left the factory, including Ralph Lauren’s 505/601) gained an additional 15 kph at maximum speed, pushing it to 260 kph. No other car from the 1950s embodies speed better than this Jaguar D, with three consecutive victories in the Le Mans 24 Hours between 1955 and 1957 and another at Nurburgring in 1956. It was the most successful racing car of its generation.

Jaguar XKSS
1958
Collection Ralph Lauren
© Photo Michael Furman

Following on from Jaguar’s magnificent victories in the 1955 and 1956 Le Mans 24 Hours, demand from its enthusiastic clients was such that the company decided to make a road version of the XKD (straight 6 cylinder 3.4 litre engine with a 250 CV output capable of propelling the car to nearly 250 kph) which was named the XKSS. Principally aimed at the American market, it differed from the racing model in having a windscreen, a convertible roof, bumpers and a more civilised interior, and the famous fin was removed. Only 16 examples were constructed between January and February 1957, and a further two examples of the D-Type were transformed by the factory in 1958. Ralph Lauren’s car is one of these, created from the XKD 533 in 1956. It participated in the Six Heures du Forez in 1957, driven by Monnoyeur and Dupuy, finishing 7th, behind a fleet of Jaguar Ds which took the three first places.

Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa
1958
Collection Ralph Lauren
© Photo Michael Furman

The 250 Testa Rossa (red head) owes its name to the red camshaft covers of its V12 3 litre engine. Made by Carrozzeria Scaglietti, adapted from a design by Pinin Farina introducing a torpedo shaped body, the car had a headrest that stuck out above the bodywork and integrated headlights behind protruding Plexiglas protection. The very particular line of this vehicle proved to be primarily functional, rather than aesthetic. Indeed, the originality of the pontoon fenders enabled the wheels to remain partially uncovered, to allow for a sufficient supply of cold air to the drum brakes. Equipped with a light body that allowed it to attain 270 kph, its 300 CV engine carried it to victory on numerous occasions, including in the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1958, 1960 and 1961. Ralph Lauren’s car is the 14th of 34 similar examples produced by Ferrari.

Ferrari 250 GT Berlinetta SWB
1960
Collection Ralph Lauren
© Photo Michael Furman

While the name 250 GT appeared in the Maranello catalog in 1955, the 1959 Paris Motor Show presented a short chassis Berlinetta version, with a wheelbase 20 cms shorter than other versions of the line – a thoroughbred equipped for the road, with aluminium coachwork designed by Pinin Farina and made in the Scaglietti workshops in Modena. Compared to the grand tourer version, intended for road use, the racing version was devoid of all luxury interior trimmings and bumpers, but equipped with disk brakes and a 280 CV engine that enabled this flagship model to masterfully dominate the legendary Tour de France automobile for three consecutive seasons (1960-1962) and the GT category of the Le Mans 24 Hours. Its sensual line, unequalled handling and performance (250kph), and list of victories, all combined to make the short chassis 250 GT Berlinetta one of Ferrari’s most popular models. Ralph Lauren’s car was the 31st example to leave the factory out of the 165 produced.

Ferrari 250 GTO
1962
Collection Ralph Lauren
© Photo Michael Furman

Designed in the utmost secrecy, the 250 GTO is considered by aficionados today to be the quintessential vintage Ferrari model, both technically and aesthetically, embodying one of the most famous and most expensive sports cars of all time. This Grand Tourer, of which only 39 examples were produced, clocked up an impressive list of victories, including the International Championship for GT Manufacturers in 1962, 1963 and 1964, thanks to its V12 300 CV engine situated up front, but also because of the lightness of its aluminium body, enabling it to attain 280 kph flat out! With its Scaglietti coachwork and its long hood, stocky cockpit and truncated rear, it symbolised the Grand Tourer par excellence. Ralph Lauren’s car was the 21st out of 36 Series I GTOs produced, and won many races driven by Pedro and Ricardo Rodriguez, Roger Penske, Augie Pabst and Richie Ginther.

The Arts Décoratifs Museum
107 rue de Rivoli
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Phone: +33 01 44 55 57 50

Open Tuesday to Sunday 11am – 6pm

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Exhibition: ‘Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945’ at the International Center of Photography, New York

Exhibition dates: 20th May – 28th August, 2011

United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Physical Damage Division
[Ruins of the Hiroshima Prefectural Commercial Exhibition Hall (A-Bomb Dome)]
October 24, 1945
Gelatin silver print
© International Center of Photography

The “United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Physical Damage Division”. Don’t you just love the irony in this title? The aim of the military group who took these photographs as part of a survey on “strategic bombing” of Hiroshima was to document the physical damage that took place. As if an atomic bomb is anything other than destructive! As if an atomic bomb is anything other than catastrophic! As if an atomic bomb is anything less than death itself!

Upon this realisation, the father of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, famously quoted the Bhagavad Gita after the detonation of the first bomb on July 16, 1945 in the Trinity test in New Mexico, “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

In saying that, military jurisprudence, that disciplinary machine of death, becomes not only the recorder of destruction but also the re-ordering of the world, thus re(c)ording the world under Foucault’s Matrix of Practical Reason:

~ Through the technologies of production, which permit us to produce, transform or manipulate things

~ Through the technologies of power, which determine the conduct of individuals and submit them to certain ends or domination, an objectivising of the subject.1

In short, the military is power; the military subjugates humans; and the military destroys at will.

The strange beauty of the Physical Damage Division photographs is that they simply document what remains. Like the “shadow” of a hand valve wheel on the painted wall of a gas storage tank, Ground Zero is burnt onto the ground glass of the camera.

Like the “shadow” these events are eternally seared into the collective memory never, ever, to be forgotten.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Foucault, Michel. “Technologies of the Self,” quoted in Martin, Luther and Gutman, Huck and Hutton, Patrick (eds.,). Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. London: Tavistock Publications, 1988, p. 18

Many thankx to the International Center of Photography for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Physical Damage Division
[View of burned-over area with Hiroshima Kirin Beer Hall at far right]
October 16, 1945
Gelatin silver print
3 11/16 x 4 9/16 in. (9.4 x 11.6cm)
© International Center of Photography
Purchase, with funds provided by the ICP Acquisitions Committee, 2006

United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Physical Damage Division
[Ruins of Shima Surgical Hospital, Hiroshima]
October 24, 1945
Gelatin silver print
4 1/8 x 6 1/16 in. (10.5 x 15.4cm)
© International Center of Photography
Purchase, with funds provided by the ICP Acquisitions Committee, 2006

United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Physical Damage Division
[Group of people near damaged trolley cars, Hiroshima]
October 31, 1945
Gelatin silver print
3 11/16 x 4 7/16 in. (9.4 x 11.3cm)
© International Center of Photography
Purchase, with funds provided by the ICP Acquisitions Committee, 2006

United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Physical Damage Division
[Distorted steel-frame structure of Odamasa Store, Hiroshima]
November 20, 1945
Gelatin silver print
© International Center of Photography

United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Physical Damage Division
[Reinforced-concrete fire shutter in cast wall of Yasuda Life Insurance Company, Hiroshima branch]
November 15, 1945
Gelatin silver print
3 11/16 x 4 3/4 in. (9.4 x 12.1cm)
© International Center of Photography
Purchase, with funds provided by the ICP Acquisitions Committee, 2006

United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Physical Damage Division
[Ruins of Chugoku Coal Distribution Company or Hiroshima Gas Company]
November 8, 1945
Gelatin silver contact print
© International Center of Photography

United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Physical Damage Division
[Remains of a school building]
November 17, 1945
Gelatin silver contact print
© International Center of Photography

Once-classified images of atomic destruction at Hiroshima will be displayed in a new exhibition Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945 at the International Center of Photography (1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street) from May 20 to August 28, 2011. Drawn from ICP’s permanent collection, the Hiroshima archive includes more than 700 images of absence and annihilation, which formed the basis for civil defence architecture in the United States. These images had been mislaid for over forty years before being acquired by ICP in 2006.

This exhibition will include approximately 60 contact prints and photographs as well as the secret 1947 United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) report, The Effects of the Strategic Bombing on Hiroshima, Japan. It will be accompanied by a catalogue published by ICP/Steidl, with essays by John W. Dower, Adam Harrison Levy, David Monteyne, Philomena Mariani, and Erin Barnett.

After the nuclear attacks in August 1945, President Truman dispatched members of the USSBS to Japan to survey the military, economic, and civilian damage. The Survey’s Physical Damage Division photographed, analysed, and evaluated the atomic bomb’s impact on the structures surrounding the Hiroshima blast site, designated “Ground Zero.” The findings of the USSBS provided essential information to American architects and civil engineers as they debated the merits of bomb shelters, suburbanisation, and revised construction techniques.

The photographs in this exhibition were in the possession of Robert L. Corsbie, an executive officer of the Physical Damage Division who later worked for the Atomic Energy Commission. An architectural engineer and expert on the effects of the atomic bomb, he used what he learned from the structural analyses and these images to promote civil defence architecture in the U.S. The photographs went through a series of unintended moves after Corsbie, his wife and son died in a house fire in 1967.

The U.S., at war with Japan, detonated the world’s first weaponised atomic bomb over Hiroshima, a vast port city of over 350,000 inhabitants, on August 6, 1945. The blast obliterated about 70 percent of the city and caused the deaths of more than 140,000 people. Three days later, the U.S. dropped a second nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, resulting in another 80,000 fatalities. Within a week, Japan announced its surrender to the Allied Powers, effectively ending World War II.

“Once part of a classified cache of government photographs, this archive of haunting images documents the devastating power of the atomic bomb,” said ICP Assistant Curator of Collections Erin Barnett, who organised the exhibition.

Press release from the International Center of Photography website

United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Physical Damage Division
[“Shadow” of a hand valve wheel on the painted wall of a gas storage tank; radiant heat instantly burned paint where the heat rays were not
obstructed, Hiroshima]
October 14 – November 26, 1945
Gelatin silver print
© International Center of Photography

United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Physical Damage Division
[Interior of Hiroshima City Hall auditorium with undamaged walls and framing but spalling of plaster and complete destruction of contents by fire]
November 1, 1945
Gelatin silver print
© International Center of Photography

United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Physical Damage Division
[Ruins of Sumitomo Fire Insurance Company, Hiroshima branch]
October 24, 1945
Gelatin silver print
3 3/16 x 4 7/16 in. (8.1 x 11.3cm)
© International Center of Photography
Purchase, with funds provided by the ICP Acquisitions Committee, 2006

United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Physical Damage Division
[Rooftop view of atomic destruction, looking southwest, Hiroshima]
October 31, 1945
Gelatin silver print
© International Center of Photography

United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Physical Damage Division
[Burned-over landscape north of ground zero in the vicinity of Hiroshima Castle]
October 31, 1945
Gelatin silver print
3 3/4 x 4 5/8 in. (9.5 x 11.7cm)
© International Center of Photography
Purchase, with funds provided by the ICP Acquisitions Committee, 2006

United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Physical Damage Division
[Interior with heavy spalling of cement plaster by fire in combustiible floor of Yasuda Life Insurance Company, Hiroshima branch]
November 1, 1945
Gelatin silver print
3 11/16 x 4 3/4 in. (9.4 x 12.1cm)
© International Center of Photography
Purchase, with funds provided by the ICP Acquisitions Committee, 2006

United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Physical Damage Division
[Damaged turbo-generator and electrical panel of Chugoku Electric Company, Minami Sendamachi Substation, Hiroshima]
November 18, 1945
Gelatin silver print
3 13/16 x 4 7/16 in. (9.7 x 11.3cm)
© International Center of Photography
Purchase, with funds provided by the ICP Acquisitions Committee, 2006

United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Physical Damage Division
[Steel stairs warped by intense heat from burned book stacks of Asano Library, Hiroshima]
November 15, 1945
Gelatin silver contact print
© International Center of Photography

International Center of Photography
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International Center of Photography website

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The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart

August 2011

MONA exterior, Hobart
Image Courtesy of MONA Museum of Old and New Art

“Lyotard writes,”We must not begin with transgression, we must immediately go to the very end of cruelty, construct the anatomy of polymorphous perversion, unfold the immense membrane of the libidinal ‘body,’ which is quite the inverse of a system of parts.” Lyotard sees this “membrane” as composed of the most heterogeneous items: human bone and writing paper, steel and glass, syntax and the skin on the inside of the thigh. In the libidinal economy, writes Lyotard: “All of these zones are butted end to end … on a Moebius strip … a moebian skin [an] interminable band of variable geometry (a concavity is necessarily a convexity at the next turn) [with but] a single face, and therefore neither exterior nor interior.”

Jean-François Lyotard quoted in Victor Burgin. In/Different Spaces 1

“Taking a walk is also an extremely immediate form of experience. Serge Daney describes the act of perception while taking a walk: ‘Because I am not particularly fond of bravura pieces, I always need a transition from one thing to the next. And I am glad that I can find it through by body and experience of walking…’
The visual memory of the walker / viewer determines the sequence of the pictures. Since the 1960s Marcel Broodthaers has defined the exhibition as a cinematic sequence of pictures and objects, thereby subverting the fixity of the single object through recontextualisation.”

Serge Daney quoted in Hans Obrist. “In the Midst of Things, At the Centre of Nothing.”2

Libidinal, Moebic MONA

My analogy: you are standing in the half-dark, your chest open, squeezing the beating heart with blood coursing between your fingers while the other hand is up your backside playing with your prostrate gland. I think ringmeister David Walsh would approve.

My best friends analogy: a cross between a car park, night club, sex sauna and art gallery.

Weeks later I am still thinking about the wonderful immersive, sensory experience that is MONA. Peter Timms in an insightful article in Meanjin calls it a post-Google Wunderkammer, or wonder chest.3 It can be seen as a mirabilia – a non-historic installation designed primarily to delight, surprise and in this case shock. The body, sex, death and mortality are hot topics in the cultural arena4 and Walsh’s collection covers all bases. The collection and its display are variously hedonistic, voyeuristic, narcissistic, fetishistic pieces of theatre subsumed within the body of the spectacular museum architecture.

The experience starts with the ferry ride from the wharf in Hobart to the museum – the only way to arrive. During the 20 minutes of the journey mental baggage seems to drop away as you look over the water to the industrial zinc works, pass under bridges and then the museum comes into view. Perched on a promontory of land the museum rises like a rusted ancient temple. After disembarking you climb a colossal staircase to the entrance of the museum, all angles and mirrored surfaces. You enter one of two Roy Grounds listed modernist buildings built in the 1950s – beautiful, crisp white spaces that house the shop and a cafe, cloakroom and inquiry desk where you collect your ‘O’, an iPhone-like device that tracks all the artworks that you look at. The are no didactic text panels in the museum freeing the viewer to just experience, all data such as artists names and educational information and the tit-bit Gonzo text being accessed through the ‘O’. Into the large enclosed forecourt space a spiral staircase with a circular lift in the centre descends into the abyss (an inspired piece of design) and your journey proper has begun. Three levels deep into the ground you travel, the space carved out of solid rock. Impressive.

The museum is the body and the artworks are the organs, fragments of the whole exhibition (that of the actual museum). The experience is very kinaesthetic as the body gets lost within the space of the gallery. We wandered like flâneur among the darkened, cinema-like spaces, almost floating from one area to the next, discovering, feeling disorientated, following underground passages, tunnels and stairs, emerging into light and then descending into the abyss again. Hours passed. Like a Moebius strip there seemed to be no interior/exterior to the body. As Lyotard notes the membrane of the libidinal ‘body’ is composed of the most heterogeneous items: here was rock, steel, shit, bestiality, intestines, brain, touch, burial etc… the curating of the collection within the space “creating a safe space for the appreciation and consideration of seemingly extreme and subversive practices.”5

Into this space of controlled transgression, the carnivalesque mise-en-scène allow the artists to delve into the deeper and darker areas of the human condition: “as Anthony Everitt once said of Damien Hirst [to] ‘open up paths for the viewer into areas of experience which are not anti-moral or amoral but extra-moral… a world where bad taste is driven to the point of elegance and disgust is filtered into delight’.”6

While some of the works were spotlit in the darkened galleries, “this dramatic lighting working to decontextualise the art objects, evoking a crepuscular and “timeless” sense of space, out of which the individual pieces emerged,”7 there also seemed to be an affinity between the building itself and the artworks (relating to the concept of affinity in museum curation). The diversity of installation techniques made an acknowledgement of the institutionalising processes part of the viewer’s experience of the show, disrupting a unified, totalising presentation of these objects and their cultures as “exhibition.”8 The intertextual tableaux mixed a Damien Hirst spin painting with Egyptian sculpture, ancient artefacts with Fat Cars. The context of the objects and their relationship to each other and the architecture is how the works are “framed.” This device emphasises the aesthetic rather than information and encourages the viewer to think about the relationship between the artefacts, objects and contemporary works. These inventive arrangements create a meta-narrative that offers the possibility of multiple interpretations to the viewer, multiple truths. All of this undertaken as the body moves through the spaces of the gallery and gets “lost”. As Norman Bryson has observed, “Architecture is sensed primarily through the eye and through bodily movement, and these sensations also play a key role in the way in which the contents of museums make their impact.”9

While the items are not explicitly related in terms of subject, medium or style through unexpected confrontation the works spring to dissonant life. Most of the time. When this process doesn’t work the viewer is left a little flat feeling, and…. so? wandering from piece to piece becoming slightly disenchanted. Little of the work at MONA took me to new spaces; in fact some of it was pretty mediocre, including the very dated Sir Sidney Nolan Snake (1970 to 1972, see below) that is permanent ‘wallpaper’ and takes up a whole, beautiful gallery wall. The tri-screen video by Russian collective AES+F, the works by Anselm Kiefer and the ancient artefacts (most of all) were notable exceptions. The museum is not a place for prolonged concentration and contemplation. This is not really the point of the place. The whole museum is a sensory, immersive surprising experience that cannot be broken down to its parts. David Walsh’s collection does tick all the fashionable boxes: here a Juan Davila, there a Del Kathyrn Barton, now a Howard Arkeley as though his buyers have advised him on just what to buy, but it is his personal vision, his collection. You can’t argue with that.

On of the problems of lumping all of these works together is obvious: “Ancient objects whose meaning is lost to us, medieval utensils, Christian religious images, and art objects made by modern masters were reduced to one meaning – stylistic resemblances providing evidence of the essential nature of humanity.”10 In other words a return to the globalising view of humanity evidenced by Edward Steichen’s MoMA world touring photographic exhibition of the 1950s The Family of Man. Conversely, when this strategy works well it promotes for the viewer different modes and levels of ‘interpretation’ through subtle juxtaposition of ‘experience’. As Emma Barker has observed, “we still need a curator to stimulate readings of the collection and to establish those ‘climatic zones’ which can enrich our appreciation and understanding of art… Our aim must be to generate a condition in which visitors can experience a sense of discovery in looking at particular paintings, sculptures or installations in a particular room at a particular moment, rather than find themselves standing on the conveyer belt of history.”11 Within this plastic space experience is paramount, allowing the viewer to develop their own reading without relying on the curatorial interpretation of history, setting new parameters for the relationship between viewer and object. As Barker notes such juxtapositions are a more natural strategy for a private collector than for a museum curator, with exhibitions and displays according to this dialectical principle happening with more frequency.12 The museum looses its fundamental didactic, educational purpose.

Other problems may also become evident. In a museum whose spectacular architecture was specifically designed for David Walsh’s collection it will be interesting to see how outside, touring exhibitions (such as the recently installed Experimenta Utopia Now exhibition) display in the space, especially given the psychosexual nature of his collection and its relationship to the building. If the quality of the temporary exhibitions is overwhelmed by the architecture, if the labyrinthine, enigmatic and layered nature of the space (all those floating bridges and the huge Void that can be seen in the photographs below) engulfs lesser works then it may well fall very flat.

At the end of the day we emerged into the afternoon light, expelled from the museum in a tidal wave of humanity, exhausted, satiated. Where else in Australia could you spend all day at a museum and not have seen enough? On flying home you can log into the MONA website to retrieve your ‘O’ tour, to see what art you liked and what you didn’t; what pieces you saw and all those that somehow you missed! The physical and its remembrance transported into the virtual.

Since Laura Mulvey’s essay of 1974 “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” we have been aware of the voyeuristic and fetishistic character of our psychosexual relation to cinema. Engulfed in the dark cube, that psychosexual panorama, the cinematic labyrinth that is MONA has the viewer absenting themselves in front of the art in favour of the Eye and the Spectator.13 Spectatorship and their attendant erotics has MONA as a form of fetishistic cinema. It is as if what Barthes calls “the eroticism of place” were a modern equivalent of the eighteenth century genius loci, the “genius of the place.”

The place is spectacular, the private collection writ large as public institution, the symbolic power of the institution masked through its edifice. The art become autonomous, cut free from its cultural associations, transnational, globalised, experienced through kinaesthetic means; the viewer meandering through the galleries, the anti-museum, as an international flaneur. Go. Experience!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Footnotes

1/ Lyotard, Jean-François. Économie Libidinale. Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1974, pp. 10-11 quoted in Burgin, Victor. In/Different Spaces: Place and Memory in Visual Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, p. 150

2/ Obrist, Hans Ulrich. “In the Midst of Things at the Center of Nothing,” in Harding, Anna (ed.,). Curating: The Contemporary Museum and Beyond, (Art & Design Magazine Profile No. 52), London: A.D., 1997, p. 88

3/ Timms, Peter. “A Post-google Wunderkammer: Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art Redefines the Genre,” in Meanjin, Vol. 70, No. 2, Winter 2011. pp. 31-39

4/ Keidan, Lois. “Showtime: Curating Live Art in the 90s,” in Harding, Anna (ed.,). Curating: The Contemporary Museum and Beyond, (Art & Design Magazine Profile No. 52), London: A.D., 1997, p. 41

5/ Ibid., p. 41

6/ Ibid., p. 41

7/ Staniszewski, Mary Anne. The power of display: a history of exhibition installations at the Museum of Modern Art. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998, p. 84

8/ Ibid., p. 97

9/ Bryson, Norman. “A Walk for a Walk’s Sake,” in De Zegher, Catherine (ed.,). The Stage of Drawing: Gesture and Act. London: Tate, 2003, pp. 149-58.

10/ Staniszewski, op. cit. p. 129

11/ Barker, Emma. “Exhibiting the Canon: The Blockbuster Show,” in Barker, Emma (ed.,). Contemporary Cultures of Display. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999, p. 55

12/ Ibid., p. 45

13/ O’Neill, Paul. “The Curatorial Turn: From Practice to Discourse,” in Rugg, Judith and Sedgwick, Michèle (eds.,). Issues in Curating Contemporary Art and Performance. Bristol: Intellect, 2007, pp. 13-28

Many thankx to Delia Nicholls for all her help and to MONA for allowing me to publish most of the photographs in the posting (all except the top two and the one of us inside Babylonia that were taken by Fredrick White). Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Zinc works from the ferry on the way to MONA
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

3d schematic from the O, showing the levels and nodes indicating art works visited, MONA

The Void
February 2011
Museum of Old and New Art – interior
Photo credit: MONA/Leigh Carmichael
Image Courtesy of MONA Museum of Old and New Art

B1 walkway overlooking The Void
February 2011
Museum of Old and New Art – interior
Photo credit: MONA/Leigh Carmichael
Image Courtesy of MONA Museum of Old and New Art

Loop System Quintet/Untitled (stool for guard)

Left:
Taiyo Kimura (Japanese, b. 1970)
Untitled (stool for guard)
2007
Mixed media, clothes, cd player, speaker

Right:
Conrad Shawcross (English, b. 1977)
Loop System Quintet 
2005
Waxed machined oak, five light bulbs, electric motor and gearbox, drive shafts, cogs, universal joints, flange units, screws, bolts, nuts, washers

Photo credit: MONA/Leigh Carmichael
Image Courtesy of MONA Museum of Old and New Art

Callum Morton (Australian born Canada, b. 1965)
Babylonia
2005
Wood, polystyrene, epoxy resin, acrylic paint, light, carpet, mirror and sound
Photo credit: MONA/Leigh Carmichael
Image Courtesy of MONA Museum of Old and New Art

Sculptor Fredrick White and Marcus Bunyan inside Callum Morton’s Babylonia wearing the ‘O’

Portrait gallery
Various artworks by various artists
Museum of Old and New Art – interior
Photo credit: MONA/Leigh Carmichael
Image Courtesy of MONA Museum of Old and New Art

Masturbation. It is a source of endless irony to me that when I was young, and desperately in need of endless fucking, no one was interested in helping me out, whereas now, older and slower, I could fill even my desired adolescent quota. What saved me then was my right hand, even though I call myself left-handed. Surely the hand that you wank with (I guess John Holmes was ambidextrous) defines you just as much as the hand you write with? Anyway, who writes anymore? It’s so much easier to type. Mental masturbation allows me to pretend I’m a mental John Holmes, takes both hands. But no brains.

Art. I’m not at all sure that conceptual art and traditional art are the same thing. One can come from muscle memory, from pragma; at its best it’s not at all conscious. The former, though, is so self-aware it’s often targeting its own self-awareness. Check out the Hirst and the Pylypchuk at the other end of the gallery.

David Walsh 2011

Corten Stairwell
February 2011
Museum of Old and New Art – interior
Photo credit: MONA/Leigh Carmichael
Image Courtesy of MONA Museum of Old and New Art

Corten Stairwell & Surrounding Artworks
February 2011
Museum of Old and New Art – interior
Photo credit: MONA/Leigh Carmichael
Image Courtesy of MONA Museum of Old and New Art

The Nolan Gallery

Sir Sidney Nolan (Australian, 1917-1992)
Snake
1970 to 1972
Mixed media on paper, 1620 sheets

Jannis Kounellis (Greece, 1936-2017)
Untitled 
2002
Jute coffee bags, coal; three parts

Photo credit: MONA/Leigh Carmichael
Image Courtesy of MONA Museum of Old and New Art

Erwin Wurm (Austrian, b. 1954)
Fat Car
2006
Steel chassis and body; leather interior, with polystyrene and fibreglass
Photo credit: MONA/Leigh Carmichael
Image Courtesy of MONA Museum of Old and New Art

Museum of Old and New Art
655 Main Road Berriedale
Hobart Tasmania 7011, Australia

Opening hours:
Fridays – Mondays, 10am – 5pm

MONA website

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Exhibition: ‘Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass’ at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Exhibition dates: 10th April – 7th August, 2011

Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941)
Neodymium Reeds on Logs
2008
de Young Museum, San Francisco, California
Photo by Teresa Nouri Rishel
© 2008 Chihuly Studio

“The way I paint or draw, I don’t think about it very much. If I’m thinking about it, that kind of means that I don’t know what to do. If I start thinking, ‘I want to draw, now what can I draw?’ and I’m not inspired – because that can happen very easily – then they start to get mundane. On the other hand, if I start making drawings that I know how to do already, and if I can go fast enough, they start to get really good.”

Dale Chihuly

I love contemporary glass and Dale Chihuly is one of my favourite artists in the world. The Persian ceiling is breathtaking – organic and pulsating like the most outrageously coloured jellyfish floating over your head; the Ikebana boat, the Mille Fiori pitch perfect – a riot of colour and form, playing with ideas and the chandeliers, the chandeliers – wow! Then to do something as sensitive and restrained as the Tabac basket or the beautiful Neodymium Reeds on Logs. This is the full package, bravo.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass

Often considered the greatest artist working in American glass since Louis Comfort Tiffany, Dale Chihuly is known for creating dramatic works, impressive for their size and bold use of color. Fortunately for Bostonians, his massive glass forms can now be seen in a dozen installations at the Museum of Fine Arts…

Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941)
Ikebana Boat
2011
Blown glass, boat hull
5 X 17 X 7′
Artwork © 2011 by Chihuly Studio, All rights reserved
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941)
Mille Fiori
2011
Blown glass
9½ X 56 X 12′
Artwork © 2011 by Chihuly Studio, All rights reserved
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Installation view of the exhibition Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston showing Chihuly’s Lime Green Icicle Tower (2011)

Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941)
Persian Ceiling
2011
Blown glass
15 X 28′
Artwork © 2011 by Chihuly Studio, All rights reserved.
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941)
Persian Ceiling
2011
Blown glass
15 X 28′
Artwork © 2011 by Chihuly Studio, All rights reserved
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941)
Persian Ceiling (detail)
2011
Blown glass
15 X 28′
Artwork © 2011 by Chihuly Studio, All rights reserved
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941)
Persian Wall
2011
Blown glass
15 X 30′
Artwork © 2011 by Chihuly Studio, All rights reserved
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

A magical wonderland to delight Alice herself unfolds in Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), from April 10 through August 7, 2011. This exhibition presents new and early works created over the last four decades by Dale Chihuly, one of the world’s foremost artists working in glass. Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass features 12 boldly hued installations. Nine of these glass artworks are on view in the MFA’s Ann and Graham Gund Gallery, which serves as the main stage for the exhibition. Three additional installations are displayed within and outside of the Museum’s soaring, glass-enclosed Ruth and Carl J. Shapiro Family Courtyard, including the 42-foot-tall Lime Green Icicle Tower. The exhibition is organised by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in cooperation with Dale Chihuly. It is supported by Highland Street Foundation. The media sponsors are The Boston Phoenix and WFNX Radio Network.

“Dale Chihuly is an American original, a master artist and craftsman who brings a truly magical touch to the fragile, yet malleable medium of glass, and who embodies the message: art is for everyone,” said Malcolm Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund Director of the MFA. “Visitors to the exhibition will be surprised and delighted by his dazzling installations, which create a kaleidoscopic world full of colour and light. This exhibition gives us the wonderful opportunity to showcase the full range and grand scale of his art.”

First Installation in the New Shapiro Family Courtyard

The MFA continues the celebration of the recently opened Art of the Americas Wing and Shapiro Family Courtyard with Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass, showcasing the artwork of one of the most innovative and beloved American artists of our time. The show was conceived two years ago when Chihuly visited the Museum while the courtyard was still under construction, and marks the first time that exhibition-related works are on view in the courtyard. Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass was designed by Chihuly specifically for the Museum site. Works created in the Chihuly Studio hot shop in Seattle, Washington, incorporating thousands of individual pieces of hand-blown glass, were sent to Boston in six 53-foot containers. The 12 installations were assembled on site at the MFA during a three-week period in March. During this time, visitors to the MFA were able to watch a team from Chihuly Studio install the monumental glass artworks in the courtyard and surrounding gardens…

Works created specifically for Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass, such as the dramatic Lime Green Icicle Tower, have transformed the Shapiro Family Courtyard. Measuring 42-feet high and weighing approximately 10,000 pounds, the sculpture’s 2,342 glass elements catch the light flooding into the glass-enclosed space. Also in the courtyard, along the colonnade of the Museum’s historic interior façade, is the newly created Boathouse Neon II – an expansive profusion of red, yellow, and orange – spanning 98 feet. Outside, along the courtyard’s glass walls, Amber Cattails extend the length of the northern-landscaped area as though planted in their natural environment.

“Perhaps the greatest artist in American glass since Louis Comfort Tiffany, Dale Chihuly is one of the central figures in the contemporary studio glass movement. This exhibition will give our visitors a look at his extraordinary career – the creation of enchanting environments that, through the manipulation of light and colour, both delight the eye and challenge our perception of space,” said Gerald W.R. Ward, the Katharine Lane Weems Senior Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture, who organised the exhibition.

Nine Unique Installations in the New Gund Gallery

The exhibition continues below the courtyard, where nine unique Chihuly installations (including both newly made and early works) are on view in the Gund Gallery for special exhibitions. Outside of the gallery, a glistening, 30′ long and 15′ tall Persian Wall composed of intricately detailed rondels – flower-like shapes in yellows, reds, and oranges – offer an enchanting welcome to visitors. Inside the gallery, Scarlet Icicle Chandelier, measuring 6’ high, sets the stage for the bold creations that lie beyond, such as Ikebana Boat, a 17′-long, newly made composition featuring a weathered wooden rowboat filled with brightly colored, seemingly alien glass forms. Chihuly’s Ikebana series, which alludes to Japanese flower arrangements, is featured in a nearby room, where 5′-to-6′-tall silvered vessels hold inventive floral “stems”. Also on view in the room is an assortment of Venetians – silvered blown glass sculptures originally conceived by Chihuly after seeing Venetian Art Deco glass. Chihuly Drawings seen in this space serve as complement and inspiration for the glass Venetian works. The nearby Northwest Room evokes the artist’s native Pacific Northwest environment and the Native American influence on his work. It features an assemblage of ethereal Baskets inspired by Native American baskets, as well as displays of 75 colourful trade blankets and a variety of woven baskets from the artist’s own extensive collection.

Adjacent to this installation is a darkened space showcasing Mille Fiori (Italian for “a thousand flowers”), measuring 58′ long and 11′ tall and presented on a 12′-wide raised platform. This breathtaking work of art is one of the artist’s largest installations, a combination of many of the colourful, inventive shapes found in Chihuly’s other creations – from exotic Cattails and tall Reeds, to giant glass Niijima Floats and ribbon-like Herons – brilliantly coloured in shades of yellow, red, lavender, green, orange, and blue. Persian Ceiling, a dazzling 15′ by 25′ array of vibrant and beautifully articulated shapes encased and suspended from the ceiling, is featured in the adjacent gallery. This eruption of colour continues in the Chandelier Room, featuring six dramatic Chandeliers hanging at different heights from the 16′-high Gund Gallery ceiling. Included are newly created works, the 12′-tall Silvered Chrysalis Tiered Chandelier and Iris Yellow Frog Foot Chandelier, as well as the spectacular Chiostro di Sant’Apollonia Chandelier and three other works: Palazzo di Loredana Balboni Chandelier, Orange Hornet and Eelgrass Chandelier, and Onyx and Caramel Chandelier. The final exhibition space showcases luminescent Neodymium Reeds, a large-scale installation composed of birch logs and elegant glass Reeds in shades of lavender.

Press release from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston website

Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941)
Persian Wall (detail)
2011
Blown glass
15 X 30′
Artwork © 2011 by Chihuly Studio, All rights reserved
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941)
Palazzo di Loredana Balboni Chandelier
2011
Blown glass, steel
9 X 7 X 7′
Artwork © 2011 by Chihuly Studio, All rights reserved
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941)
Chiostro di Sant’Apollonia Chandelier
2011
Blown glass, steel
10 X 7 X 9′
Artwork © 2011 by Chihuly Studio, All rights reserved
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941)
Tabac Basket
Photo by Teresa Nouri Rishel
© 2008 Chihuly Studio

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Avenue of the Arts
465 Huntington Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts

Opening hours:
Thursday – Monday 10am – 5pm
Closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays

Museum of Fine Arts Boston website

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Review: ‘Paradise’ by Brook Andrew at Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 18th June – 30th July 2011

Brook Andrew Paradise installation at Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

This is a strong, refined photo-ethnographic exhibition by Brook Andrew at Tolarno Galleries in Melbourne, one that holds the viewers attention, an exhibition that is witty and inventive if sometimes veering too closely to the simplistic and didactic in some works.

Rare postcards of Indigenous peoples and their colonising masters and surrounded by thick polished wood frames (the naturalness of the wood made smooth and perfect) and coloured neon lights that map out the captured identities, almost like a highlighting texta and forms of urban graffiti. This device is especially effective in works such as Men and Women (both 2011, below) with their male and female neon forms, and Flow Chart (2011, below) that references an anthropological map.

Other works such as Monument 1 (2011, below) lay the postcards into the rungs of a small step ladder covered in white paint that has echoes of the colonisers renovation of suburban homes and becomes a metaphor for the Indigenous peoples being stepped on, oppressed and downtrodden. In a particularly effective piece, Monument 2 (2011, below) the viewer stares down into a black box with multiple layers of neon that spell out the words ‘I see you’ in the Wiradjuri language: we can relate this work to Lacan’s story of the sardine can, where the point of view of the text makes us, the viewer, seem rather out of place in the picture, an alien in the landscape. The text has us in its sights making us uncomfortable in our position.

The work Paradise (2011, six parts, above) can certainly be seen as paradise lost but the pairing of black / white / colour postcards is the most reductive of the whole exhibition vis a vis Indigenous peoples and the complex discourse involved in terms of oppression, exploitation, empowerment, identity, mining rights and land ownership. The two quotations below can be seen to be at opposite ends of the same axis in this discourse. My apologies for the long second quotation but it is important to understand the context of what Akiko Ono is talking about with regard to the production of Indigenous postcards.

“White… has the strange property of directing our attention to color while in the very same movement it exnominates itself as a color. For evidence of this we need look no further than to the expression “people of color,” for we know very well that this means “not White.” We know equally well that the color white is the higher power to which all colors of the spectrum are subsumed when equally combined: white is the sum totality of light, while black is the total absence of light. In this way elementary optical physics is recruited to the psychotic metaphysics of racism, in which White is “all” to Black’s “nothing”…”

Victor Burgin 1

“In his study of Aboriginal photography, Peterson also looks at the dynamics of colonial power relations in which both European and Aboriginal subjects are constituted in and by their relations to each other. Peterson in the main writes about two different contexts of the usage of photography of Aboriginal people

1. popular usage of photographs, especially in the form of postcards in the early twentieth century (Peterson 1985, 2005)

2. anthropologists’ ethnographic involvement with photography (Peterson 2003, 2006).

Regarding the first, Peterson depicts how the discourses of atypical (that is, disorganised) family structures and destitution among Aboriginal people were produced and interacted with the prevalent moral discourses of the time. He makes an important remark about the interactive dimensions that existed between the photographer and the Aboriginal subject. Hand-printed postcards in the same period showed much more positive images of Aboriginal people (Peterson 2005: 18-22). These were ‘real’ photographs taken by the photographers who had daily interactions with Aboriginal people…

Peterson gives greater attention to photographs taken by anthropologists for scientific purposes, and in this second context provides a more detailed treatment of his insight regarding the discrepancies between the colonisers’ discourse and the actual visual knowledge that photography offers…

These two contexts are not, of course, mutually exclusive. By dealing with image ethics and the changing photographic contract, Peterson (2003) shows the interlocking formations of popular image, anthropological knowledge and Aboriginal self-representation. In particular, it is important to remember that Aboriginal people have not always rejected collaboration with and appropriation of the idioms of the coloniser. Aboriginal people were not bothered by posing for photographers to produce images such as ‘naked’ Aboriginal men and women in formal pose, accompanied by an ‘unlikely combination’ of weapons (Peterson 2005); and at times complex negotiations occurred between the photographer and the photographed – resulting in both consent and refusal (Peterson 2003: 123-31).

These anecdotes suggest the necessity of unravelling the ‘lived’ dimensions of colonial and / or racial subjugation and resistance to that subjugation from the site of their occurrence …

Rather than scrutinising the authenticity of Aboriginality or taking it for granted that ethnographic photography is doomed to reproduce a colonial or anthropological power structure, it is more important to attend to the ‘instances in which colonized subjects undertake to represent themselves in ways that engage with the colonizer’s own terms’, as Pratt (1992: 7, emphasis in the original) suggests. She proposes the term ‘autoethnography’ to refer to these instances: ‘If ethnographic texts are a means by which Europeans represent to themselves their (usually subjugated) others, autoethnographic texts are those the others construct in response to or in dialogue with those metropolitan representations’ (Pratt 1992).

Akiko Ono 2

The work Paradise buys into the first quotation in a big way, playing as it does with the idioms of black / white / colour. It can also be seen as a form of autoethnographic text that uses rare postcards to critique historical relations between peoples and cultures. What it does not do, I feel, is delve deeper to try to understand the “interlocking formations of popular image, anthropological knowledge and Aboriginal self-representation” and resistance to that subjugation from the site of their occurrence. As the quotation observes “Aboriginal people have not always rejected collaboration with and appropriation of the idioms of the coloniser” and it is important to understand how the disciplinary systems of the coloniser (the ethnographic documenting through photography) were turned on their head to empower Indigenous people who undertake to represent themselves in ways that engage with the coloniser’s own terms. Nothing is ever just black and white. It is the interstitial spaces between that are always the most interesting.

In conclusion this an elegant exhibition of old and new, an autoethnographic text that seeks to address critical issues that look back at us and say – ‘I see you’.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Burgin, Victor. In/Different Spaces: Place and Memory in Visual Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, p. 131

2/ Ono, Akiko. “Who Owns the ‘De-Aboriginalised’ Past? Ethnography meets photography: a case study of Bundjalung Pentecostalism,” in Musharbash, Yasmine and Barber, Marcus (eds.,). Ethnography & the Production of Anthropological Knowledge: Essays in honour of Nicolas Peterson. The Australian National University E Press [Online] Cited 16/07/2011 (no longer available online)

~ Peterson, N. 1998. “Welfare colonialism and citizenship: politics, economics and agency,” in N. Peterson and W. Sanders (eds.,). Citizenship and Indigenous Australians: Changing Conceptions and Possibilities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 101-17.
~ Peterson, N. 1999. “Hunter-gatherers in first world nation states: bringing anthropology home,” in Bulletin of the National Museum of Ethnology 23 (4), pp. 847-61.
~ Peterson, N. 2003. “The changing photographic contract: Aborigines and image ethics,” in C. Pinney and N. Peterson (eds.,). Photography’s Other Histories. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 119-45.
~ Peterson, N. 2005. “Early 20th century photography of Australian Aboriginal families: illustration or evidence?” in Visual Anthropology Review 21 (1-2), pp. 11-26.
~ Peterson, N. 2006. “Visual knowledge: Spencer and Gillen’s use of photography in The Native Tribes of Central Australia,” in Australian Aboriginal Studies (1), pp. 12-22
~ Pratt, M. L. 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writings and Transculturation. London: Routledge

Footnote 1. Peterson has built up a collection of process-printed (that is, mass-produced) postcard images and hand-printed images dating from 1900 to 1920 (that is, real photographic postcards), over 20 years, during which time he obtained a copy every time he saw a new image. He feels confident that he has seen two-thirds of the process-printed picture postcards from the period although it is harder to estimate how many hand-printed images were circulating (Peterson 2005: 25n.3). He had a collection of 528 process-printed postcards (Peterson 2005: 25) and 272 hand-printed photographs (p. 18) by 2005.

Many thankx to Olivia Radonich for her help and to Tolarno Galleries for allowing me to publish the text and photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. Images courtesy the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne. Photos by Christian Capurro.

Brook Andrew Paradise installation at Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Paradise 1 (red)
2011
Rare postcards, sapele, and neon
24.5 x 28.5 x 8cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Paradise 2 (orange)
2011
Rare postcards, sapele, and neon
24.5 x 34 x 8cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Paradise 3 (yellow)
2011
Rare postcards, sapele, and neon
24.5 x 28.5 x 8cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Paradise 4 (green)
2011
Rare postcards, sapele, and neon
25 x 33.5 x 8cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Paradise 5 (magenta)
2011
Rare postcards, sapele, and neon
24.5 x 28 x 8cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Flow Chart
2011
Rare postcards, sapele and neon
283 x 449.5 x 8.5cm

Brook Andrew Paradise installation at Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Men
2011
Rare postcards, sapele, and neon
82 x 264 x 12.5cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Women
2011
Rare postcards, sapele, and neon
179 x 179 x 6cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Women (detail)
2011
Rare postcards, sapele, and neon
179 x 179 x 6cm

Tolarno Galleries is pleased to present Paradise, a major solo exhibition by Brook Andrew. Widely regarded as a multi-disciplinary artist, Brook Andrew’s Jumping Castle War Memorial was a highlight of the 17th Biennale of Sydney. Recently his major installation, Ancestral Worship 2010, was included in 21st Century: Art in the First Decade at Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane. His powerful new installation – Marks and Witness: A Lined crossing in Tribute to William Barak 2011 – was commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria and is currently on display at Federation Square, Melbourne.

Paradise expands Brook Andrew’s interest in forgotten histories. His new works ask us to think about what has disappeared from our worlds, literally, and also from our consciousness. The exhibition features a number of assemblages made in neon and wood and incorporating rare postcards and photographs collected over many years. Men 2011 includes the original postcard that became the source for Sexy and Dangerous, Andrew’s iconic work of 1995.

Brook Andrew’s continuing search for curious portrait images from the 19th and early 20th century represents his fascination with the way the camera has documented a particular ‘colonial’ gaze and an interest in the exotic. Outlining or highlighting these images in glorious coloured neon emphasises this point.

However bright the neon, Brook Andrew’s works are characterised by a formal beauty and simplicity that explores conceptually complex ideas and themes. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Monument 4, a ‘boomerang bar’ or Monument 2, a black lacquer box of neon containing the words ‘I see you’ in Wiradjuri. Gazing into this ‘well of words’ is like looking into infinity.

Brook Andrew’s work is held in every major collection in Australia. An important survey of his work: Brook Andrew Eye to Eye was presented by Monash University Museum of Art in 2007. In 2008 his work was showcased in Theme Park at AAMU Museum of Contemporary Aboriginal Art in The Netherlands. Major publications accompanied both of these solo exhibitions.”

Press release from Tolarno Galleries

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Monument 2
2011
Black lacquer, wood, perspex, neon, mirror and wire
38 x 99 x 87cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Monument 2 (detail)
2011
Black lacquer, wood, perspex, neon, mirror and wire
38 x 99 x 87cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
18 lives in Paradise
Single box detail
2011

The basic unit used in 18 Lives in Paradise is a cardboard printed box 50 x 50 x 50 cm. The boxes are the building blocks for a sculpture, wall or any other structure. The box is also a parody of the courier box – those containers daily transported around the globe in the vast movement of lives and identities today. What was thought of as fixed may not be so.

The images are sourced from postcards. The postcards range from the early to mid-twentieth century and form part of a worldwide curiosity in indigenous people, circus acts and personalities, environment and resources … The images come together as an assemblage of ‘freaks’ and represent the collision paths of indigenous and non-indigenous cultures; those being documented out of curiosity and those belonging to dominant cultures who have used the land and its people for entertainment and wealth.

18 Lives in Paradise can form a column or wall. It can be a barrier, a beacon or epitaph. En masse, the boxes are a symbol of many lives whose identities are sometimes twisted for the gaze of the curious world.

Brook Andrew 2011

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Monument 1
2011
Black lacquer, are postcards, wood, mirror and metal
104.5 x 69.5 x 58cm

Tolarno Galleries
Level 4, 104 Exhibition Street
Melbourne VIC 3000 Australia
Phone: +61 3 9654 6000

Opening hours:
Tues – Fri 10am – 5pm
Sat 1pm – 4pm

Tolarno Galleries website

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Marcus Bunyan black and white archive: ‘At Newport’ series 1991

July 2011

I am scanning my negatives made during the years 1991-1997 to preserve them in the form of an online archive as a process of active memory, so that the images are not lost forever. These photographs were images of my life and imagination at the time of their making, the ideas I was thinking about and the people and things that surrounded me.

All images © Marcus Bunyan. Please click the photographs for a larger version of the image; remember these are just straight scans of the negatives !

Photographs are available from this series for purchase. As a guide, a vintage 8″ x 10″ silver gelatin print costs $700 plus tracked and insured shipping. For more information please see my store web page.

1991

At Newport series

This series of photographs was taken in Melbourne at the old Victorian Railway’s Newport Workshops and formed the second part of my first solo exhibition, Of Magic, Music and Myth held in 1991 at a hairdressing salon in High Street, Prahran, Melbourne. Some of the titles e.g. Fords are a Joke, GMH are shit (1991, below) are taken from the graffiti scrawled on various surfaces. All are silver gelatin photographs on fibre-based paper.

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Fords are a Joke, GMH are shit
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Harrys got a…
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Screened figure
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Heavy springs
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Untitled (Torro)
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
I, Robot
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Large Anvil
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Spring, Turrets, Keep and Ladder
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Big Cogs
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Coronation
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Frank’s Apron
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Hand is fucked, Farm is flooded, Caravan drifted away I
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Hand is fucked, Farm is flooded, Caravan drifted away II
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Untitled
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Hoe with Surging Rainwater
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Forms I
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Forms II
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Forms III
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Forms IV
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan black and white archive page

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Exhibition: ‘Ai Weiwei – Interlacing’ at Fotomuseum Winterthur, Zurich

Exhibition dates: 28th May – 21st August 2011

Many thankx to Fotomuseum Winterthur for allowing me to publish the text and the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for another version of the image.

Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957)
Dropping a Han-Dynasty Urn
1995
Triptych
C-prints
150 x 166cm each
© Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957)
Profile of Duchamp, Sunflower Seeds
1983
From New York Photographs, 1983-1993
C-print
20 x 28.5cm
© Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957)
June 1994
1994
C-print
117.5 x 152cm
© Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei – Interlacing is the first major exhibition of photographs and videos by Ai Weiwei. It foregrounds Ai Weiwei the communicator – the documenting, analysing, interweaving artist who communicates via many channels. Ai Weiwei already used photography in his New York years, but especially since his return to Beijing, he has incessantly documented the everyday urban and social realities in China, discussing it over blogs and Twitter. Photographs of radical urban transformation, of the search for earthquake victims, and the destruction of his Shanghai studio are presented together with his art photography projects, the Documenta project Fairytale, the countless blog and cell phone photographs. A comprehensive book accompanies this exhibition.

Ai Weiwei is a generalist, a conceptual, socially critical artist dedicated to creating friction with, and forming reality. As an architect, conceptual artist, sculptor, photographer, blogger, Twitterer, interview artist, and cultural critic, he is a sensitive observer of current topics and social problems: a great communicator and networker who brings life into art and art into life.

Ai Weiwei was born in 1957, the son of the poet Ai Qing. Following his studies at the Beijing Film Academy, he cofounded in 1978 the artists’ collective The Stars, which rejected Social Realism and advocated artistic individualism and experimentation in art. In 1981 Ai Weiwei went to the USA and 1983 to New York, where he studied at Parsons School for Design in the class of the painter Sean Scully. In New York he discovered artists like Allen Ginsberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, and, above all, Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp is important for him because he understood art as part of life. At this time, Ai Weiwei produced his first ready-mades and thousands of photographs documenting his life and friends in the Chinese art community in New York. After his father fell ill, he returned to Beijing in 1993. In 1997 he cofounded the China Art Archives & Warehouse (CAAW) and began from then on to deal with architecture as well. Ai Weiwei opened his own studio in 1999 in Caochangdi and set up the architecture studio FAKE Design in 2003. In the same year, he played a major role, together with the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, in the construction of the Olympic stadium, the so-called Bird’s Nest. Following its completion, it became a new symbol of Beijing. In 2007, 1001 Chinese visitors traveled, at his instigation, to Documenta 12 in Kassel (Fairytale). In 2010 the world marvelled at his large, yet formally minimal carpet of millions of hand-painted porcelain sunflower seeds at the Tate Modern.

Ai Weiwei deliberately confronts social conditions in China and in the world: Through photographically documenting the architectonic clear-cutting of Beijing in the name of progress, with provocative measurements of the world, his personal positionings in the Study of Perspective, with radical cuts in the past (made to found pieces of furniture) in order to create possibilities for the present and the future, and with his tens of thousands of blog entries, blog photographs, and cell phone photographs (along with many other artistic declarations). This first, large exhibition and book project of his photography and videos focuses on Ai Weiwei’s diversity, complexity, and connectedness, his “interlacing” and “networking” with hundreds of photographs, blogs, and explanatory essays.

The artist as network, as company, as activist, as political voice, as social container, as agent provocateur: at every moment – in the past, present, and future – every society on Earth needs outstanding unique figures like Ai Weiwei in order to stay awake, to be shaken awake, to be made to recognise their own obstinacy, and to be able to avoid tunnel vision. We are therefore deeply saddened that the completion of this book coincides with Ai Weiwei’s arrest which we deplore. We are extremely concerned about the artist. And we wish that this great thinker, designer, and fighter will remain a resistant public voice for all of us – and especially for China.

The exhibition and book were developed in close collaboration with Ai Weiwei. For reasons already mentioned, however, he was unable to be involved in completing the book. We continue to hope that he will be personally present for the installation of the exhibition.

Press release from the Fotomuseum Winterthur website [Online] Cited 06/07/2011 no longer available online

Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957)
Provisional Landscapes
2002-2008
Diptych
Inkjet prints
66 x 84cm each
© Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957)
10/29/04, Hebei Carpet Factory, China
c. 2005-2009
From Blog Photographs
© Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957)
6/1/08, Wenchuan, China
c. 2005-2009
From Blog Photographs
© Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957)
Study of Perspective – Tiananmen
1995-2010
C-print
32.5 x 43.5cm
© Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957)
Study of Perspective – The Eiffel Tower
1995-2010
C-print
32.5 x 43.5cm
© Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957)
From Bird’s Nest
2005-2008
C-print
46.5 x 60cm
© Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957)
Fairytale 1
2007
From Fairytale
Inkjet-print
92.5 x 92.5cm
© Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957)
Ai Weiwei. Williamsburg, Brooklyn
1983
From New York Photographs 1983-1993
C-print
29.2 x 20cm
© Ai Weiwei

Fotomuseum Winterthur
Grüzenstrasse 44 + 45 CH-8400
Winterthur (Zürich)

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday 11am – 6pm
Wednesday 11am – 8pm
Monday closed

Fotomuseum Winterthur website

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Book: ‘Spomenik’ by Jan Kempenaers

February 2011

Three Canons

Be still with yourself

Until the object of your attention

Affirms your presence

Let the Subject generate its own Composition

When the image mirrors the man

And the man mirrors the subject

Something might take over

Minor White 1968

“Gone is the modernist tenet of authorship in which everything in a photograph depends and can be traced to a single photographer acting in isolation. In its place, White supposes a relationship with subject that is a two way street: by granting the world some role in its own representation we create a photograph that is not so much a product solely of individual actions as it is the result of a negotiation in which the world and all its subjects might participate.”

Vince Leo

These are beautiful photographs; there is no fuss, no histrionics here. The use of light and the framing of subject are wonderful. The photographer has let the subject generate its own composition meaning that the sculptures speak for themselves: something takes over – an ethereal evocation of space and place.

The sculptures occupy a representational space appropriated by the imagination. “Lefebvre writes that it [representational space] “overlays physical space, making symbolic use of its objects” and is predominantly non-verbal in nature.”1 The photographs and their representational space offer the viewer the possibility of drifting (Guy Debord’s dérive) encouraging “an unplanned journey through a landscape… where an individual travels where the subtle aesthetic contours of the surrounding architecture and geography subconsciously direct them with the ultimate goal of encountering an entirely new and authentic experience.”2

I find the photographs truly authentic. I immerse myself in their presence: I embrace them because they are in my imagination, creatures of the deep recesses of the mind.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Burgin, Victor. In/Different Spaces: Place and Memory in Visual Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, p. 27
2/ Anonymous. “Dérive,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 28/06/2011

Many thankx to Jan Kempenaers for allowing me to publish the photographs and text in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All photographs © Jan Kempenaers and courtesy of the artist.

This monument, authored by sculptor Miodrag Živković, commemorates the Battle of Sutjeska, one of the bloodiest battles of World War II in the former Yugoslavia.

World War II

Since nearly the beginning of Axis powers taking control of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in April of 1941, the armies of Germany, Italy and their other Axis collaborators had been battling against armed uprisings of local resistance forces, most notably Josip Tito’s communist Partisan Army. As the Partisans in large part relied on guerilla tactics and unconventional warfare, they became a significant force for the Axis leadership to reckon with. As a result, the German Army created a set of targeted operations to take out Tito specifically, which they felt would behead the Partisan’s leadership and destroyed the movement. The first attempt at subduing Tito took place in January of 1943, during what the German’s called Operation Case White, which the Yugoslav’s later referred to as the Battle of Neretva near Makljen. However, this operation ended in Tito dramatically escaping at the last moment.

In May of 1943, Axis powers set upon Tito again with a new operation called Case Black. The operation was initiated with 127,000 Axis forces pursuing 22,000 Yugoslav Partisans across the Durmitor Mountains, then north into the Zelengora Mountains of present-day Bosnia. Then, in early June of 1943, the Partisans were subsequently boxed in and trapped within Axis lines on Vučevo Mountain on the east Sutjeska River valley, near the small village of Tjentište. As a result, a massive battle between the two sides ensued in what today is known as the ‘Battle of Sutjeska’ (Bitka na Sutjesci). Despite this hopeless seeming situation, Tito orchestrated a daring move where, starting on the morning of June 9th, he ordered Partisan units to begin breaking west across the open valley and over the river. Some of the Partisans were surprisingly successful in breaking the German lines, at which point they headed up a steep ravine of Ozren Mountain and were then able to break north through German lines and escape past Goražde through the mountains into eastern Bosnia.

Despite this ambitious and daring escape Tito made during this seemingly hopeless battle, it came at a great cost of life. During the conflict, over 7,000 Partisan soldiers were killed. Tito’s escape at Sutjeska is considered a significant pivotal moment is the Partisan Liberation Struggle against the German-Italian Axis occupiers, as it proved that they were a formidable fighting force which could not easily be destroyed.

Anonymous text. “Tjentište,” on the Spomenik Database website Nd [Online] Cited 22/07/2022

The Petrova Gora monument was designed by Vojin Bakić and built in 1982. It was dedicated to the people of Kordun and Banija who died during World War II. It was dismantled in 2011.

The Kosmaj monument in Serbia is dedicated to soldiers of the Kosmaj Partisan detachment from World War II.

The Kruševo Makedonium monument in Macedonia was dedicated to the Ilinden Uprising of 1903, when the Bulgarian population revolted against the Ottoman Empire.

Ilinden Uprising

The primary historical event this monument commemorates is the Ilinden Uprising, which was an uprising of Macedonian IMARO rebels initiated against Ottoman rule on August 2nd, 1903. During this time, in the region of present-day Kruševo, resistance fighters proclaimed this newly liberated land to be the land of the Kruševo Republic, under the leadership of then school-teacher turned war-hero Nikola Karev. This separatist territory lasted less than two weeks before it was suppressed by 176,000 Turk soldiers and put back under Ottoman control, with nearly 9000 people being executed at the hands of the Turks in retaliation.

World War II

In addition, this spomenik commemorates the local Kruševo fighters of the People’s Liberation Struggle (WWII) who struggled under the Partisan banner to help free Macedonian from Axis and fascist occupation. On August 19th, 1942, the Kruševo Partisan Detachment was formed as a force of community soldiers who engaged in skirmishes with Axis troops across Macedonia until Kruševo’s liberation by Soviet-backed Bulgarians during the fall of 1944. Macedonia was officially declared a nation-state during the Anti-fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM), held at Prohor of Pčinja Monastery, on August 2nd, 1944, which was a date symbolically chosen to align with the date of the Ilinden Uprising, as the ASNOM gathering considered itself the ‘Second Ilinden’. Presently, this date is still celebrated in Macedonia as the Day of the Republic.

Anonymous text. “Kruševo,” on the Spomenik Database website Nd [Online] Cited 22/07/2022

The Susanjar Memorial Complex in Bosnia and Herzegovina was created in remembrance of the thousands killed by Germans during the Orthodox festival of Ilindan in 1941.

Spomenik Construction

Preliminary plans to construct a memorial complex at the Sanski Most execution site for the commemoration of these tragedies was organised in late 1968. At this point, an official selection board was convened to arrange this memorial’s construction. This board consisted of municipal officials as well as generals and officials of the SR of Bosnia who were from the Sanski Most region. The chairman of the board was Yugoslav WWII hero Petar Dodik, at this time a lawyer from Sarajevo. Funding for the project was raised by this board largely via public voluntary donations from those in the community. Three specific notable designers were considered by the board to create the monument, all who had varying ideas of what the monument should look like. Belgrade architect Bogdan Bogdanović, wanted to construct a ‘Tower of Babel’ themed structure, but the design selection committee found this concept unacceptable. Famous Zagreb sculptor Vanja Radauš suggested a bone-shaped memorial, but this was also rejected, as it was felt it might incite feelings of anger and hatred towards Croats in general, especially as the memorial was intended to be a place of healing and reconciliation… not horror.

The project was eventually awarded to Sarajevo architect Petar Krstić, whose primary composition, completed in 1970, consisted of an aluminium flame-like obelisk set within an open paved courtyard. The complex’s approaching pathways were lined with stone tiles commemorating the victims killed and executed in the uprising. In addition, long crisscrossing concrete tubes are arranged around the monument as seating for visitors and as an outdoor classroom for students. The official commemoration ceremony for the memorial took place on August 2nd, 1971, a date which recognised 30 years since the 1941 St. Elijah’s Day killings. During the memorial’s construction, there was an alleged incident where when workers were digging in the ground to construct the memorial’s crypt, blood started to bubble up from the earth. After an investigation, it was determined to be human blood (presumably left over from the massacres which occurred on the site) which had seeped into the ground and mixed with moist clay, allowing it to remain viscous and suspended. However, I was not able to find definitive corroborating evidence of this event. Also, after the monument’s official opening in 1971, a series of annual poetry reading events called the ‘Šušnjar Literary Festival’ were held at the site every August 2nd during the monument’s remembrance ceremonies.

Symbolism

It has been stated by the creator of this memorial sculpture, Petar Krstić, that its sharply irregular and luminescent form is meant to resemble the shape of a shining leaping flame and that said form is meant to be symbolic of the light of life and the victorious process of overcoming the threat of fascism which caused such sufferings to the people of the Sanski Most region. Such a universally understood image of the flame representing the ‘light of life’ was mostly surely chosen by the memorial’s selection board with the intention that it would be an inclusive and non-incendiary symbol pleasing all members of the town’s ethnically divided population. In addition, Krstić explained that his sculpture was meant to symbolise not only the suffering of people in Sanski Most, but suffering of all people throughout the ages. Such statements reinforce the ‘universalist’ interpretations of this sculpture. Interestingly, Krstić’s original design called for the memorial sculpture to emit sounds and lights from a machine within the structure, which would symbolise the struggle and suffering of the people of Sanski Most – however, this experimental concept became cost prohibitive and was never integrated into the site.

Anonymous text. “Sanski Most,” on the Spomenik Database website Nd [Online] Cited 22/07/2022

Built in 1963, this monument in Niš, Serbia commemorates the 10,000 people from the area that were killed during World War II. The three clenched fists are the work of sculptor Ivan Sabolić.

This monument is in Korenica, on the border of Croatia and Bosnia. It commemorates Yugoslavia’s victory in World War II.

This monument is dedicated to the soldiers who freed the city of Knin, Croatia from the fascists during World War II.

Built in 1949, this monument was designed by Vojin Bakić and is dedicated to the fallen fighters of the Yugoslav front.

The Kadinjača Memorial Complex commemorates those who died during the Battle of Kadinjača.

Serbia’s most grandiose spomenik (Yugoslav-era memorial), Kadinjača commemorates the Partisans from the Workers’ Battalion who perished on this spot fighting the Germans in November 1941. Rising on a green hill like some futuristic Stonehenge, the arresting series of white granite monoliths of various heights and angles culminates in two 14m-high pillars that together form a symbolic ‘bullet hole’ sculpture. The 15-hectare complex comprises a stone pyramid with a crypt for the fallen soldiers.

There’s a memorial hall with an exhibition about the historic event. The Partisans’ heroic defeat at the battle of Kadinjača marked the end of the short-lived Republic of Užice, the first liberated territory in German-occupied Europe. Proclaimed by Yugoslavia’s legendary resistance movement, it covered an area of about 20,000 sq km in western Serbia and lasted only 67 days.

Anonymous text. “Kadinjača Memorial Complex,” on the Lonely Planet website Nd [Online] Cited 22/07/2022

This sculpture was built in 1973 and designed by Bogdan Bogdanovic. It is dedicated to the long mining tradition in Kosovo.

Jan Kempenaers website

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Exhibition: ‘HIJACKED 2: Australia/Germany’ at the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide

Exhibition dates: 13th May – 1st July 2011

Many thankx to the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Olaf Unverzart (German, b. 1972)
Untitled (from the series Fallen Kann Ich Auch Alleine)
1999
Pigment print
56 x 38cm/125 x 85cm
Courtesy of Oechsner Galerie

Ingvar Kenne (Australian born Sweden, b. 1965)
Nick Cave
2001
From the series Citizen 1997-2012
C-type print
100 x 100cm
Courtesy of the artist

Narelle Autio (Australian, b. 1969)
Untitled 8 (from the series Not of This Earth)
2001
Courtesy of the artist

Jörg Brüggemann (German, b. 1979)
Nam Song River, Vang Vieng, Laos, December 2007
2007
C-type print
69 x 57cm
Courtesy of the artist and Ostkreuz

Johanna Ahlert (German, b. 1980)
Truck and Trailer Castle, Berlin
2008
From the series CONVOI 2008
C-type print
100 x 127cm
Courtesy of the artist

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
The loners
2009
From the series Between worlds
Pigment ink-jet print
105 x 105cm

Ingvar Kenne (Australian born Sweden, b. 1965)
Mona Chuguna, Author, Broome, Australia
2009
From the series Citizen 1997-2012
C-type print
100 x 100cm
Courtesy of the artist

Hijacked 2: Australia/Germany builds on the very considerable success of the inaugural exhibition, Hijacked 1 – Australia and America, and its internationally celebrated and hugely successful book. This new exhibition effectively considers two socially disparate nations, Germany and Australia, through an expansive photographic anthology of fascinating works, juxtaposed to suggest connections.

Hijacked 2 has been curated by Mark McPherson and Ute Noll and showcases the diverse talents and perspectives of thirty contemporary German and Australian photographers. With a focus on the depiction of the young, the boundary-riding, and the fringe-dwelling, Hijacked 2 is evocative, confronting, dreamlike and rousing.

Featured artists from Australia are: Narelle Autio, James Brickwood, Michael Corridore, Andrew Cowen, Tamara Dean, Suzie Fox, Lee Grant, Derek Henderson, Rebecca Ann Hobbs, Ingvar Kenne, Bronek Kózka, Georgia Metaxas, Polixeni Papapetrou and Louis Porter.

From Germany the artists are: Johanna Ahlert, Natalie Bothur, Jörg Brüggemann, Thekla Ehling, Albrecht Fuchs, Jan von Holleben, Karsten Kronas, Anne Lass, Jens Liebchen, Myriam Lutz, Julian Röder, Josef Schulz, Oliver Sieber, Ivonne Thein, Olaf Unverzart and Sascha Weidner.

Hijacked 2: Australia/Germany is toured by the Australian Centre for Photography. A substantial 412-page publication accompanies the exhibition with texts by Uta Daur, Bec Dean, Alasdair Foster, Bill Kouwenhoven, Katja Melzer, Daniel Palmer and Katrina Schwarz.

Text from the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art website

Ivon Thein (German, b. 1979)
Untitled 07 (from the series Thirty-Two Kilos)
2006
C-type print
55 x 80cm
Courtesy of Galerie Voss

Oliver Sieber (German, b. 1966)
Reita, Köln, 2007
2007
Pigment print
34 x 27cm
Courtesy Galerie Priska Pasquer, Germany

David Henderson (New Zealand, b. 1963)
Dave Omeka Kidwell and Feather, Ātiamuri
2008
From the series Mercy Mercer

Thekla Ehling (German, b. 1968)
Untitled
2011
From the series Vergiszmeinnicht (forget-me-not)

Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art
Hawke Building, City West campus
University of South Australia
55 North Terrace, Adelaide
Phone: (08) 8302 0870

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 5pm

Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art website

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Exhibition: ‘Vienna – Art & Design’ at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 18th June – 9th October 2011

Media preview for Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

A subtle pleasure

The delicate paintings are smaller with a flatness of texture and a sombreness than I had not imagined; magnificent in their subtlety. However, the real stars of this wonderful exhibition are the design pieces.

Whether silver, wood, ceramic, glass or jewellery the designs are balanced by a glorious aesthetic. Never has a tea service looked so ravishing or decadent.

This is not a wham bang show like Dali or that other King of some fame showing elsewhere. This is for a discerning audience – one that can take time (between pots of tea) to study and go ooh and aah!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the National Gallery of Victoria for inviting me and for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All photographs © Marcus Bunyan 2011 except the photographs of the full paintings which come from the NGV press CD ROM.

I just couldn’t help myself!
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of first room of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of first room of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria showing at left:

Otto Wagner (architect) (Austrian, 1841-1918)
Alexander Albert (manufacturer) Austria active c. 1904
Chair for Dr Karl Lueger
1904
Rosewood (Dalbergia sp.), mother-of-pearl, leather
98.5 x 63 x 59.5cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Estate of Karl Lueger, 1910

at right:

Wilhelm Gause (Germany 1853-1916)
Vienna Municipal Ball
1904
Watercolour and oil on cardboard
62 x 88cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Commissioned by the City of Vienna, 1904
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Wilhelm Gause (Germany 1853-1916)
Vienna Municipal Ball
1904
Watercolour and oil on cardboard
62 x 88cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Commissioned by the City of Vienna, 1904

Stylish, provocative, rebellious, and unforgettable – the world has seen nothing like Vienna in 1900. A century ago, a group of radical young artists, architects, writers, musicians, designers and thinkers overturned all the rules and created a brave new world. Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Josef Hoffmann and Adolf Loos were central to this artistic revolution which transformed Vienna into a dynamic metropolis at the forefront of ground-breaking modernism.

Vienna at the dawn of the twentieth century was opulent, elegant and daring. Casting aside outmoded social mores and moralities, private life became public spectacle. Cabarets, coffee houses, and nightclubs teemed with radical debate and artistic abandon. Gustav Klimt’s society portraits immortalise the chic women who presided over this creative ferment. Josef Hoffmann and the Vienna Workshops created the bold new interior design and the household objects with which these women furnished their elegant homes, establishing the modern ‘look’. As Sigmund Freud defined sexual fragmentation and erotic obsession for a new millennium, Egon Schiele explored human sexuality in images of unparalleled and startling frankness.

Vienna: Art & Design will explore this extraordinary period of artistic and intellectual genius, bringing together more than 250 works of art, including painting, drawing, graphic and decorative art, furniture, fashion, jewellery and photography, most never before seen in Australia. Visitors will experience the inventiveness and brilliance of a unique generation who laid the foundations for life in the twentieth century – a legacy still vividly alive today.

Text from the National Gallery of Victoria website Nd [Online] Cited 22/07/2022

Otto Wagner (Austrian, 1841-1918) (architect)
Alexander Albert (Austria active c. 1904) (manufacturer)
Chair for Dr Karl Lueger
1904
Rosewood (Dalbergia sp.), mother-of-pearl, leather
98.5 x 63 x 59.5cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Estate of Karl Lueger, 1910
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Josef Hoffmann (Austrian, 1870-1956) (designer)
J. & J. Kohn, Vienna (manufacturer)
Adjustable-back chair (Sitzmaschine)
1908
Ebonised Beech (Fagus sp.), plywood, steel
(a-b) 110.8 x 68.1 x 83.7cm (overall)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased through The Art Foundation of Victoria with the assistance of Jardine Matheson Australia, Fellow, 1983
© Estate of Josef Hoffmann

Josef Hoffmann (Austrian, 1870-1956) (designer)
Wiener Werkstätte, Vienna (commissioning workshop)
J. Soulek, Vienna (manufacturer)
Bureau, from the Gallia apartment boudoir
1913
Painted wood, gilt, glass, silk, brass
(a-m) 179.4 x 110.9 x 64.6cm (overall)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Samuel E. Wills Bequest, 1976
© Estate of Josef Hoffmann

Otto Wagner (Austria 1841-1918) (architect)
Reconstruction of facade for Die Zeit (installation view)
1902 designed, 1985 made
Iron, aluminium, nickel-plated iron, glass
450 x 332cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Commissioned by the Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, 1985
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Otto Wagner (Austria 1841-1918) (architect)
Reconstruction of facade for Die Zeit (installation detail)
1902 designed, 1985 made
Iron, aluminium, nickel-plated iron, glass
450 x 332cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Commissioned by the Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, 1985
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Otto Wagner objects including shelving, stool, chair and hot air blower (rear) in the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Gustav Klimt (Austria 1862-1918)
The Park (installation detail)
1909
Oil on canvas
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view part of the second room of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Wilhelm Otto List
Young lady in black and white (installation detail)
1904
Oil on canvas
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Charles Robert Ashbee (designer) (British, 1863-1942)
Standing cup and cover (installation view)
1901
Silver, turqoise

Josef Hoffmann (designer) (Austria-Hungary 1870-1956)
Sports Trophy (installation view)
1902
Silver, gilt, malachite
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Josef Hoffmann (Austria-Hungary 1870-1956) (designer)
Wiener Werkstätte, Vienna (manufacturer) (Austria-Hungary 1903-1932)
Tea service (installation view)
c. 1909-1911
Silver-gilt, wood
(1.A-E) 21.5 x 29.0 x 26.8cm (overall) (kettle, stand and burner)
(2) 10.8 x 15.4 x 20.2cm (teapot)
(3.A-B) 8.7 x 8.8 x 6.8cm (overall) (sugar basin and lid)
(4) 4.8 x 8.5 x 15.6cm (milk jug)
(5) 3.4 x 36.3 x 29.9cm (tray)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased, 1985
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of room three of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria showing part of Gustave Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze: Central wall 1901-1902 (detail at top)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Max Klinger (German, 1857-1920)
Beethoven (installation view)
c. 1902
Plaster
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of room four of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria with at right, Gustav Klimt’s painting Emilie Flöge (1902)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Gustav Klimt (Austrian, 1862-1918)
Emilie Flöge
1902
Oil on canvas
178.0 x 80.0cm
Wien Museum, Vienna

Gustav Klimt (Austrian, 1862-1918)
Emilie Flöge (installation detail)
1902
Oil on canvas
178.0 x 80.0cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of room five of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of first room of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria showing at right:

Koloman Moser (Austrian, 1868-1918) (designer)
Armchair (installation view)
1903
Painted beech

at second right

Josef Hoffmann (Austrian, 1870-1956) (designer)
Collapsible library steps (installation view)
1905
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Gustav Klimt (Austrian, 1862-1918)
Fritza Riedler (installation detail)
1906
Oil on canvas
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Gustav Klimt (Austrian, 1862-1918)
Fritza Riedler
1906
Oil on canvas
152.0 x 134.0cm
Belvedere, Vienna

Installation views of room six of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Josef Hoffmann (Austrian, 1870-1956)
Tea and coffee service (installation view)
1909
Silver, ivory
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of room seven of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria with, against the wall,

Adolf Loos (Austrian, 1870-1933) (designer)
Sideboard, from the Langer apartment
1903
Mahogany (Swietenia sp.), mirror, brass
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Adolf Loos (Austrian, 1870-1933) (designer)
Johann Heeg (manufacturer)
Clock
1906-1907
Brass, glass, clock mechanism, enamel paint, steel
(a-b) 42.7 x 43.0 x 32.7cm (overall) (c) 7.4 x 5.5 x 0.8cm (key)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased through The Art Foundation of Victoria with the assistance of Waltons Limited, Fellow, 1987

Installation view of room seven of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Ferdinand Andri (Austrian, 1871-1956)
The Gallia children (installation view)
1901
Oil on canvas

with Josef Hoffmann furniture in the foreground
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Ferdinand Andri (Austrian, 1871-1956)
The Gallia children
1901
Oil on canvas
100.4 × 130.8cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented by the family of Moriz and Hermine Gallia, 1976
© the artist’s estate

Gustave Klimt (Austrian, 1862-1918)
Portrait of Hermine Gallia (installation view detail)
1904
Oil on canvas
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Pieces of Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Mosser silver in the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Love the reflected light!

Installation views of room eight of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Objects by Dagobert Peche (left, right and second right) and Josef Hoffmann in the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Egon Schiele (Austrian, 1890-1918)
Portrait of a boy (Portrait of Herbert Rainer aged approximately six (installation detail)
1910
Oil on canvas
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Egon Schiele (Austrian, 1890-1918)
Portrait of a boy (Portrait of Herbert Rainer aged approximately six)
1910
Oil on canvas
101.0 x 101.5cm
Belvedere, Vienna

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