Between mythical creatures and human forms, between dream and nightmare, we find ourselves in a world where life crawls and insects swarm: Welcome to the land of the Blue Hour. A selection of works by Jan Fabre in the Picture Gallery of Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna can be seen from 4 May till 28 August 2011. This podcast was realised with the kind support of UNIQUA ArtCercles.

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Interview with Jasper Sharp, the curator of “The Hour Blue” exhibition of Jan Fabre at Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna

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Jan Fabre is an artist we can safely describe as a multidisciplinary all-rounder. He is a painter, graphic artist, stage director, choreographer, lighting designer, author and editor – drawing from all fields of creativity: Arts, sciences, philosophy, literature, religion…nothing escapes him. more »

Irene Andessner resuscitates the Tableau vivant with “Art Protectors” in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna. The exhibition ‘The Gold Age. Dutch Group Portraits from the Amsterdams Historic Museum’ can be seen till 21.11.2010 in Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
This podcast was realised with the kind support of UNIQUA ArtCercles.

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Art Protectors is a two-piece tableau vivant Irene Andessner staged in the Kunsthistorisches Museum after the model of Dutch regent’s portraits. Two paintings of Jan de Brays of 1667 are the initial source. They show the administrative council of the leper-, pestilence and insane asylum, the directors and patrons administering and supporting it. In her contemporary reinterpretation of the subject, Andessner replaces the staff of both paintings by patrons of the arts: collectors, gallerists, a museum director, a curator. more »

“And if there ever was an age when one sees varied and wondrous things I believe that ours is one” (Mateo Bandello, 1554) This podcast was realised with the kind support of UNIQUA ArtCercles.

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Miniatures made of ivory, rhino and narwhale horn. Ostrich eggs, symbols of power and resistance as the ancient mythology says the giant birds live on stones and iron. Seychelles nuts washed ashore on the Maldives. Bezoars, rocks found in the stomach of ruminant animals that are rumoured to dispel melancholy, composed in the finest art of metalworking. Arty watches, wondrous automatic machines, quadrants, astrolabes and other scientific instruments. The most bizarre monstrosities, Madonna figures and Dionysian satyrs standing in a row with mystic animals thrown out of the deepest oceans. more »

A good five centuries ago, a navigator called Vespucci had gained the respect of a cartographer called Waldseemüller, who decided to christen the Mundus Novus as the continent of America. The interest in Europe in imported goods from the New World had grown significantly in this time. With economic expansion, the Old World had also opened up a new area of knowledge, which was meant to be conquered scientifically.

Sylvia Ferino – Pears as Tearducts, a Corncob for an Ear. Part 1

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Sylvia Ferino – Pears as Tearducts, a Corncob for an Ear. Part 2

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Against the backdrop of this newly developing landscape of knowledge in the sixteenth century, the Milanese painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo began making portraits of human faces arranged from seafood, fruits, and vegetables in the court of the Habsburg king, Maximillian II. Of course, this kind of metamorphosis of the human face had already been mesmerizing people at the time and more »