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It began, as it had to begin, how painting – which captures something new, thereby disturbing the conventional view – nearly always begins. With the changing times. With the meeting of artistic minds. With admiration that follows, along with a lack of understanding and sometimes even denial.

Four years after Georges Braque moved into the French capital from Normandy, he was still painting landscapes in the Impressionistic style. However, his sphere of influence changed. He admires Matisse, Derain, Dufy, and Friesz. Not two years passed by before he became one of the Fauves, one of the young wild ones, as the art critic Louis Vauxcelles patronizingly referred to them on the occasion of an exhibition. Braque commuted between the city, the Montmartre district of Paris, where Picasso had also set up his studio, and the country, the southern Mediterranean coast. There, in Provence, Braque developed his first Fauvist landscapes of pure color. Beginning in 1908, as he was traveling once again to the south to L’Estaque, flat, geometric surfaces became prominent in his paintings. Braque wanted to exhibit these harbingers of Cubism in the Salon d’Automne issue, but they were rejected by the jury.

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Picasso reffered to Braque with the statement, “C’est ma femme”, a reflection of their intensive artistic collaboration which began in the following years. Through mutual inspiration and stimulus, the two artists visually experimented with the fragmentation of subject matter: breaking through the central perspective in favor of the multiplication of foci; concentrating on the reality of the picture rather than reality of the subject, thereby approaching the borders of abstraction; the dissolution of figure and foundation; experimenting with the objective character of the picture – its structure, materiality, and autonomy – introducing foreign materials and fragments into the reality of the picture. The most innovative developments of the still recent century rose from this collaboration. They are the art-historical starting points of further developments in modern art. At the beginning of the Second World War, the mutual support system of artists, as Braque liked to refer to this era, came to an end.

When he returned from the war, Braque took up where he had left off – Cubism. He dedicated himself to the still life. For him, painting was meant to stir things up, which meant avoiding total abstraction. Studio pictures followed, an introverted subject for an equally introverted personality, so Braque returned to the landscape in the last years of his life.

Despite intensive collaboration and Braque’s innovative spirit, Picasso was always the center of attention, the cult of personality accounts for the more extroverted one of the two artists. However, this imbalance is not justified on the artistic level, according to Heike Eipeldauer and Caroline Messensee, the curators of the latest Braque retrospective at the Bank Austria Kunstforum in Vienna. With works on loan from over fifty institutions, the Bank Austria Kunstforum is exhibiting the impressive oeuvre of the French painter for the first time in twenty years in Austria. The work of the painter will be on display until March 1st, 2009 at the Bank Austria Kunstforum in Vienna. (wh)

How does art find entrance into a medium which was still considered by many as only a photocopy of reality without artistic value until the middle of the last century? The writer and painter Friedrich Duerrenmatt pointed out a way: Reality, too, must be formed and given a voice that, in this case, tells us stories. By using the tool of photography for this art of making reality speak to us, what was previously only considered photocopy becomes a poetic procedure, a human treasure hunt, whose booty is timely and timeless at the same time.

The exhibition, “Fotografis - Collection Reloaded”, in the Bank Austria Kunstforum, offers a space for such photographic figurations of reality along with its trails of the temporality to be displayed. The works from the internal FOTOGRAFIS collection reveal the paths of development of the photographic view. The extension in the form of various loans makes it possible to pose confrontations with photographic positions of our time—from the pictorial photography of Alfred Stieglitz to Andreas Gursky, Axel Hütte, and Elgar Esser, from the new objectivity of Albert Renger-Patzsch, Edward Weston, or Paul Strand to recent works of James Welling, Günther Förg or Candida Höfer.

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The Bank Austria Kunstforum FOTOGRAFIS collection was created in 1975. This step was remarkably farsighted for its time. On the one hand, it was remarkable considering that, at this time in Austria, the photographic arts had relatively little value and were considered to be merely collectible items. On the other hand, it is also remarkable in that the farsightedness of that time has resulted today in a collection with outstanding work from the history of the photography, which could have only been collected in our time through high financial expenditure.

The selection of the purchased work was dictated by the goals of demonstrating the history of artistic photography, giving photography researchers material, and promoting the new generation of photography. The structure of the photography collection was conceived and facilitated by Anna Auer and Werner Mraz. Both had created the “Galerie Die Brücke” several years earlier, the first gallery in Europe to exclusively specialize in photography. During their time of working on the collection, scarcely three hundred works were purchased. The earliest work of the collection dates back to the 1940s, apart from international works, the collection also covers the work of Austrian artists.

CastYourArt asked Lisa Kreil and Florian Steininger—who are responsible for the conception and organization of the exhibition—for a glimpse into the collection and exhibition concept. How photography can be seen as a human treasure hunt with a both timely and timeless booty, can be explored at the Bank Austria Kunstforum on the Freyung until October 29th, 2008. The collection will then move to Prague before it becomes on permanent loan to the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg. (wh/jn)

To flare up, to freak out, to lose it—to see red. Red stands for danger, the red stoplight, red stands for pain and suffering, the red flag, red stands for love and desire, glowing-hot red, blood red. “The Eye” sees red. Exclusively. At least according to the Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn, whose installation “The Eye” currently takes place at the Wiener Secession.

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Thomas Hirschhorn is a fan of philosophy. He admires Foucault. In one of his early works, Foucault investigates “The Order of Things”, which gives us a clear view of the world, putting some things together according to a relation, while others are incomparably set apart. The order of the things, according to the philosopher, is not self-evident, various possibilities exist. Foucault quotes from J.L. Borges’ book “The Book of Imaginary Beings”, an encyclopedia which arranges the world in a decidedly unexpected manner. An example: the species of animals are categorized as follows: embalmed animals, milk pigs, sirens, animals from fables, stray dogs, animals who belong to the emperor, which could be painted with a very fine camel-hair paintbrush, animals that look like flies from a distance, etc.

What makes this order impossible for us, says the philosopher, is not the fact that, for example, animals from fables are included among the categories for the animals. The impossibility results from the fact that animals from fables are placed beside milk pigs, which in turn are placed beside embalmed animals, then stray dogs, and so on, thereby placing things together on a level which we ourselves could not even imagine in our wildest imaginings, in which these things can exist among and even have relationships to one another.

Foucault asked the question: on what level can things exist and relate to each other in the real world? In his exhibition in Vienna, Hirschhorn, fan of philosophers and an artist answers: in the red. “The Eye” sees red and only red. “The Eye” seeing red is an arrangement by the artist in which all things red are put on one level and thereby placed in relation to each another.

Hirschhorn’s red puts us in a frame of mind which works against the confusion of an order of the world that is becoming more and more complicated. This is related to the fact that, although the artist places all the things on one level, he refuses to make their connections obvious to the viewer: “ “The Eye” sees, but it does not necessarily understand”. In this sense, Hirschhorn’s installation is just as radical as Borges’ encyclopedia. It is a setting in which things are placed on common ground and in close proximity, and which we try comprehend—but “The Eye” does not understand, it only feigns insight into relations. Hirschhorn is therefore justified in implying that his art could be considered pretentious and ambitious, and, in a certain sense, that it would be insane even to want to point out all of the connections in the installation.

Hirschhorn’s tools are the all-inclusive, the over-the-top, the over-the-edge, as well as the going one or two steps beyond that which is permitted acceptable. Instead of a neat reduction, he aims for an overwhelming excess of order—a frenzy of free association gone wild. Let’s call it “rhizomorphing”. Hirschhorn also mentions Gilles Deleuze, the French philosopher, as a major influence. In 1976, Deleuze postulated, along with Félix Guattari: “1 and 2 – the principles of connection and heterogeneity. Any point of a rhizome can and must be connected with every other one. Completely different on the other hand from a tree or root, for which only one point and order is fixed”. (wh/jn)

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.

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 could have been considered a sensational visual gimmick on the part of Arcimbaldo, according to Dr. Sylvia Ferino, the curator at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. However, at the same time, Arcimboldo’s pictures were a sign of the awakening of the natural sciences and the humanistic reflection of the European self in the mirror of the new world.

After Arcimboldo was summoned to Vienna by Emperor Ferdinand I as a copy artist and portraitist, his duties were extended under the emperor’s son, Maximillian II, and grandson, Rudolf II. Arcimboldo then documented flora and fauna for the artistically- and scientifically-interested royal family. Elements of this activity found their way into his composite head figures, which also served as subjects of opinion and study for the scholarly writings of the scientists of its time. In addition, Arcimboldo invented hydraulic machines, sketched bridges, developed synaesthetic theories, and acted as the royal court artist due to his universal skills. On top of that, he was held in high regard by his employers for the imperial celebrations that he hosted. He was also well respected by fellow intellectuals such as Ulisse Aldrovandi, the founder of the modern zoology.

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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Dr. Sylvia Ferino, with whom we spoke about the connection of Arcimboldo’s work to the social background of his time, has been honored several times for her work with the icons of Italian Renaissance painting. Along with many other projects, she curated the Arcimboldo exhibition, which was shown at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, and at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. (wh/jn)

Intensity can be fascinating. However, levity also holds a certain charm. The artist’s name, ILA — which stands for the sentence in German: einen “Immens Langen Atem haben” (literally, “to be long of breath”, i.e. “to have stamina or willpower”) — expresses the difficulties of an artist’s existence: facing setbacks, keeping up endurance, rolling with the punches. The business of art often seems like hard work, however, the work process and artistic expression of art is more like play. He wishes for his works to appear like they happen effortlessly, minus burdening concepts like “genius” or artistic self-sacrifice. His work, he says, is inspired by the idea of giving something. They should be considered as invitations to stick around, to wake one up but not to win one over. The viewer then must choose his or her own way through the works, unguided by the preconceptions of others.

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After getting a degree in geology, ILA turned his attentions towards art. His preoccupation with natural science can still be found in his work. Exhibition titles such as “All in All” are reminiscent of the systematic paradigm of nature. In his work, “Earth Plugs” — which was honored with First Prize at the International Biennale for Miniatures in Belgrade — he drilled holes into pavement curbs, house facades, and boulders using a diamond drill bit, thereby inoculating the socio-geological ground of these public spaces and found locations as a kind of artistic intervention. “Call Wood” features the installation of an automatically answering mobile phone somewhere in the middle of the forest. At the headquarters of the high-tech company AVL, ILA’s “Climate- Control Machine” can be found, which in this time of global warming, keeps an ice relief of the world permanently frozen though solar power. The “Female Network” places females in typical positions while speaking on their mobile phones into the context of primitive cave paintings. Culturally provocative references to the natural sciences permeate ILA’s work.

In the academic art education system, ILA is most struck by its tendency to stifle its students’ potential. Stuffy formal principles in isolated educational institutions and the focus on competition in artistic activity, truly limits the artists’ horizons. His work, he says, not least of all through its sense of humor, is sometimes liberating in a childlike way, creating room once again to play. (wh/jn)

The Albertina in Vienna—its distinguished collection of artwork covers, among other things, Albrecht Dürer’s rabbits—shows in its current exhibition, “Art after 1970”, that it also offers more recent works of art. CastYourArt’s Ulrike Grabler and Ewa Stern were at the exhibition opening and asked visitors about their opinion over the museum and the exhibited works. For example, does the museum’s exhibition suit the taste of its tradition-conscious public, and does the size of exhibited works from such artists as Baselitz, Brandl, Lassnig, Rainer or Weiler really determine their aesthetic value? The attending guests readily responded to both questions, but they were not necessarily united in their opinions. Listen and decide for yourself. (wh/jn)

Albertina exhibition. Art after 1970

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