Art moves people
CastYourArt offers podcasts for people fascinated by art. The weekly published video- and audio-episodes are windows to the world of art: its ideas, institutions, and actors, its economics, contradictions, and its ups and downs.CastYourArt-Contact

CastYourArt free of charge on your computer
Register and get access to the most current entries of CastYourArt as free automatic downloads from the iTunes Store. CastYourArt-Subscription

CastYourArt for the iPhone and mobile phone
We have developed a new mobile CastYourArt site. Just go to www.castyourart.com/mobile on your iPhone or mobile phone browser or click the link. CastYourArt-Mobile

CastYourArt Video- und Audioepisodes

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.

[8:07 min] download for: mobile | computer & iPod | send feedback

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)

The author Josef Kleindienst, based in Vienna, writes “audio pictures”, plays, novels, and screenplays. His work, “Become a Member”, came out in 2007.

It is an audio picture of a relationship that is formed between three people due to an unexpected event. The ones involved are paralyzed in a moment of shock and unable to escape the situation. They are trapped in this involuntary gathering and struggle with actions and words to regain their fading composure.

[42:06 min] download for: mobile, computer and iPod | send feedback

The speakers are Simona Sbaffi, Andreas Patton, Manfred Stella, and Simon Hatzl. Music by Hüseyin Evirgen. Sound by Johannes Kelz. Illustration by Elsa Mährenbach. Text and direction by Josef Kleindienst.

… this is Eugen Lendl’s answer to the question about what that special quality is that predestines one for the occupation of the gallery owner. However, “most of them originate from rich parents”, he says.

About the development of the gallery. Part 1

[11:54 min] download for: mobile, computer and iPod | send feedback

About the relation between artists and galery owners in time. Part 2

[13:29 min] download for: mobile, computer and iPod | send feedback

As a gallery owner, Eugen Lendl has experienced the limits of the handling of art, the artists with special gifts, and the impressive consistency and power of expression, which enriches his life. He is also familiar with the commercial aspects of art and its value, which translates into a lasting relationship with the customer.

He has been in the business for forty years and he represents both contemporary international and local artists in his gallery program: Thomas Baumann, Herbert Brandl, Helen Chadwick, Manfred Erjautz, Werner Reiterer, Hubert Schmalix, Markus Wilfling, and Erwin Wurm, to name a few. He has been with some of the artists since their beginnings. In the last years, the emphasis of his art has been in sculpture, as well as painting. The areas of interest vary. According to Lendl, he develops along with his artists.

Our discussion with Eugen Lendl gave us insight into a seasoned gallery career: evolving with the times, getting older, being aware of the newer generations, but in addition, developing the ability to observe those trends from a distance and still retain the passion to make an impression. The interview became a review of the “now” factor: “There’s always a few good crazy ones” who promote and feed the art trends in the city. “I, myself “, says Eugen Lendl, “am one of them.” (wh)

As the artistic duo SIGNA, Signa Soerensen and Arthur Koestler provide our world with replicas of itself. They install reproductions of the original, three-dimensional parallel worlds, habitable cartographies: a run-down flophouse is the setting for the hopeless world of six Eastern European prostitutes who are ruled by their social degredation and the brutality of their pimps — a mystical nightmare universe consisting of forty areas filled with religious, political and social rituals. The wing of a closed-off psychiatric station, led by the female doctor, Dorine Chaikin, and her team, subject amnesia patients to a procedure that includes welfare service and discipline.

[7:44 min] download for: mobile | computer & iPod | send feedback

The parallel worlds of SIGNA are replicas which have lost their historical and geographical attributes. The colors, costumes, furniture, in their tiniest details: these seamless properties offer temporal and regional associations, but the where and when remains indefinite. Whoever enters these worlds signs on for six, twelve, or twenty-four hour periods, and carries out a part of the happening. The power of one’s fantasy, personality, and borders begins a play between oneself and one’s other. For this year’s Steirischer Herbst, the CastYourArt team asked for a visit to the northern complex of the Dorine Chaikin Institute and received one of its rare admissions. (wh/jn)

In the view from above, the earth appears as an unpopulated globe. Zoom in, and a view appears of regions and cities, houses and roadways, playgrounds and parks, cafes and stores, all populated by humans who appear tiny, like ants, occupied, engaged in a multiplicity of movements. The view from above relativizes the action. It strips the individual of particularity. and dissipates into the countless paths of the masses. Such an overview of the viewer is primarily based on this moment of his unobservedness, aloofness, and distance.

What if, however, curiosity strikes? If the view creeps ever closer, for those who are interested in checking out life below in more detail? It involves the unavoidable risk of the voyeur: being caught in the act by a sudden, disturbingly inverted gaze.

The pictures of the painter Stylianos Schicho reveal such instants of immobilization in which time stops, but at the same time, everything overwhelms. The observer loses his bird’s-eye view and is suddenly sucked into the ant’s world. And the observed ones suddenly see themselves reflected. They sense themselves under a stranger’s view, which relativizes their inattention and their attention at the same time — a deer-caught-in-headlights effect.

[7:44 min] download for: mobile | computer & iPod | send feedback

Where surveillance uses technology as a channel, the private eye as a discoverer stays anonymous. The view is there, but the viewer is missing. In such a panoptic situation, in which humans gaze meets the lense, a direct confrontation is missing. Instead, movements towards withdrawal begin: the retreat of the observed ones under the observing gaze. The ones who observe become more and more hidden, the observed ones expose themselves - an ever larger hunger for detail.

Stylianos Schicho, sees this development rather pessimistically. One may not nevertheless let go. It should be possible to capture at least one moment of waking up and becoming aware. (wh/jn)

Why are works of art valuable to us on a personal level? Sometimes, their value lies in how they link up with our origin: for example, an old picture which has been in the possession of our family for generations. It can also lie in its symbolic nature, if the acquisition of a work of art is coupled with a special moment in our life. Sometimes, our memories are kept alive by a work of art, addressing us in special ways that invoke happiness, reflection, or tranquility.
Beyond the personal level, art objects can be treated as cultural properties. They may possess for us unique and irretrievable styles. Their settings represent the development of certain ideas or groups of artists. They may document the awareness of the life of a generation, working as collective memories, verifying the strength of the multiplicity of human expression.
When the value of a work of art is established in financial terms, it is based on professional concerns or future precautions. It then offers an issued return or the chance to invest money profitably.
Given the multitude of priorities, insurance is an important topic in the world of art and it is requested for a variety of reasons. CastYourArt was interested in investigating these possibilities and met with Dr. Petra Eibel from UNIQA for a discussion over the matter. As a director of the department of art insurance, she includes the business of insurance from a cultural standpoint in her job description – as was the case with the recent famous theft of the salt chamber from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. At the same time, she has many years of experience of dealing with damage avoidance in the exhibition business, art trade, and private sector.

The art of insurance in a changed world of art. Part 1

[14:15 min] download for: mobile, computer and iPod | send feedback

Art insurance for whom, at what time, and at which price. Part 2

[16:05 min] download for: mobile, computer and iPod | send feedback

Steps for the insurance of art and possibilities of prevention. Part 3

[09:42 min] download for: mobile, computer and iPod | send feedback

What are the most frequent cases of damage within the art industry and how could they be avoided? For whom does art insurance make sense? What steps need to be taken in order to establish secure insurance? How much does the insurance of art cost and what services are available in the case of emergencies? To find out more about these and other questions on art and its liability, check out our three-part interview with Dr. Petra Eibel from the art insurance company, UNIQA. (wh/jn)

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.

[7:47 min] download for: mobile | computer & iPod | send feedback

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)

Picture for yourself reality. Is that reality immediate, direct, unexpected? Should we attribute this power of reality to something within the medium or to the medium itself? Reality, realized as a procedure of exclusion, as an attempt at reduction, has reigned over the scientific and artistic arguments that have existed over centuries. In the last twentieth century, this gateway was submerged in the continually rising flood of the everyday vocabulary of visual art.

The influence of this radical change on the work of the painter Franziska Maderthaner is visible. Instead of reduction, construction, de- and re-construction, and bricolage prevail. Instead of strict exclusion, surplus of meaning. Instead of the pathos of one, a play with references with which to assemble and compose.

[8:56 min] download for: mobile | computer & iPod | send feedback

The work of Franziska Maderthaner is hyperreal, sampled, and assembled. For this painter, to realize means to gather, to paint, to piece together various media, styles, content, and techniques — that is the way to go. We as viewers realize what occurs to us as impressions and images through composition and assemblage. This process of assimilation is the work, theme, experiment, and suggestion of the painter. Rules of style — from either figurative or abstract painting — do not interest her. In the end, as Maderthaner puts it, it is all just paint on a canvas.

Now, back to reality. Who are you — you, who has created this reality? You are a multitude of entities, an entire array of assembled narratives, which, when joined together, could be addressed in any number of ways: Franziska Maderthaner, Lou Rosenblatt …, (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.

[6:58 min] download for: mobile | computer & iPod | send feedback

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)

In 2007, he was the winner of the Cologne Art Award, one year later, he is nominated for the Strabag Art Award in Vienna. Bernhard Buhmann was born in 1979 in Vorarlberg. He is young and talented. His works are developed in his studio, and he is still studying under the direction of Johanna Kandl at the University for Applied Art.

Artistically speaking, the painter is in an intermediary phase. When one’s own paintings have received such acknowledgments, there is the temptation to continue to reproduce that which has brought success. Although having financial security is certainly a relief, Buhmann has decided to move on to his next phase artistically. For now, he is preparing for a new period of uncertainty. It is not only that his ability is being put to the test and that his pictures can no longer depend on previous expectations. It is also about the search itself to discover what his artistic work will bring to light. This search is not necessarily meant to be one that is seeking answers to clearly defined questions, on the contrary, it is meant to be an exercise in abstruseness, which only gradually reveals its themes and directions.

[6:56 min] download for: mobile | computer & iPod | send feedback

So what changes? Buhmann began with some portrait work. The painter shows subjects who seem to beholding themselves back from the viewer, sometimes amusing themselves with a Rubik’s cube, sometimes diverting their gaze, somehow determining the relational spaces for themselves. The spatial element is fundamentally social. Human behavior is of interest, which stems from a time before painting when Buhmann studied sociology.

In his new work, the spatial element is extended, into which the subjects recede as individuals. They then correspond instead to ideal types, become more formalised, the facial features are scaled down, they play out roles, ideal types, situations. And the area that the new work is covering not only concerns relations. The painter places his subjects in a surrealistic, stage-like setting made up of spaces, back spaces, temporarily-positioned walls. The spaces are not based on any typical models, according to Buhmann, and the dramaturgy and figures are not developed based on archetypes, instead they just emerge on the canvas. He refers to influences from everywhere, from everyday life as well as from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. But he is not reproducing. He is concerned with not letting the creative process take place in another medium, rather, letting the pictures develop in such a way that finds the strength of their own medium. (wh/jn)