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    in Exhibitions

    David Bowie Crossed the Soviet Union on the Trans-Siberian Express Train in 1973. Fascinating Photos Document a Historic Voyage

    A 1973 train trip through Siberia to Moscow by rock legend David Bowie is now the subject of a museum exhibition. “David Bowie in the Soviet Union” at California’s Wende Museum features his friend Geoff MacCormack’s photos of the rock star at the end of his worldwide Ziggy Stardust/Aladdin Sane tour, in which the photographer participated as a singer, percussionist, and dancer. 
    After a concert in Yokohama, Japan, Bowie—who had a phobia about flying due to a fortune teller’s prediction that he would die on a plane—suggested he and members of his entourage take the Trans-Siberian Express train, running along the longest railway line in the world at some 5,772 miles, en route to Paris via Warsaw and East Berlin. Using a Japanese Nikkormat camera, MacCormack (aka Warren Peace), who had known Bowie since they were eight years old, captured intimate moments with the musician throughout the train trip.
    Geoff MacCormack, David Bowie in Front of the Trans-Siberian Express, 1973. Courtesy of the artist and Wende Museum.
    Bowie and MacCormack mixed with fans and caroused with soldiers and sailors, with the aftermath depicted in MacCormack’s David Bowie After Long Drinking Sessions on the Train (1973). MacCormack also documents everyday moments like a woman skipping rope on a train platform and Russian boys posing for the camera. Leee Black Childers, photographer and writer, shot Bowie and MacCormack on the train and in Moscow. 
    The show includes Bowie’s own The Long Way Home, a nearly eight-minute documentary, shot on 16mm film during the trip itself, that includes their attendance at the May Day Parade in Moscow. MacCormack’s photos are interspersed with Bowie’s footage. Also included in the film program is a 20-minute interview with Bowie in the USSR in 1996 by Artemy Troitsky. The exhibition is guest curated by Olya Sova, an independent curator who divides her time between London and L.A. and runs the arts organization The New Social. 
    MacCormack published the photographic memoir David Bowie: Rock ‘n’ Roll With Me this spring. It’s named after a song on Bowie’s 1974 album Diamond Dogs that he co-wrote. 
    Accompanying the show is a playlist put together by Los Angeles non-profit online radio station dublab.
    See more photos from the show below.
    Leee Black Childers, David Bowie and Geoff MacCormack on the Trans-Siberian Express (1973). Courtesy of the artist and Wende Museum.
    Geoff MacCormack, David Bowie After Long Drinking Sessions on the Train (1973). Courtesy of the artist and Wende Museum.
    Geoff MacCormack, Skipping Lady (1973). Courtesy of the artist and Wende Museum.
    Leee Black Childers, David Bowie and Geoff MacCormack at the May Parade at Red Square (1973). Courtesy of the artist and Wende Museum.
    “David Bowie in the Soviet Union” is on view at the Wende Museum, 10808 Culver Blvd, Culver City, California, through October 22.

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    in Street Art

    New Mural by Johannes Mundinger in Espelkamp, Germany

    Berlin artist Johannes Mundinger paints Benkhauser Mill. The Benkhauser Mühle is localy known for its select assortment of pet food and gardening articles. The actual mill, which stands at the back of the property, is less conspicuous. This changed last weekend, when Johannes Mundinger painted the southern façade with a typical mural, as part of his project Feldforschung.Under this title he paints barns and buildings in the countryside, showing his work in environments far from established exhibition venues or big cities, to bring some unexpected perspectives to the visitors. In the motifs, he takes up the stories of residents or the owners and what he learns about the building and environment, about its use and function during the times.A mural often takes up an entire house façade. Johannes Mundinger also likes to use the entire surface of a façade, so that his abstract works can sometimes be 10 to 15 metres high, as for example at the Art Space ATEA in Mexico City or the mural at the Neulpureun School in Yeoju in South Korea.The artist didn’t have to go quite that high this time, but a scaffold was still needed to paint the seven-metre-high mill wall. The artist, who lives in Berlin, had already done some research on the mill beforehand. A typical approach for him is to incorporate the history and function of a building into his work. To learn more about the Benkhauser Mühle, Johannes Mundinger had a long talk with senior manager Marlis Meyer, who could tell a lot about the history of the mill.She told how the mill was actually first powered by the stream Flöte, which flows directly along the property, and was only later expanded by wind power. The two ponds in which the water was dammed were also used to make ice. These ice blocks were delivered by horse-drawn carts to the local brewery, where they were used for cooling, Marlis Meyer recounted. If you look closely at the newly created mural, you can spot the two mill ponds in the picture. The wing that broke off the mill in the early 20th century has also found its way into the composition of the picture, Johannes Mundinger continued. In his conversations with Marlis Meyer, Johannes Mundinger learned about many exciting stories about the mill, some of which the senior manager illustrated with newspaper articles that she keeps in a small newspaper archive. These stories then flow consciously or unconsciously into the painting in the process of painting.As further inspiration, Johannes Mundinger looked at microscopic photographs of wheat flour and incorporated these views into the composition. Here, Johannes Mundinger has detached himself from the realistic image; colour and plasticity are left out and are not depicted.Abstraction and omission or even overpainting are an essential part of Mundinger’s art. Figurative representations are rather rare here. It is more a matter of capturing the essence of something and then depicting only the essentials. The play with levels, surfaces and forms also takes up a lot of space. Surfaces are often superimposed and juxtaposed to create abstractions, but also spatial depth.The project was funded by Kreis Minden-Lübbecke with material support of Yes and Productions, Berlin.  Credits: Eva Rahe @eva_rahe More

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    in Exhibitions

    13 Must-See Museum Exhibitions in Europe This Summer, From Modernist Rediscoveries in Scandinavia to a Kusama Blockbuster in Bilbao

    By all indications, this summer will be another record-setting season for travel. With Americans’ trips alone surging 55 percent over last year—which was already a sixfold increase compared to 2021—chances are you, or someone you know, will be jetting around the continent during the next three months. No path across Europe is complete without a visit or two to its renowned art institutions, so here’s our list of the most intriguing European museum shows to have on your radar (or to share with others) while hitting the cobblestones or autobahns this summer. 
     

    “Ragnar Kjartansson: Epic Waste of Love and Understanding”
    Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark 
    Through October 22, 2023
    Still from Ragnar Kjartansson, No Tomorrow (2022). Courtesy of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark.
    Scandinavia’s first major retrospective of Ragnar Kjartansson presents two decades of the Icelandic contemporary artist’s creations across a multitude of mediums. Connected by an underlying pathos and irony, Kjartansson’s works tread an ambiguous line between the tragic and the comic, whether they’re commenting on how we understand ourselves, our myths, power structures, or masculine identities. In addition to popular hits such as The End (2009) and The Visitors (2012), be sure to catch entirely new projects created for Louisiana’s exhibition, including the marbled plywood monument at the main entrance and the new performance Bangemand (Scaredman). 

    “Thorvald Hellesen. Pioneering Cubism”
    National Museum, Oslo, Norway 
    Through August 20, 2023  More

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    in Exhibitions

    In Pictures: A Series of Paintings Basquiat Made During an Italian Residency He Loathed Have Been Reunited at Switzerland’s Beyeler Foundation

    Although he is essentially synonymous with the New York underground scene of the 1980s, Jean-Michel Basquiat also traveled frequently through Asia and Europe. On one trip to Modena, Italy, in 1982, he produced a group of eight new paintings for an exhibition with the dealer Emilio Mazzoli that never ended up happening.
    Inevitably, with time, these works have made their own journeys across the globe. Just over 40 years later, they have all been reunited for the first time in a new show at Fondation Beyeler in the Swiss town of Riehen, near Basel.
    The typically expressive works each measure at least six-and-a-half by 13 feet and tend to focus on one solitary figure who is, in some cases, accompanied by a cow or a dog. Lacking any of the common motifs of the metropolis that Basquiat liked to employ, they seem to reflect his new, more provincial location. Some of the compositions had been spray painted over old canvases discarded by the artist Mario Schifano, and all are easily identifiable thanks to the inscription of ‘Modena’ on the back. As such, they can be viewed as one cohesive body of work.
    Basquiat was just 21 in 1982, but his star was rapidly ascending and that June he was the youngest artist to exhibit at Documenta 7 in Kassel. The year before, Mazzoli had given him his first solo show under his original alias of SAMO so, in early 1982, the artist gladly accepted an invitation from the Italian dealer to visit Modena and produce more works inside his warehouse studio.
    Looking back on the arrangement some years later, however, Basquiat compared it to “a sick factory. I hated it. I wanted to be a star, not a gallery mascot.” He was surely relieved, then, when Mazzoli had a disagreement with Basquiat’s New York gallerist Annina Nosei and the show was canceled. Nosei eventually sold the canvases, some of which went on to become his most renowned and highly valued.
    “Basquiat: The Modena Paintings” runs until August 27. Preview works from the show below.
    Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Guilt of Gold Teeth (1982). Photo: Annik Wetter, © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, licensed by Artestar, New York.
    Jean-Michel Basquiat, Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump (1982). Photo: Daniel Portnoy © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, licensed by Artestar, New York.
    Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Field Next To The Other Road (1982). Photo: Adam Reic, © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, licensed by Artestar, New York.
    Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Woman with Roman Torso [Venus]) (1982). Photo: Robert Bayer, © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, licensed by Artestar, New York.
    Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Cowparts) (1982). Photo: Adam Reich, © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, licensed by Artestar, New York.
    Jean-Michel Basquiat, Profit 1 (1982). Photo: Robert Bayer, © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, licensed by Artestar, New York.
    Jean-Michel Basquiat, Devil (1982). Photo: © 2023 Phillips Auctioneers LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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    in Exhibitions

    A Portuguese Biennial Staged an Exhibition About the Country’s Legacy of Slavery. Then Its Host Venue Dismantled It

    At an exhibition staged by the Porto Photography Biennial in Portugal, visitors have been laying red carnations alongside artworks. The flower is a symbol of democratic liberation in the country and inside the Centro Hospitalar Conde de Ferreira, its presence is a protest against the decision to censor a multimedia exhibition.
    “Vento (A)mar,” a site-specific installation by Dori Nigro and Paulo Pinto, sought to spark dialogue on Portugal’s slave trafficking legacy inside a hospital bequeathed by a profiteer of the very industry, Conde de Ferreira. The exhibition, located across 10 rooms of psychiatric hospital’s panopticon, succeeded, though not perhaps precisely as the Brazilian artists had intended.
    View of Panopticon at the hospital. Photo: courtesy José Sergio.
    At the show’s opening on May 20, the hospital banned access to a room exhibiting mirrors etched with words challenging the legacy of Conde de Ferreira, including one that read: “How many enslaved people is a psychiatric hospital worth?” A week later, the room reopened with three works removed — all of which directly referenced the hospital’s founding patron. The work that remained was a sugar bowl with a portrait of Conde de Ferreira sat on a stool.
    In a statement, the hospital’s administrative board claimed to have been “affected” by the exhibition’s language, though insisted it remained committed to engaging its history “in an adequate way.”
    Room 7 of the panopticon at the Porto Biennial being closed. Photo: courtesy Porto Photography Biennial.
    The hospital’s move was unexpected and prompted the Porto Photography Biennial organizers to rapidly gather and come to a decision. Should they pull the show? Insist the censored works be remounted? Or continue with the censored version? The artists, curator Georgia Quintas, and the Biennial’s artistic directors decided to take the latter course staging “Vento (A)mar,” which means both “Wind at Sea” and “Wind to Love,” as altered by the hospital.
    “Continuing the exhibition in light of the act of censorship, gives voice to the issues raised in the exhibition,”Virgilio Ferreira and Jayne Dyer, co-artistic directors of the Biennial told Artnet News. “It offers time for reflection and a deeper examination and debate on the silencing of slavery which remains an open wound in Portuguese society.”
    The hospital’s censorship, the directors said, only further emphasized the need to offer space for the voices and perspectives of enslaved people and their descendants. “Slavery is embedded in the history of Portugal,” they said, “The exhibition reveals the sensitivity of the issue to recognize and deal with the consequences of this dark period in Portugal’s history.”
    After the mirror works were removed from room seven, a sugar bowl with a portrait of Conde de Ferreira remained. Photo: courtesy Porto Photography Biennial.
    The artists were taken aback by the hospital’s decision to censor the show, particularly given the accommodation they had received from the institution while setting up. They describe “Vento (A)mar” as a meditation on ancestral memory between Pernambuco, their Brazilian state of origin, and the city of Porto where they have settled. In response to the censorship, the artists will now collaborate with the Biennial on works that facilitate public debate and develop into longer-term projects.
    Currently in its third edition, the Porto Photography Biennial is presenting the work of 70 artists and 14 curators across 14 citywide venues, all open free to the public. “Vento (A)mar” is on view through July 1.

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    in Street Art

    New Mural by Dragon76 in New York, USA

    Japanese artist Dragon76 is painting a mural at Vesey Street. With a style described as “Mad Max meets the future,” Dragon is the latest street artist to work on the World Trade Center campus. This is the second mural Dragon has done on the site, having painted another one in 2018 next to the St. Nicholas Shrine. His mural draws inspiration from the American west and features an indigenous woman.Born in Shiga, Japan in 1976. Based on street art, Dragon76’s artwork is passionate and energetic. It ” touches our soul” and constantly evolving. The concept of his art style is “the coexistence” of two opposites such as past and future, stillness and motion, evil and justice.Check out below for more photos of Dragon76’s latest work. More

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    in Exhibitions

    A New Show Pays Tribute to Agnes Gund’s Art for Justice Fund With Works by Titus Kaphar, Faith Ringgold, and More

    I’m still quoting a joke that arts philanthropist Agnes Gund made six years ago. Speaking about her Black grandchildren, she mentioned a pillow she has embroidered with the words along the lines of: “If I knew grandchildren were this much fun, I would have had them first.”
    The president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art delivered this line at an event at the New York institution inaugurating the Art for Justice Fund, a project of Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors that she generously supports and was created to fight the racist scourge of mass incarceration in America. With just 4.25 percent of the world’s population, the U.S. houses a fifth of the world’s prison inmates at an annual cost of about $81 billion. (Apropos of those grandchildren, Black minors are four times as likely to be incarcerated as their white counterparts.)
    Julie Mehretu, Rubber Gloves (2018). Photo by Tom Powel. Courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery and Ford Foundation Gallery.
    Now, the exhibition, “No Justice Without Love,” at the Ford Foundation Gallery in New York celebrates the end of the six-year lifespan of the initiative, which focuses on bail reform, sentencing reform, and developing reentry opportunities for the formerly incarcerated.
    It features major figures such as Titus Kaphar, Julie Mehretu, and Faith Ringgold, along with artists on the rise like Jesse Krimes and Sherrill Roland, as well as collectives like For Freedoms and the People’s Paper Co-op. Some of the artists, including Krimes and Roland, were formerly incarcerated; Krimes just launched the Center for Art and Advocacy, dedicated to mentoring those formerly incarcerated, with money from the Art for Justice Fund.
    Bayete Ross Smith, still from How A White Mob Destroyed a City and Got Away With It, from the Red Summers 2021. Courtesy of the Artist and Ford Foundation Gallery.
    Curated by Daisy Desrosiers, director and chief curator at Gund Gallery at Kenyon College, the show includes works that visualize the mass incarceration system and its wide-ranging effects in various ways. 
    Some focus on infrastructure, at differing scales. At the show’s entrance, for example, is a video animation by Paul Rucker, Proliferation (2009), that shows the U.S. as if seen from a satellite, with glowing dots of various colors mapping the growth of the prison system, set to Rucker’s music. A 19-foot-tall print by Maria Gaspar reproduces the exterior of Cook County Jail at life size; next to it hangs a minimalist-looking sculpture by Roland that traces the mortar lines between cinder blocks that make up the walls of cells like the one where he spent more than 10 months for a crime he didn’t commit.
    Other works address the situation more obliquely: for example, Titus Kaphar’s 2019 painting From a Tropical Space, in which two Black women appear with strollers with white spaces where the children should be, as if stolen from them. Krimes’s quilt Marion (2021), meanwhile, depicts an outdoor scene of the type to which an imprisoned person might wish to return, made partly from used clothing collected from incarcerated people.
    The show partly aimed to answer the question, “How do you organize a show about a fund?” In partial answer is a “Call and Response” section, devoted to acknowledgements from cultural practitioners who have received support from the fund, in the form of letters, artworks, audio, and video. After the show closes, it will remain available on Art for Justice’s website.
    See more images from the show below.
    Jesse Krimes, Marion (2021). Courtesy the artist and Ford Foundation Gallery.
    Maria Gaspar, Unblinking Eyes, Awaiting (2023). Courtesy of the artist and Ford Foundation Gallery. Photo by Sebastian Bach.
    Sherrill Roland, 168.803 (2021). Courtesy of Tanya Bonakdar Gallery and Ford Foundation Gallery.
    The People’s Paper Co-op in collaboration with Kill Joy and PPC Fellows: Faith Bartley, Nashae Cooper, Tinika Hogan, Ivy Johnson, Janaya Pulliam, My Power Within (2021). Courtesy of The People’s Paper Co-op.
    Titus Kaphar, From a Tropical Space (2019). Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
    “No Justice Without Love” is on view at the Ford Foundation Gallery, 320 E 43rd St, New York, through June 30.

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    in Exhibitions

    A Dozen Drawings From Leonardo da Vinci’s 1,200-Page ‘Codex Atlanticus’ Will Go on View in the U.S. for the First Time

    A dozen drawings by Leonardo da Vinci will be on view in the U.S. for the first time in a show opening this summer in Washington, D.C. They come from the Codex Atlanticus, the largest collection of drawings and writings in Italian by the legendary polymath, which stretches across some 1,200 pages over 12 volumes.  
    Leonardo maintained the Codex Atlanticus from 1478 to 1519, the year of his death, and it has been held in Milan’s Biblioteca Ambrosiana since 1637.
    An array of subjects are included in the collection, such as botany, flight, mathematics, musical instruments, and weaponry. Engineers and designers have found rich material for their work in its pages. Art historian and Leonardo expert Carlo Pedretti dubbed the codex, which spans the artist’s entire career, the most important of the master’s manuscripts. 
    Leonardo da Vinci, Hydraulic pump and fountain within a building. ⓒ Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana/Mondadori Portfolio.
    “Imagining the Future—Leonardo da Vinci: In the Mind of an Italian Genius” opens June 21 at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, in Washington, D.C. 
    Indicating Leonardo’s great ambition, one drawing explores the concept of perpetual motion without an external energy source, along with imaginative architectural studies. Another sheet testifies to the artist’s interest in underwater exploration, showing concepts for diving machines as well as water pumps. Another contains detailed diagrams and calculations exploring mathematical principles, such as the golden ratio, in their application to art and architecture.
    Some drawings in the show can be tied to modern mechanisms, the organizers point out: Leonardo’s study for a digging machine provided inspiration for the excavating machines of today; his design for a self-propelling cart has echoes in our self-driving vehicles; and his diving apparatus influenced underwater exploration.
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