Publications by Simone Kussatz

Articles in Whitehotmagazine

2012-01-26T05:52:00.001-08:00

If you want to find some samples of my work, please check out Whitehotmagazine, which is an international online art magazine, based in Canada, published by Noah Becker.

http://whitehotmagazine.com/contributors/simone-kussatz/710

My new blog

2012-01-26T05:31:00.000-08:00

I started a new blog a few weeks ago that's only for the visual arts.. please check it out.

http://simonekussatz-artblock.blogspot.com/view/classic

Audra Weaser and Sharon Weiner at Ruth Bachofner Gallery

2012-01-26T04:43:00.000-08:00

http://www.artltdmag.com/index.php?subaction=showfull&id=1320444379&archive=&start_from=&ucat=32&

L.A. Times: The Invisible Siegfrieds join the L.A. Ring festival Parade

2012-01-26T04:38:00.000-08:00

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/15/entertainment/la-et-invisible-siegfrieds-20100415

Ann McCoy: The Alchemist of Pfaueninsel at Bleicher/Caporale Gallery

2011-05-04T17:28:00.000-07:00

http://www.artltdmag.com/index.php?subaction=showfull&id=1304540677&archive=&start_from=&ucat=32&

Mike Saijo's "A Dream Deferred" at Bleicher Caporale Gallery

2011-05-03T20:55:00.000-07:00

http://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/mike-saijo-bleicher-caporale-gallery/2274

Irish poetry night at Jack Rutberg Fine Arts

2011-04-02T08:56:00.001-07:00

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/04/a-bit-o-irish-poetry-at-jack-rutberg-fine-arts-.html

Glen Wexler - Improbable Realities

2011-03-28T14:53:00.001-07:00

http://www.fabrikmagazine.com/content/glen-wexlers-improbable-realities/

Interview with cinéaste Stephen Mitchell

2011-03-25T16:42:00.000-07:00

Although born in Los Angeles and raised in a neighborhood of prominent people in Brentwood California, filmmaker Stephen Mitchell left his hometown - with the movie capital of the world, Hollywood - for Paris and his love for French cinema. Since then he has produced, written and directed twelve movies, created more than a thousand televised one-act plays, judged Best Directing in a Comedy Series for the Cable ACE awards and received a first-look deal with Tri-Star Pictures, Inc. for his TV-series “(Interview)”.

Simone Kussatz: As an artist it is the dream of many to live in Paris. Could we begin by talking about the two years (1979-1980) you spent there?

Stephen Mitchell: I intended to go for two weeks and stayed for two years. I wrote, produced and directed my first project “Montmartre” (in French) and a pilot starring Philippe Léotard while I was there. It was an extraordinary time and in the process I was privileged to meet Lino Ventura, Françoise Fabian and André Dussollier among other mainstays of French cinema of the time. I felt as though I'd come home.

Simone Kussatz: Which French films and directors struck your attention most prior to your career as a filmmaker?

Stephen Mitchell: Claude Lelouch frst got my attention with “Un homme et une femme” (1966) and later with “L'aventure, c'est l'aventure” (1972). Jean-Luc Godard's “ À bout de souffle ”(1960) and Jean-Pierre Melville's “Le Samouraï”(1967) were very influential. I still look at these films today and find something new in them every time.

Simone Kussatz: Having worked in France and the United States, what do you think is the biggest difference in American and French filmmaking?

Stephen Mitchell: It may be an unfair observation that is entirely too subjective, but I find that filmmaking in America is an expression of business and marketing and that filmmaking in France is an expression of enthusiasm for the cinema - at least in the circles I traveled.

Simone Kussatz: Aside from French films, you have an appreciation of the old Italian and British films. What is it that makes them aesthetically appealing to you?

Stephen Mitchell: No doubt there is an element of nostalgia involved seeing the cars and scenery of the era but I find myself being entertained by the likes of Alec Guinness, Robert Morley and Alastair Sim with a subtlety and finesse that I don't find with contemporary actors. Marcello Mastroianni had no equal anywhere and America wasn't producing films like Dino Risi’s “Il sorpasso” (1962). I discovered a literary and cinematic richness in these films. Even actors like Broderick Crawford, Anthony Quinn and Richard Basehart seemed different when they appeared in Italian films.

Simone Kussatz: Between 1985-2001 you shot a 500-and-half-hour episode of the TV –series “(Interview)” and lately with French actors and actresses. What was the idea behind it and how were they perceived here in the United States?

Stephen Mitchell: The “(Interview)” series developed a cult following that included the top actors, writers and directors in Hollywood resulting in the sale of many of my original stories to major A-list filmmakers. The people who had been inspiring me with their work were suddenly becoming my fans and seeking me out. It was an amazing experience and brought about a situation where Tri-Star Pictures was paying to see the shows before they aired on local cable. More recently, I began producing the show in French.

Simone Kussatz: At one point you received a phone call from Marlon Brando commenting in French on one of your shows. What is it that he said?

Stephen Mitchell: I did not pick up the phone when it rang letting the answering machine take the call - it was almost midnight. After awhile, I noticed that the machine was still recording the incoming message. So, curious, I turned up the volume to hear what was being said. A man was speaking in fluent French but with an abominable American accent about how many Mexicans were living in Los Angeles. I turned the volume off and ignored the call. When the incoming call continued for several more minutes - the machine was voice - actuated and would continue as long as the caller was speaking, I picked up the phone and began speaking to him in French. "Je suis Marlon Brando et j'ai vu votre interview à la télévision." (I am Marlon Brando and I saw your interview on the television). After we talked for a while, he asked to have a copy of the show.

Simone Kussatz: Can you tell us a bit more about the making of them? You said they were aired at Adelphia studios, but you shot them in another studio?

Stephen Mitchell: Initially I shot the program in Adelphia's Public Access studio but a number of technical and policy limitations pushed me to establish a relationship with a studio in North Hollywood that became a home base not only for “(Interview)” but for all the programming that emanated from the repertory company for film and television that I had founded. We were taping one show or another almost every day of the week for all those years.

Simone Kussatz: You mentioned that you don’t approve of American TV and didn’t understand the popularity of the TV-series “Friends”. Why?

Stephen Mitchell: I watch very little television these days though I am a big fan of “House”. I followed Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry in “Jeeves and Wooster” and I think the writing and acting on the “House” series are inspired. When a new actor would come into the rep company, I would ask which one was their favorite TV show. The answer was invariably “Friends”. Why, I would ask. Because it's funny, they would answer. I'll bet you that it isn't funny, I would tell them. Next time you watch it, laugh every time you hear a laugh on the soundtrack, then come back and tell me if you still think it's funny. They tried it and, without exception, they returned with a verdict of "not funny". The reason for this is that the laugh track serves as a post-hypnotic suggestion that the program was "funny". The instruction to laugh along with the soundtrack as they watched the show impeded the hypnotic effect - they couldn't zone out and receive the implant, because they were remaining alert to the content.

Simone Kussatz: Are your feelings towards American feature films similar to American TV since your correspondence with American filmmaker John Huston gradually ended when you moved to Paris?

Stephen Mitchell: My correspondence with him began as a spur-of -the-moment impulse. He was - and still is - a favorite of mine. I wrote to him addressing the envelope to "John Huston, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico" and was stunned when he replied. Previously, I had written to Mervyn LeRoy after seeing him on the “Tom Snyder Show" one evening. A few days later, I received a phone call from him. One has to remind oneself that these towering figures are, at their core, enthusiasts and share our love of film and filmmaking.

Simone Kussatz: You owned a film school and developed a new acting technique, in which an actor has to break up a sentence into phrases and inject different emotions into the text. Why do you think that this makes acting more effective?

Stephen Mitchell: The film school and acting technique came about as a way to ensure a quality expansion of the repertory company which was modeled on the old Hollywood studio system. To answer your question, emotions are contagious where words alone are not. The goal of a scene or a film is to provoke an emotional response, whether joy, anger or sadness. For each actor who appeared in one of our films or shows, the goal was to increase his or her following or fan base and that was a function of branding and marketing. Rather than concentrate on the demographics of male/female, education & income, I categorized the constituent audience groups into happy, angry, fearful and sad people. These were the wavelengths that needed to be resonated by each actor's performance and, thus, the technique I authored addressed these issues.

Simone Kussatz: In 2001 your book “How to start a Hollywood Career without having to go there” was published. Why did you think actors would profit from a book like this?

Stephen Mitchell: It was my observation that most of the actors in Hollywood originated from other parts of the world. They arrived in Los Angeles without friends or an infrastructure of any kind to support themselves. The book was intended to show those wanting a career in Hollywood how to begin their promotion and marketing while still in the comfort of their home surroundings. It was also intended to steer them clear of some major pitfalls to which newcomers often fall prey.

Simone Kussatz: Aside from a documentary about the tobacco industry, which you co-produced with Charlie Evans Jr, you are doing documentaries about cars, including a documentary about the Ferrari GTO and the Carrera Panamericana. Both subjects involve some kind of danger. Are these documentaries at all linked to a near-fatal car accident that you experienced?

Stephen Mitchell: I don't know if I have the full answer to this question other than to say that my interest in fast cars in general and Ferraris in particular developed when I was in the hospital recovering from the accident which was a head-on collision on the Ventura Freeway in Los Angeles. Two people who had been drinking heavily found themselves on the wrong side of the road and ran straight into us. I read a lot of copies of “Road & Track” magazine while I was recovering and became passionate about Formula 1 and European road racing in the process.

Simone Kussatz: You’re a contributor to “Sports Car Digest” and “Prancing Horse" magazine. What is your fascination about cars and what was the latest article you’ve written for them?

Stephen Mitchell: I was first attracted to cars by the aesthetics of their design - I was too young to drive them at the time. Later, I was excited by the dynamics of their performance and the sounds of their engines. The articles that have appeared in the publications you mention centered around my experiences with my Ferrari GTO and my encounters with people in the Ferrari world including Enzo Ferrari himself.

Simone Kussatz: Thank you so much for your time…

Stephen Mitchell: Thank you, Simone!

Photo: Courtesy of the artist

Artist Chad Glass

2011-03-14T20:12:00.000-07:00

I met Sacramento-born storyboard artist and co-owner of ANKA Gallery Chad Glass at one of the Stephen Mitchell's Elysee Wednesday meetings at Caffe Primo at Sunset Plaza. Since I love to play the piano and currently don't have one Chad Glass caught my attention when he showed us drawings of an abandoned piano that he had seen sitting on the corner of a street. Therefore, we started communicating over FACEBOOK through which following conversation came up.

Chad Glass: You seem to like art and artistic things, what is some of your favorite types of artwork? Are you an artist?

Simone Kussatz: I'm a journalist who writes about art. I'm also a creative person. I feel good, if I take pictures and if I do a painting here and there or put things together like in a collage, but I'm not an artist the way we define artists in Germany, which is someone who does this on a professional basis and makes a living from it. But then I'm a writer and I do this on a professional basis and some people consider writers to be artists. My favorite type of art? That's not an easy question. I can tell you what I don't like. I don't like kitch and tacky things. I don't like sexually provocative or aggressive art, exploiting the body. That doesn't mean I don't like nudity, but it needs to be shown in a certain way. I'm someone who appreciates subtleness, depth and art that has some kind of a higher meaning - perhaps a humanitarian element. I like to see emotions and the human condition in general. If it's relevant to world events, I like that too. I don't know... it needs to intrigue me.

Chad Glass: I draw storyboards here in LA and have an art gallery in Portland, Oregon. I co-own it and founded it. I also show my own work there. It is here: http://www.ankagallery.com/

Simone Kussatz: Thank you... I'll look it up. I liked the abandoned piano you had drawn and showed at Stephen Mitchell's Elysee on Wednesdays.

Chad Glass: Thanks. Those drawings mean a lot to me and are highly symbolic.

Simone Kussatz: Can you say a bit more about that? In which way are they symbolic?

Chad Glass: It is death. It is a musical instrument that will never make music again. Its physical body was destroyed and it passed into another form, into a pile of wood several weeks thereafter.

Simone Kussatz: very nice. I can completely relate to that.

Chad Glass: If you've ever seen someone die there is a beauty in it as well as an ugliness. The piano was beautiful in its last days, with its insides exposed, the beautiful craftsmanship, the amazing work and sculptural forms of its mechanisms. But is was at once ugly in its death throes and destruction. The forces destroying it were hostile to it and to life. Life itself is brutal and this physical world is hostile.

Simone Kussatz: I've not watched someone taking his or her last breath, but I've seen my grandfather before the stages of death, and my little brother when he was dead. And the idea of an autopsy after death, cutting one's body open and looking at all the organs, makes me now think about the inside of the piano you drew. An autopsy is a last look at our amazing machine and the mechanism that takes care of us - the brain that sends us all the messages how to move our arms and legs, etc, the heart that pumps the blood to the lungs. And then all of a sudden this machine stops working and withers. It's difficult to find sense in it. Therefore I could not agree more with you about life being brutal and the physical world being hostile, trying to cover up these facts and feelings by bombarding us with superficiality.

Glass Well: Yes the body is a machine, a shell. When it is dying and is then dead the idea of it being only a vessel is very clear. It is unequivocal. Whatever was "in it" is definitely not there anymore.

Simone Kussatz: Thank you for our conversation. Shall the piano be a symbol for all the people who lost their lives during the tsunami. An image of a beach with abandoned pianos comes to my mind... what a quiet and long and sad sound.

Chad Glass: That is a very beautiful and lushly melancholic image. Thank you.

Simone Kussatz: I forwarded my link to my friend and colleague, art critic Peter Frank.. This was his response: "Vielen Dank! I like his drawings, both for subject and for form...."

Chad Glass: Simone, I continue my gratitude and thanks for your article about my drawings. I am grateful for your attention in this matter.

Simone Kussatz: And thank you for creating something that has personal meaning to me... thinking about abandoned pianos, makes me now also think about abandoned people and abandoned talents. I love to see your drawing also as an image of an abandoned soul... and in that also lies beauty and ugliness..

Chad Glass: Excellent, it is all of that.

Interview with Indian photographer Manjari Sharma

2011-02-01T10:00:00.000-08:00

Interview with Manjari Sharma conducted over the phone: Los Angeles - Mumbai

The New York city based photographer Manjari Sharma is one of the artists that is currently represented at Kopeikin Gallery in Culver City along with American photographer Steve Fitch. Born in Mumbai, the 31-year-old Sharma just returned from Santander in Spain, where she was invited to coordinate the photo entries for Espacio Nudage - a multi disciplined event, dedicated to emerging talent in design. Trained in India and the US, Sharma’s work has been published in numerous international and national magazines and newspapers, including the Times of India, Geo magazine and PDN (Photo District News). Her work has also been used on a Pinguin book cover. In addition she helped to research a National Geographic Project based in India, was a guest at India’s CNBC, and a 2009 winner of the Strand photo contest in New York.

Simone Kussatz: In both of your series, “Shower” and “Water”, of which some of your works are currently exhibited at Kopeikin Gallery water plays a key role. Can you tell us more about that?

Manjari Sharma: Both those projects were photographed six months apart. Both were not planned, but it was hindsight that made me do them. As far as the Shower series is concerned, to begin with, it's very rare that one has a window in a bathroom in New York City. So at first, it was a formal and visual thing as I saw this light coming through and felt fascinated what it did to my marble walls in the bathroom. The water falling down on my subjects is what transformed this project.

In Indian culture the water of the Ganges River has a great significance. The holy water as it is said, washes away your sins. The project was about inviting people to come into my shower but interestingly as people showered it almost felt as if it were a confessional. As soon as the water hit their faces and bodies, they started to relax and would often discuss intimate things like relationships with their parents, love lives and moments of their childhood, or life lessons that you wouldn't share at a bar or another public place. In a strange unplanned way the water series in a way was a macro look at the relationship of people with the water and the shower series was a micro look at the same.

Kussatz: Did you tell your subjects in which pose to get?

Sharma: Sometimes it was a natural capture and sometimes I had them do over a pose I just noticed they naturally have.

Kussatz: In your shower series you have people of different ethnicities? Was there any particular purpose for that?

Sharma: I’ve always felt very drawn to multicultural people. Once the project became clear to me, I wanted to capture that personal relationship between people and water and to showcase that to people from all over the world, so that they can relate to that.

Kussatz: Your “Water” series was made on the beaches in Rio de Janeiro. They were shot from this great angle. Were you in a helicopter or standing on top of a mountain?

Sharma: No, I was shooting them from the 17^th floor of a hotel room looking at a private beach. And then there were these men standing in a very isolating position. I can’t swim and felt intrigued by looking at people feeling so comfortable in water.

Kussatz: So they actually didn’t know you were shooting them?

Sharma: No, they had no idea. But you can’t see their faces. It’s more about the form from a distance.

Kussatz: I like the pastel colors. Can you say more about that?

Sharma: I've changed the color palette with Photoshop. I wanted them to have a simpler palette so as to not let the details distract the viewer from the concept.

Kussatz: Did you have a particular reason to shoot in Brazil?

Sharma: No. I was just traveling. I was a bride’s maid at my friend’s wedding. As an artist you have to be prepared to make your art wherever you are. And when the moment strikes you want to be ready to use your tool.

Kussatz: I truly enjoyed your work and also found some beautiful images in your portfolio. I think it’s important to put light on emerging artists. I was wondering who influenced you artistically?

Manjari: I was influenced by a variety of artists. If you look at art your whole life you don’t know what kicked in. But I would say mostly by Irving Penn, but also by Greg Miller. I was his assistant for one year. He’s really great at the relationship with his subjects.

Kussatz: Thank you very much for our conversation. I look forward to meeting you in person for the closing reception at Kopeikin Gallery on February 12^th.

Published in Whitehotmagazine February 2011.

Copyright (c) Simone Kussatz

Photos: Courtesy of the artist

Interview with American sculptor Brad Howe

2011-01-25T19:41:00.000-08:00

Appeared in Luxury Life Magazine on January 12, 2011 (Pg. 98/100-103)

http://issuu.com/luxurylife/docs/luxurylife_winteredition_8

Iannis Xenakis: Composer, Architect, Visionary at MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) Pacific Design Center

2011-01-25T17:24:00.000-08:00

According to the Oxford dictionary "A genius is a person who is exceptionally intelligent or creative, either generally or in some particular respect." Viewing the compelling compositional, mathematical and architectural sketches of the Greek composer, Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) at MOCA Pacific Design Center, we are not solely exposed to beautiful artifacts, but excerpts from the creative processes of a genius mind.

However, some might ponder why the works of a composer would be exhibited in museums such as the Drawing Center in New York, the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal and now at MOCA Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles rather than in symphony halls? Or why, instead of looking at sketches, there wouldn't be more outdoor performances such as last year's performance of "Persepolis" in the Los Angeles State Historical Park?

For one thing there has always been a strong link between the visual arts and music. Russian painter, Wassily Kandinsky, who was himself an accomplished musician, used color in a highly theoretical way associating tone with timbre, hue with pitch and saturation with the volume of sound. The German writer, Wolfgang von Goethe, once described architecture as frozen music. And Xenakis who used the aural curved surfaces of his first major composition "Metastaseis" as an inspiration for the curved walls of the Philips Pavilion, could have not embodied Goethe's metaphor more literally.

Furthermore, music notation has mostly been hand-rendered, like calligraphy. In Western tradition, there are the five lines of the staff, which look like a grid, with dots representing pitches (high and low) and other configurations symbolizing durations. This per se can be visually beautiful. However, what makes Xenakis' sketches unique is that he was not drawing sound in the common manner, but was working through strategies to apply physics and mathematics as a way to organize sound, using set theory, group and game theory, probability theory, in particular stochastic processes, which he then graphically plotted out. His multi-media works presented on paper often contain tiny handwritten notes in various languages - Greek, French and English - and different ink-colors.

The exhibit at MOCA Pacific Design Center, curated by Sharon Kanach and Carey Lovelace, is compromised of two parts. On the ground floor, the exhibit's narrative begins with the early years of Xenakis, including a family photograph of him with his two brothers and uncle in 1933, Xenakis as a Greek resistance fighter in 1944, a picture of Xenakis at Le Corbusier's studio in Paris, photographs and studies of the Philips Pavilion and the Dominican Monastery of Sainte Marie de la Tourette, a typewritten letter by Le Corbusier to Xenakis stating that Xenakis's services were no longer needed, after the two had a dispute when Le Corbusier neglected to mention Xenakis' assistance in the Philips Pavilion. There are also studies for his first compositions "Metastaseis" and "Pithoprakta".

On the second level the exhibit continues with the hand-drawn double-vector matrix for "Achorripsis", which Xenakis used to illustrate a lecture in 1964 as a Ford Fellow in Berlin. It also features studies for "Terretektorh", "Erikhthon" and "Cendrées", including pages of orchestral scores, a DVD of drawings and calculations for "Pithoprakta" with a musical performance by the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg conducted by Arturo Tamayo. On top there is a virtual presentation of "Poème Électronique", provided by the Virtual Reality & Multi-Media Park in Torino, Italy. One can also see a film with Xenakis working on "Polytope de Cluny" and a video from the collection of the Herb Alpert School of music showing a lecture about music with Xenakis at Mills College. Furthermore, there are studies and photographs of "Polytope de Mycènes", "Polytope de Cluny", "Polytope de Persepolis," and "Polytope de Montréal", as well as various programs for the different events. The exhibit concludes with some of Xenakis unrealized projects, such as his studies for "Cosmic city", "the Reynolds House" and "Cité de la Musique."

Along with the exhibit comes a catalogue (written by Ivan Hewett, Carey Lovelace, Sharon Kanach) with a moving memoir by Mâkhi Xenakis, describing the days with her father in Corsica. Therefore, the exhibit does not only portray Xenakis as the remarkable artist, but also the remarkable human being, who fought against the Nazis and the British and survived many hardships, including the death of his mother at age five, imprisonment, severe physical injury, a life in exile and rejection by the Parisian musical elite - Nadia Boulanger, Darius Milhaud and Arthur Honegger. Yet, he never stopped immersing himself into interdisciplinary studies, from Plato to archaeology, to find his own answers. The exhibit and catalogue also focus on the two people who tremendously impacted Xenakis' career - Swiss architect Le Corbusier and French composer Oliver Messiaen, who told him "You are almost thirty. You have the fortune of being Greek, an architect, and of having studied special mathematics. Take advantage of those things. Do them in your music."

In that sense the exhibit succeeds in getting to the essence of the person Iannis Xenakis, someone who was a lateral thinker, someone who was always "thinking outside the box."

Copyright ©Simone Kussatz
Photos: Courtesy of MOCA Pacific Design Center

Published in Whitehotmagazine January 2011

Interview with Manfred Menz at ROSEARK

2010-12-26T10:19:00.000-08:00

The earlier oeuvre of Manfred Menz consists of artworks that deal with social critical subjects such as racism, euthanasia or homelessness in a capitalist society; they take the form of installations or collages with texts from self-written poems or excerpts from screen-plays. However, in the past few years the German born artist has been working with digital manipulation in which he removes the iconic structure from famous architectural landmarks by replacing them with the stark white of photo paper and leaving us with only elements of nature. Some of these works can be currently viewed at ROSEARK in West Hollywood.

Simone Kussatz: Do you rather see yourself as a conceptual artist or photographer?

Manfred Menz: I consider myself to be a conceptual artist, although, I've worked with all kinds of cameras. In the beginning of my second career - I worked in film at first - I did more installations than photography. And when I did photography I used them for collages and added texts to them. Now the photographs at Roseark which are part of “the Invisible Project and Invisible Asia” are a combination of photography and digital work.

Kussatz: What inspired you to create photographs of landmarks that can't be actually seen?

Menz: I started with this work about 10 years ago. My work has two components. They are made out of a conceptual and an emotional part. I was first interested in the emotional part, which was to focus on what has always been there, but we've missed seeing, which is nature around landmarks. Obviously if we decide to take a tourist picture of the Eiffel Tower we want to see the tower, and don't care much about the surrounding nature. So I wanted to see what was there. The other part, the conceptual part, was that digital imaging became popular at that time and although I wasn't much into computer work, I felt fascinated by the idea that it would allow me to alter images in ways that one could never tell what happened to the pictures. Therefore I removed the landmarks. I started with my project in Europe. I went to Germany, London, Paris, and Rome. I took a photograph of one of the oldest landmarks, the Colosseum and later worked in Los Angeles and San Francisco. In 2007 and 2008, I went to South Korea and Japan.

Kussatz: Since the focus of your work is on nature do your works carry any environmental message?

Menz: There are many messages in my work and I'm always happy, when I discover another one, which I originally hadn't seen. The environmental message as I mentioned earlier is to see things that surround us, yet we've never seen and paid attention to. In regard to the Eiffel Tower I found these four trees that in some way give us an impression of the relation between the landmark Eiffel Tower and the trees. The trees are not very large by nature, and they can be overlooked easily, but they have a wonderful beauty to them, which fascinated me. However at the end of my project, I realized that most nature around landmarks are man-made. Most plants hadn't grown naturally. And that provided another interesting view which is to what extent do we value nature as what it is, or what we wanted it to look like. Therefore, my pictures show how our alter ego presents itself as nature. That's why I call them documents of society's self-portraits.

Kussatz: In your work “Tate Modern” you have these luscious looking trees and a white ground that appears to be from a winter landscape. In your work “Changdeok Palace” we see trees with colors that represent the different seasons also on what seems to be a snow-covered ground. Isn't there a contradiction?

Menz: I only take pictures during the end of April towards mid-May, because that's when we get to see the freshest green in nature. I have about 30 pieces throughout the world; some may look as if they have more than one season due to my removal of everything. I usually use grey for the ground, which enhances the green tone of nature. And that makes it look like cold winter snow. It's a nice reflection on the fresh green. So you may be puzzled, when you first look at it, thinking how it is possible that there is this fresh green in winter. I wasn't aware of that at first and it wasn't planned, but I like that effect. It's an optical illusion. As far as “Changdeok Palace”, it's my favorite image, because it's unique to get a chance to be able to see all seasons at once.

Kussatz: Karl Marx Boulevard (Karl-Marx-Allee) was your first image in this series. Is there any political agenda in this?

Menz: Karl Marx Boulevard is a well-known street in Berlin. It doesn't only bear the name of Karl Marx, but associates his ideology with it. However, my first thoughts were about the painters of the past that dealt with images of alleys lined by rows of trees. They were creating this optical illusion, a sense of infinity, by using a tunnel vision. I liked the perspective. Those two rows of trees are parallel in reality. The conceptual part of this picture is that I removed the remaining traces of all social achievements and capitalistic buildings of our collective awareness. And what I left is perhaps the 21st Century's version of a virtual reality. I'm not a Marxist. Karl Marx said of himself he isn't a Marxist. He also said “Art is not a mirror to held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it” and that's exactly what I think I did.

Kussatz: Can you tell us more about your work in the Korean Demilitarized Zone?

Menz: I worked from the position of the Joint Security Area. I took pictures with a view from the South Korean to the North Korean side, where there was this gigantic watchtower, from where the North Koreans would watch what was happening on the other side. There is a lot of tension with about 2 Million soldiers total on both sides standing face-to-face. In my opinion this is the most dangerous place on planet. Being from Germany that was a divided country for a long time after World War II, I expected to see military equipment or a military environment on the Northern Side. But instead, I rather looked at something that seemed to me like Disneyland. There was this wonderful nature with trees and so forth. And what fascinated me was the relationship between what reality is and what we're made to believe it is. And I think my work shows that.

Kussatz: You mentioned that you came across some difficulties when you took these pictures?

Menz: I needed to get a permit in Panmunjom first and a military escort for my own protection. I used a panorama camera. It took time to set it up. Therefore the circumstances under which I worked were very interesting.

Kussatz: Since the show includes images of Berlin and Korea, did you try to compare the former situation in Germany with the current situation in Korea?

Menz: I would never compare the two political situations or juxtapose them. They are very different from each other. Yet, it's natural for me to be interested in Korea because I know what it looks and feels like to be divided as a country and the meaning of it and how it's being presented. However, Korea was very different from what I thought it would be. It was much tenser, and yet there was this wonderful nature in such a political difficult environment. And then they have this artificial village on the Northern side. Nobody lives there but it looks very impressive, and obviously it's just there to make us believe something that's not real.

Kussatz: Your picture “Rodeo Drive” seems to me the most artificial one in that show.

Menz: It is the most artificial one and it is the most colorful one. There is the illusion that there are these potted plants floating in the air. And it appears to us as if we're standing at a point looking down at the palm trees, although it was exactly the opposite from where I took the photograph. I was actually looking up. And in a way this is how we feel, if we go shopping on Rodeo Drive. We think as if we belong to the top of society by holding a bag from one of the most well-known streets in the world, where it actually is the opposite. It doesn't make us what it appears to be. It's only an illusion.

Interview was published in Whitehotmagazine on December 24, 2010.

Images: Courtesy of artist Manfred Menz (right - Karl-Marx Boulevard, Berlin 2003, 36x44; left - Tate Modern, London 2003, 43x39)

Cheryl Ann Thomas "New Work" at Frank Lloyd Gallery

2010-11-29T17:30:00.000-08:00

“That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet,” American poet, Emily Dickinson, once wrote in the 19th century. It is exactly the same awareness of our mortality that American ceramicist Cheryl Ann Thomas toys around with in her new works that are currently showcased at Frank Lloyd Gallery. But more than that, her work is also about aging; the disappointments, the hopes and hardships, the dealing with suffering, all the ups and downs that shape our precious lives. Thomas said, “My work is an intimate and experiential inquiry into fragility and loss; I construct, I sabotage, I reconcile.”

The exhibit is comprised of ten elegant black and soft creamy white-colored sculptures, primarily made out of porcelain, except for two bronze and one stainless steel sculptures. Most of them contain the title Relics and several numbers, which indicate the different parts they’re made of. The simplicity in the titles and the reduction to two colors is a conscious act of the artist. Thomas wanted viewers to bring their own interpretations and experiences to her work. Therefore they almost function like a Rorschach test, where one can project one’s inner dialogue. The majority of sculptures sit individually. The two sculptures Coupled-Relics and Five Relics are installed together. Made in the same manner as her former work, the Santa Monica-born artist created them through the coil-technique, where hundreds of clumps of black, white, and gray clay are hand rolled into thin, ropelike strands and stacked, which were later over-fired.

In Six Relics, one can see what seems to be a hooded black cape with a floating creamy white scarf wrapped around it. The sculpture suggests the mysterious interplay between life and death – perhaps death made an appearance, but life force was stronger and pulled him away. In Threesome Relics, a solely creamy white sculpture, one is exposed to what seems to be a figure that could be an aged man wearing a large straw hat, resting his forehead on his left knee. In contrast to Six Relics, this sculpture presents perhaps a life that has yet been spared from a direct encounter with death.

The beauty in Cheryl Ann Thomas works is their elegance and philosophical content. Like each life entering the world, her oeuvre also seems to have that uncertainty of the outcome.
- Simone Kussatz

Copyright (c) by Simone Kussatz

Published in Art Ltd. March 14, 2011

http://www.artltdmag.com/index.php?subaction=showfull&id=1300148521&archive=&start_from=&ucat=32&

Henri Cartier-Bresson at Peter Fetterman Gallery

2010-11-14T10:10:00.000-08:00

Henri Cartier-Bresson at Peter Fetterman Gallery

By Simone Kussatz

In this art world jungle where many artists want to outdo each other by using sensationalism, provocation, and high-tech manipulated images, it feels soothing to view the works of French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who knew how to create grand effects with a small German-made Leica. Cartier-Bresson’s sense for subtle, aesthetic composition, human dignity, historical relevance and psychological insight can be currently viewed in an exhibit that celebrates Peter Fetterman Gallery’s 20th anniversary. Henri Cartier-Bresson: Eye of the Century displays a collection of photographs created during Cartier- Bresson’s journeys to Belgium, former Yugoslavia, China, England, Greece, India, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Russia and the US with a strong focus on life in the 50s and 60s. The exhibit also includes landscape and street scene images of France, portrait photographs of Truman Capote, Alberto Giacometti, and Matisse as well as rare prints including a photograph by Cartier-Bresson taken in Provence about two decades after his retirement, when he'd returned to his first love, drawing.

The picture of children and women in Aquila Degli Abruzzi in central Italy is here too. The women are wearing long black dresses, their heads covered with black bandanas. Some wear aprons and carry cake trays on their heads while walking through the alleys, others are gathered at a plaza. It is an image of a slow-paced life. This high-angle shot exemplifies the influence of painting in Cartier-Bresson’s photography – perhaps the influence of André Lothe with whom he studied in Paris. Geometric forms appear as in cubist paintings or in Lothe’s L’Escale: triangles, rectangles, parallelograms, and trapezoids. A vertical axis created by a balustrade in the lower part of the photo and a building above it, as well as diagonal axes provide the photograph symmetry.

Next to Aquila Degli Abruzzi, there is a photograph of two girls walking through a narrow alley in a long shadow. It was shot in former socialist Sarajevo, the city where Islam, Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Judaism have been coexisting for centuries. The image was taken two decades after the city was liberated from the occupancy of German Nazis and seventeen years before the Bosnian war, when Josip Broz Tito was president. The two girls with their braided hair, embracing each other and holding what appears to be school supplies, suggest the quiet and peaceful and political atmosphere at that time.

And then there is a photograph that had never been printed before by a collector until gallery owner, Peter Fetterman, discovered it in an obscure book years ago. It is the image of a fundraiser ball (a very posh event) for Queen Charlotte’s hospital, one of the oldest maternity hospitals in Europe. This high angle shot captures some of the same joie de vivre that Cartier-Bresson so much admired in Hungarian photographer, Martin Munkasci’s work, especially in his photograph of the three African nude boys running into the surf at Lake Tanganyika. Yet, it doesn’t have the spontaneity of the African boys; the action seems much more controlled, which is emphasized by Cartier-Bresson catching the dancing couples positioned in perfect diagonal lines. Due to their moving the image is a bit out of focus, which has some of the effect of an aquarelle blurring.

In Decisive Moment Cartier-Bresson wrote, “In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject.” In photographs such as Barber Rome (1951) and Brussels, Belgium (1932) those human details are telling a story of absurdity and curiosity. There is the image of a barber standing next to a mannequin head covered with a wig, looking through his showcase touching his bald patch. How does he feel working with hair, while losing his? Or there are the two men in Brussels, one of them looking through a hole of a circus tent, the other with a handlebar mustache and distinctive features looking to the side as if he guards him or is distracted by something that catches his curiosity. What could it be?

The Roman Catholic Church enjoyed a huge political influence under Communism. That becomes obvious in Cartier-Bresson’s photo Mass, Warsaw, 1956. Again shot from a high angle, it shows a group of people herded together with a priest sitting in a hanging chair above them. Since the photo was taken in 1956, the year Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski was released from his three-year detainment due to his opposition against communism; it’s possible that the photo showed a service with him.

Published in Whitehotmagazine November 2010.

Lezley Saar at Merry Karnowsky Gallery

2010-10-06T07:46:00.000-07:00

Lezley Saar at Merry Karnowsky Gallery

By Simone Kussatz

Lezley Saar’s “Autist’s Fables”, an oeuvre she created over a span of two years, seems to be a continuation of her former body of work, “Mulatto Nation” - dichotomy and the anomalies of nature, too, play a key role. Saar’s body of work invites viewers into the world of her 18-year-old autistic daughter Geneva to learn to appreciate her creativity, sensitivity, penchants and overcoming isolation. The solo exhibit contains a combination of illustrations with circular color photographs collaged into paintings, glass-encased dioramas, and the gallery’s smaller exhibit hall set up as a living room, in which gothic-looking photographs in ornate golden frames are decorating its walls and a small TV monitor encircled by red velvet curtains shows the court métrage - a short film - Le Mystère de Geneviève.

The influence of Aubrey Beardsley in Saar’s paintings is obvious. There are the black ink illustrations on pastel hued backgrounds, the flexuous lines and curvy shapes, creating interesting negative spaces. Overall the exhibit is created as a third-person narrative, part of it written down in English, part of it told in French, as in Saar’s short film. The tale employs lifeless figures and Victorian settings similar to Edward Gorey’s stories. Although autobiographical, it uses techniques of fiction: Geneva is Geneviève, Lezly is Lisette, and Geneva’s father is Albert. The story unfolds with the key steps in Geneva’s development, including her birth, her loss of speech, the fantasy world she creates as a little girl in which villains and imaginary friends appear and dolls that allude to the children she won’t be able to bear. Part of the narrative applies fable elements in the manner of Aesop and Jean de La Fontaine. Mysterious looking animals – hybrids - are its main protagonists, delivering the moral that autism, as any other deviation from the norm, should be accepted in society.

In contrast to paintings such as “A imaginary life, imaginary friends,” “A calendar savant”, “A beautiful Initiation”, “All the months had a special color,” and “A Very Sensitive Child”, where the positive, extraordinary sides of Geneva’s personality are accented, the photographs “Bad Seed Boy Villain”, “Family Portrait on Stage”, “Genevieve with saw”, “Genevieve with Tall Friend and Bad Seed Boy”, seem to acquaint us with her sometimes aggressive tendencies. Generally, the exhibit conveys beauty, complexity, mystery, perplexity, and enchants viewers into another reality.

Photo © belongs to Merry Karnowsky Gallery

"Combustione: Alberto Burri and America" at Santa Monica Museum of Art

2010-09-28T21:42:00.001-07:00

By Simone Kussatz

There is a fine line between being a European-born American, and being a European with a second home in America. Italian artist Alberto Burri--who was married to the American dancer Minsa Craig with whom he wintered in Los Angeles for 28 years and kept his main home in Italy--falls under the latter category. This makes sense considering that Burri, a former physician, was first brought to America by force as a prisoner of war, rather than, say, Italian-born artist Joseph Stella who came to America freely. Burri also seemed to be more inclined towards Italian culture, showing a greater interest in Italian Renaissance than in the work of his American contemporaries such as Robert Rauschenberg, whose works he supposedly summed up as being "un'americanata e basta" (an American thing and that's all). Therefore it is no surprise that his ambiguity towards American culture made him nearly forgotten in the canon of American art history, at least until this fall, when the Santa Monica Museum of Art reintroduced him and his contributions to American art.

The exhibition, including 25 paintings (from 1951 to 1986) and ten prints (from 1990), is as beautiful as it is important due to its striking color combinations and display of found objects and outre materials, some with historical significance. White (1952), a painting composed of oil, bronze, enamel paint, cotton fabric and gold leaf with a cracked surface, seems to be inspired by the damaged frescos of Benozzo Gozzoli, which Burri viewed after his return to his hometown Cita di Castello after World War II. Composition (1953), made of oil, gold paint and pieces of burlap stitched together, with small areas of red paint shimmering through, is part of his Sacchi series, reminiscent of the Marshall Plan supply sacks, used by Americans to help Europeans with goods after the war. Nero Plastica L.A. (1963) demonstrates one of Burri's other working methods, in which he pulled and draped black plastic and created holes with a blowtorch. In Bianco Cretto C1 (1973), a white canvas with a craquelure encircles a round smooth area created by thick acrylic paint, sometimes mixed with sand or earth, dried in various ways; the work is part of Burri's Cretti series inspired by his numerous trips to Death Valley. The exhibit beautifully reveals Burri's creative progress, and the artistic expression he found in the merging of two cultures, even two worlds.

Review was published in ART Ltd. on January 7th, 2011

Jordi Alcaraz at Jack Rutberg Gallery of Fine Arts

2010-09-21T19:32:00.001-07:00

Jordi Alcaraz at Jack Rutberg Gallery of Fine Arts

How does one paint one’s breath, show the composing process of a travel book or reduce a room into a painting? These are the kind of questions Catalonian artist Jordi Alcaraz enjoys toying with. Some of his works can be currently viewed at the Jack Rutberg Gallery of Fine Arts, the space that gave him his first U.S. solo-exhibit “Traslúcido”.

One aspect that makes Alcaraz’s show so appealing is its Catalonian sensibility. There are organic shapes in Gaudi’s style, reflected images with a surrealistic appeal, and many evocative pieces of works that keep one wondering. Some have a feeling reminiscent of the Spanish Civil War. Others seem to be inspired by Robert Motherwell, especially his painting “Elegy to the Spanish Republic”. The show, spread out through the two main gallery rooms at Jack Rutberg’s is particularly beautiful, because of its poetic and philosophical nature, its subtle colors and the elements Alcaraz works with: transparency, reflection and writing.

“Time” consists of an antique wooden sculpture, a nun-like figure, partly painted in white and beige, who reaches her fingers of her left hand through an opening in a vitrine, whose front wall is slightly bent inward and ends into what looks like the upper part of a martini glass. The contrast between the two materials, one seems to represent the traditional, the other, the modern world, is analogous to what we find in today’s architectural landscape in Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia. The enclosed sculpture also provides an interior versus exterior perspective, and creates the dimension of someone from the past looking into the future and vice versa. The idea of glass surrounding the sculpture seems is reminiscent of modern architectural concepts, where buildings include large glass windows and sliding glass walls ( as in Richard Neutra’s buildings) to bring the outside in. Situating a religious sculpture in a modern frame, the work also suggests the development of religion over time. But then there is also the element of a nun breaking through a wall, maybe the wall that leads to the mysterious and unknown as in the works by Spanish artist Antoni Tàpies. And that’s exactly what American curator and critic Peter Selz’s calls attention to in the book “Jordi Alcaraz dibuiox”, when he writes “Alcaraz takes physical space, objects, and ideas and projects them into new dimensions.”

In “painting and breathing”, the surface of a white paper is displayed as two pages of an open book. The surface is covered on the left-handside by a black mark that is similar to a Chinese or Japanese calligraphy character, and the work is covered by two layers of plexiglass. The top layer is smooth, the bottom one has a slight distortion that appears to be a chain of bubbles. Delicate shadows are thrown onto the paper. Alcaraz’s work evokes the idea that the creation of art is as essential to an artist as breath is for the human being. It also suggests process and evolution, and the association with breath has a meditative implication - breathing is practiced in Yoga and Qigong.

“Process to reduce this room into a painting”, among the more surrealistic pieces in the show, consists of a mirror with a silver surface that looks like liquid. There is a hole in the upper left corner from which that liquid seems to run. The reflection in it of Rutberg’s gallery, is soft and melting, like the watches in Salvador Dali’s “Persistence of Memory.” The hole is implicated as being the entire gallery. Hence, Alcaraz not only turned a three-dimensional space into a two-dimensional one, but also made the inside of a gallery space appear to be bigger than the gallery as a whole, stressing the importance of the inner walls of a gallery.

In “Book of Astronomy”, Alcaraz pierced holes into the pages of an open book and the plexiglass covering it. Two of the holes have tiny black dots painted in them, similar to a pair of eyes. The remaining holes seem to be the solar system. Pictorially, the most direct influence on Alcaraz works where pierced holes seem to be dominant is likely the Spanish artists who lived through the civil war, as Peter Selz pointed out. Therefore, the holes in the astronomy book seem to be inspired by the holes that Manolo Millares once put into the cover of a catalogue at his show at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, as well as they’re inspired by the penetrating eyes in the works of Antoni Saura’s, and the cutting of the eye in Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali’s film “Un Chien Andalou.”

One of the more philosophical pieces “Book of Travels”, is an opened book showing two blank pages, where the writing of the underlying shimmers through. Several layers of plexiglass cover the book, on which black lines of various sizes are engraved, leading in different directions. Some of the lines cross each other, like the life lines on a palm; others expand to the left and right over the edges of the book. In this piece Alcaraz reminds us that he’s more interested in the composition process than the art work itself. Through the different layers of the plexiglass, some lines seem to be closer to the page than others. Therefore, suggesting that some thoughts are to be written down, others are still in development, and a few might lead to other thoughts and another project in the future. The work can be also understood as a metaphor for the human being and the journey he or she takes.

Aside from an aesthetic point of view, what’s striking about Alcaraz’s works is that he seems to be more interested in the evolutionary aspect of art making than art itself. He places value on all art forms and their origin, and shows them in relationship to other fields, like the sciences and humanities. He takes the viewers' and art dealers' perspectives and interpretations in consideration, drawing attention to not only what he’s trying to convey, but to the perception of others, or even the world.

Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, 357 N. La Brea Ave., (323) 938-5222, through Nov. 30. Closed Sunday and Monday. www.jackrutbergfinearts.com

Matthias Merkel Hess at Steve Turner Contemporary

2010-08-17T18:28:00.000-07:00

By Simone Kussatz

Having a BA in environmental science from the University of Kansas and a MFA from the ceramics department at UCLA, it is not surprising that Iowa-born artist, Matthias Merkel Hess, would come up with an art project that would engage his viewers in a discussion about societal and environmental issues.

Therefore what would usually appear in the real world in plastic - Rubbermaid Brute trash cans and beer buckets – Merkel Hess turned into colorful glazed ceramics that are displayed in a group show “Wet Paint 2” along with the work of eight other artists at Steve Turner Contemporary, located in the Mid-Wilshire district across from LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art).

Merkel Hess' works, which are presented in either dark blues, light yellows and pinks, or a combination of dark blue on the outer and ocher or orange in the inner, remind one of the sculptures of Swedish-American pop artist, Claes Oldenburg, who also turned ordinary objects into art objects. Yet, Merkel Hess' work is much smaller in size and not been seen in public open spaces yet.

During an artist talk at the gallery that followed the day after the reception, Merkel Hess mentioned that his project is partly influenced by a book by Thomas Hine "I Want That", which made him think about American society and the relationship between people and objects, as well as his take on it. “I make objects, sometimes big, physical things, so I'm trying to understand both my own interest in objects and how we value them as humans,” he said.

The young artist also mentioned that being a potter made him always interested in vessels and their meaning and how people use them. However, instead of making bowls, coffee mugs and teapots, he wanted to make pottery that would be of interest to a contemporary art audience.

Furthermore, Merkel Hess, a former artist-in-residence at the 18^th Streets Arts Center in Santa Monica, explained that since we live in a “hyper-consumer society”, where people are desensitized to the fact that the merchandise they find in current department stores were once luxury items, his work attempted to deal with this “by taking mundane, utilitarian objects and through a transformation of material, make them something for people to think about and consider more closely,” he explained.

Although Merkel Hess' art objects look as if they have a function that is to say to store our garbage and cool our beers, they are actually unsuitable for what they were designed to do as they are heavy and fragile. Therefore, instead of serving a literal function, they become a point of discussion. “I believe this is the main function of works of art,” he said.

Merkel Hess' work will be showcased at Steve Turner Contemporary till August 21, 2010, followed by a solo-exhibit “Devils Tower-LA” between September 4th until October 2^nd, 2010 at Las Cienegas Projects.

For further information about the artist, please visit his website http://www.merkelhess.net/ or Steve Turner Contemporary's website http://www.steveturnercontemporary.com/

Photos by Simone Kussatz

All the contents of this site belong © to Simone Kussatz

Galerie am Rathaus - "The Second Life" of Renita Schnorr

2010-08-11T02:14:00.000-07:00

(Images by artists Karl-Heinz Koch Stoeber, Dhanya Dampfhofer, Ewald Christian Tergreve and Peter Z. Malkin)

Galerie am Rathaus - “The Second Life” of Renita Schnorr

By Simone Kussatz

Situated in a historical district in Berlin known as Bayerisches Viertel, a former predominately Jewish area close to Rathaus Schöneberg (the city hall in Berlin where John F. Kennedy held his famous speech proclaiming “Ich bin ein Berliner”), Galerie am Rathaus is a contemporary gallery featuring figurative and abstract paintings, landscapes, photography and sculptures.

The gallery is run by Regina Schnorr, a retired pulmonologist born in Dresden, in former East Germany. “During my childhood and youth it was natural for me to be interested in art. My father, whom I lost during the war, had many art books,” she explains. “Also, the Dresdner Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister [Dresdner Old Masters Picture Gallery] turned into my second home, where I would meet up with friends when it was raining. I always had the need to own a picture. Sometimes I would cut a print out of a book, frame it and hang it up in my room.”

As a young doctor, Schnorr started buying paintings from a Russian artist, as well as from her students, and exhibited the works in the clinic where she worked. But instead of making a name for herself, she clashed with the ideological foundation of the Social regime. In the eyes of her colleagues and authorities, she acted too independently.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Schnorr went into business for herself and led a large pulmonology office in Berlin Mitte [a district in Berlin that used to belong to East Berlin]. “This enabled me to showcase artists in my office,” she says. Soon after “The Turn”, an old schoolmate of Schnorr, with whom she used to play music, told her about painter and musician Karl-Heinz Koch-Stöber, whose paintings were forbidden in the former German Democratic Republic (DDR) after he was continuously seen socializing with French artists and university lecturers during his stay in Cambodia. “I liked his paintings and bought many of his works so that he could finally exhibit them. This became a friendship that lasted until 2000, when he died.“

During the 1990s, Schnorr and her husband went on a trip to San Francisco. One afternoon while they were walking through the streets, they came across Vorpal Gallery, whose windows were covered by blinds. Curiosity and intuition brought them into the building where they met the curator, Jerry Emanuel, who gave them a long tour through the gallery. When Schnorr saw a painting with colorful figures in a golden shimmer, she fell in love with it and learned from Emanuel that it was created by Israeli painter and poet Peter Zvi Malkin, who captured Adolf Eichmann [ Eichmann was a German Nazi, responsible for facilitating and managing the logistics of mass deportation of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps ] in Argentina in 1960.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about Malkin’s painting,” Schnorr reveals. “I got to know him later on and we developed a very deep friendship. Unfortunately, he passed away in 2005, but I have exhibited him several times in Berlin - in my office as well as in my gallery. Through his story and paintings I will always stay connected to him and will continue to exhibit him in the coming years.”

More than a decade later Schnorr followed her creative passion - writing. In 2004-2005 she published her first novel, “Die Mahagoni Schatulle” [The Mahogany Casket], published by Goldbeck-Löwe. The novel is about an attractive and intelligent Jewish woman who makes it through the Nazi era in Germany due to her will to survive and ruthless adaptability. The first reading of the novel was held by an actress at a gallery in Schöneberg.

Due to her wish to keep her autonomy and independence, as well as to show her collected artwork to the public, Schnorr decided to give up her medical office in 2007 and opened the Galerie am Rathaus in order to start “a second life.” She also wanted to create literary salons and provide music performances for the public, yet the gallery, which shows exhibits between 5-6 times a year, has not sold as many art pieces as she had expected. Schnorr hopes to change this soon by attracting more contemporary artists to her gallery. “I have plenty of offers, both from Berlin and other countries - Italy, France, Austria. I’ve already exhibited the works of Russian and American artists. What’s important to me is to have a good connection to the artists and they need to be good and reliable.”

For more information, please visit the gallery’s website: http://www.kunstgalerie-berlin.eu

All contents of this site © belong to Simone Kussatz

(Edited by Marta Kos)

Hamilton Galleries - An art oasis by the Third Street Promenade

2010-07-30T18:27:00.000-07:00

(Images: Crane Operator by Brooke Adams, Salon Style by Dan Shupe, Free-style swimmers and Moonlit Lagoon by Warren Long)

Hamilton Galleries: An art oasis by the Third Street Promenade

With its idyllic view of palm trees and sailboats cruising in the Pacific Ocean, the Pacific Plaza Center, located at 1431 Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica is a great location for viewing the work of local and international artists presented by four galleries: Hamilton Galleries, Bleicher/Golightly Gallery Nano Gallery and, across the fountain courtyard, Jeanie Madsen Gallery. Together the galleries create something of the same sense of community that artists’ colonies often have.

Hamilton Galleries opened at its current location in 2001, the first gallery of the four in the Pacific Plaza Center. The gallery is owned and run by Leigh Hamilton. Born in New Zealand, Hamilton enjoyed the free-wheeling exposure to the arts afforded by her Bohemian family. Her father was a jazz pianist, clarinetist, and bandleader, and her mother a classically trained dancer. Feeling more drawn to the stage and visual arts, Leigh Hamilton worked in the theatre and the motion picture industry as an actress for almost three decades, while spending her free time in galleries and museums and studying the lives and oeuvres of artists. Her second passion turned into a career as the TV and film roles dwindled and the act of selling herself to producers and directors became more and more frustrating and humiliating.

The moment Hamilton saw the gallery space in the Pacific Plaza Center she fell in love with it. “I thought it was beautiful with the view towards the Santa Monica Bay and the natural sunlight,” she says. “It seemed perfect for displaying art. It was an empty shell and nobody had leased the space for three years.” Hamilton was no newcomer to the business, as she had already run a small gallery in Pacific Palisades and a larger one on Robertson Boulevard in West Hollywood. But it was the first time she was able to work without partners sharing the gallery space, relying only on the clientele she had built up over the years.

Recalling her days as an actress in New York, when graffiti art emerged and artists such as Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat were active, Hamilton wanted to bring a similar atmosphere of life and excitement to her new gallery by focusing on “spontaneity, originality and the politics of the day.” During the Bush administration, for instance, she exhibited the biting work of satirical political artist Katrin Weise for two years.

Hamilton enjoys working with local artists. For one thing, she’s able to build relationships with them. For another, she can visit the artists’ studios and select the art works herself, rather than have to rely on a middleman. “It is a very personal process for me to curate the art show for the gallery,” Hamilton observes, “and I need to feel very committed to the artist. Many people paint; however I do believe it takes at least 10 years and a body of work to be any kind of an artist. I am drawn to a painter whose unique vision and style captures my attention and my own imagination.” Another reason Hamilton tends to represent local artists is to provide them the support the local community often fails to give them. “We need to support our own artists more, because that’s what helped artists like Ed Moses, Guy Dill and Ed Ruscha emerge to prominence. There should be more written about our local artists in local papers and magazines than about 18-year-old movie stars.”

Hamilton savors figurative paintings with contrasting moods and colors. The gallery displays works featuring oceanic images, radiating joy, peace and tranquility, or portraying the progressive and eccentric California lifestyle, where women are eager to equal or surpass men in athletic activities such as synchronized swimmers in the open sea. On the other hand, Hamilton also offers more dramatic works, depicting fires and explosions or conveying the complexity of our modern world in which we are flooded with information. The art Hamilton features runs the range from expressive and exuberant to dark and subdued. All her artists are highly skilled, but they don’t fit into one particular genre. One can find elements of pop art, photorealism, assemblage art, Renaissance art, South American figuration, surrealism and expressionism – among other tendencies – in their works. The artists Hamilton shows can be called postmodern, as they manifest irony, parody, and humor and push – some more than others, but all at least a bit – at the boundaries of what is accepted as the status quo. Interestingly, however, while postmodern on the one hand, they also rely on the modernist principle of innovation and distinctive stylization. Hamilton’s artists, as critic Clement Greenberg would have phrased it, are “profoundly original.”

Leigh Hamilton continually exhibits a stable group of about a dozen artists. Among them are Cassie Taggart, Dan Shupe, Esau Andrade, Margaret von Biesen, and Hamilton’s husband Warren Long. The Gallery has also shown international artists such as Edith Vonnegut (daughter of writer Kurt Vonnegut) and German neo-expressionist Rainer Fetting. Hamilton mounts about four to five major exhibits per year, with smaller group shows in between. This guarantees that the entire permanent group of artists cycles through every season.

As a result of her acting career, Hamilton has attracted a faithful group of notable collectors associated with Hollywood, including Robert and Leslie Zemeckis, Robin and Mel Gibson, Brooke Adams and Tony Shalhoub, and Sharon and Ozzie Osborne. (Adams and Shalhoub are also part owners of the gallery.) Although her regular collectors are mostly based in Los Angeles, the majority of Hamilton’s clients are visitors from out of town who chance on the gallery at its ideal location, between downtown Santa Monica and the ocean.

Another interesting aspect to the Hamilton Galleries is its constant flow of interns, mostly from Italy, who learn about the art business in the States while receiving college credit for their gallery work. “I lived in Italy for a couple of years and have a great affinity for the country, its people, and of course the culture,” Hamilton reminisces. “I was walking into every church. I really love renaissance art, I love Caravaggio. The interns also get to brush up on their English, which is required, while I can practice my Italian. And it is such a pleasure to have the energy of youth around.”

Hamilton Galleries also hosts an annual fundraiser to support The Hamilton Galleries Rob Le Mond Surf Scholarship. The scholarship sends inner city children, selected by the Santa Monica Police Activities League, to take swimming lessons or to participate in a surf camp in Malibu.

For more information, please visit the gallery’s website: http://www.hamiltongalleries.com/

All contents of this site © belong to Simone Kussatz

(Edited by Peter Frank)

Bleicher/Golightly Gallery

2010-07-22T22:25:00.001-07:00

Bleicher/Golightly Gallery

Have you ever seen an artist hypnotized and his subconscious talks about art to an audience, or an exhibit where a suitcase is moving by itself, while carrots are whistling on top of a globe, and a milk-like liquid is pouring from one drawer in a cabinet piece to the one underneath it? If not, you need to visit Bleicher/Golightly gallery in the Pacific Plaza Center on 1431 Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. The gallery offers a variety of events, including concerts, gallery talks, as well as interactive projects between artists and gallery visitors.

The gallery, run by artist and curator, Om Navon Bleicher, and his business partner, Paul Golightly, exhibits works in multiple disciplines - photography, mixed-media, conceptual art, painting, sculpture, craft and design. Unique in its approach, Bleicher/Golightly focuses on works that cross opposing genres and ideologies and sometimes integrates elements from visual fields that are not fine art. Bleicher believes that one place to find meaning and new ‘movements’ is in the intersection of opposing fields e.g. figurative-abstract, conceptual-expressive, insider-outsider.

Bleicher/Golightly Gallery concentrates mainly on ‘mid-career’ breaking artists. Yet, established artists are part of their roster too, as well as emerging artists. Most of them are local, but the gallery also has a handful of national and international artists. Bleicher chooses his artists based on the fact that “they are highly prolific and ambitious, but authentic in their approach and desire to create.”

Instead of focusing on popular art works and short term trends, Bleicher tries to exhibit works that will have a long term impact and a lasting emotional or meaningful connection and relationship with the buyer.

Om’s hope is to bring back human meaning to highly innovative works as an anecdote to the “anything-goes’ Wild West in the wake of post-modernism.”

Overall, the gallery has a friendly and open atmosphere. Similar to museums, explanations are often put on the walls or descriptions can be found in a folder at the entrance door, as well as its knowledgeable staff readily available to explain about the artists and their process of work. Everybody that walks in is treated in a respectful way. Bleicher/Golightly also holds art related events on a weekly basis, making the gallery an approachable meeting point for the bayside Santa Monica district arts community, and an enjoyable night out for visitors to the area.

After the exhibit “Turned On” - curated by Joella March - comes to an end, the gallery will kick off its next project, which will feature Airom Bleicher as well as artists, Jim Holyoak, and Matt Shane. It will be an interactive project, “where hundreds of works will come together (mostly works on papers) in a multi-faceted installation that will change constantly through the course of the exhibit as artists add more work.” Every night a new guest artist will stop in to collaborate with Holyoak, Shane and Bleicher. The general public will also be able to participate on certain sections of the installation.

For more information please visit the gallery’s website http://www.bgartdealings.com/

All contents of this site © belong to Simone Kussatz

Painting as theater - the works of Yvette Gellis

2010-06-14T07:58:00.002-07:00

Painting as theater - the works of Yvette Gellis

By Simone Kussatz

Los Angeles based artist Yvette H. Gellis has been an Artist-in-Residence at the 18th Street Arts Center since August 2008.

Born and raised in Chicago, Gellis was classically trained at the École des Beaux Arts in Aix-en-Provence, in the south of France, before she started painting abstracts and making installations. “The training was unbelievably confined,“ she says. “Even when we were doing figure drawing, they wanted the entire figure on the paper. Therefore, the limb couldn’t be going off the page.” Subsequently, Gellis went to the U.K. to study Shakespeare at The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in order to progress as an artist. “It was really to study the theatricality, tragedy, drama and the humor and all these aspects of life,” she says. “We have to make psychological choices on a daily basis, and so life mirrors art and art mirrors life.”

In addition, Ms. Gillis’s work is inspired by southern California’s Light and Space artists, notably Robert Irwin, James Turrell, and Larry Bell. “I’m influenced by their work with this sublime light. At the same time, I’m committed to the mark in painting. Every move I make is a mark. I make strong, powerful and confident marks. That’s the foundation of my practice.” Further, Gellis applies philosophical, spiritual and scientific theories to her work, incorporating a range of knowledge from quantum physics to the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda. “I’m interested in everything in terms of intuition. Jung talked about the spiritual instinct in art. Donald Kuspit talks about intuition. But even more fascinating to me is Tesla and his idea of energy, like the Zeno effect, where everything is energy and electricity and our thoughts are influencing what’s happening to us.”

Aside from creating huge installations, Gellis works primarily on large scale paintings with abstract imagery. Among other media, she employs oil, acrylic, oil pencil, graphite, and charcoal. Her paintings engage exuberant colors – pinks, purples, reds, oranges, bright greens and blues, -- or pastel hues often placed adjacent to thick black calligraphic marks or rich grey-toned forms. Some of her paintings present architectural structures, providing perspective and depth. In others she combines feminine organic shapes with masculine man-made ones, juxtaposing bright and dark colors and establishing vivid contrasts. Painted beams of light appear, suggesting a spark of sublimity. Parts of some of her paintings are covered with resin, which seems to have a life of its own, while the other forms are connected with each other.

Gellis’ preference for large-scale paintings derives from an incident during her studies at Claremont Graduate University, when a professor noticed that she painted from her shoulder rather than from her hand. Also, the confinement of the graduate studios pushed her once again to do abstract works and installations. “There is something rather dramatic happening with the work I’m doing, as I see painting as theater,” Gellis explains. “I employ the surface of the canvas like a stage to set up a theatrical condition, where the abstract mark functions as the protagonist, or the heroic self. The more space I have, the better.”

In a review in Art in America, Constance Mallinson put Gellis’ work in the context of 1950s New York Abstract Expressionism, comparing it especially to the works of Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell due to her black calligraphic lines. However, the influence of ‘50s Bay Area figuration, notably Richard Diebenkorn and Elmer Bischoff, also shines through. “I’m inspired by great art in terms of where it fits into a long term conversation,” Gellis explains. “Again, confident mark-making is really fundamental to me. I’m not interested in a mark trying to find itself or to try to sell an idea. I’m really committed to the artists from the ‘50s who promoted the idea of intuition, phenomenology, presence in the mark and color. But for me it doesn’t stop there, I go even further than that.”

Instead of trying to make pictures, Ms. Gellis is trying to get to the essence of the experience that inspired her to paint in the first place, which she then tries to communicate through her paintings. “It’s kind of when you paint a horse and you don’t describe the beauty and the muscles and the sweat,” she says. ”It’s more like using your senses, what was the feeling of being on a horse, when the hands rubbed up against the strength of that neck and the power of that animal compared to me?” She continues, “When you go to Venice, Italy, and see those fabulous four horses inside of St. Marks, you can see the symbolism, but also all the attributes that are connected to a horse. It’s a big heavy theme to take on. So to do that successfully one needs to be a master painter. Susan Rothenberg did some fantastic horse paintings years ago, capturing this. But I don’t want to do that, although I have the technical skills. For me this was just an exercise at school, but the idea of using those senses one can still find in my work today.”

Gellis tries to blur the distinction between painting, installation and the environment. “They’re really informing each other, so the objects I’m using in the installations, the fabric, the tubes, are functioning like a paint brush,” she explains. “Through my installations I want to create a three-dimensional abstract painting, so that the audience can walk into the painting, as if I were to create a gallery space.”

Although Gellis is fond of the 19^th century Hudson River School, she doesn’t produce representational paintings herself, but only uses the concept of sublimity in her work. She considers herself an abstractionist rather than an abstract painter per se. “My marks and the abstract marks in my paintings are very controlled and they are very thoughtful,” she explains. ”It’s not as if I’m just moving paint around abstractly. There is a long process to putting together these paintings. I collect a lot of photographs, some of them my own, and I do a lot of research and look at abandoned and destroyed places, photographing and looking at them and finding a meaning in this fleeting energy in life that comes and goes, this quickness of life, this ephemeral aspect to living.”

(Edited by Peter Frank)

The contents of this site belongs © to Simone Kussatz

The works of Megan Madzoeff

2010-05-30T08:59:00.000-07:00

The works of Megan Madzoeff

By Simone Kussatz

California artist Megan Madzoeff, trained at Art Center College of Design and Claremont Graduate University, doesn’t stick to one genre. Instead, she has a penchant for mixing abstractions with real images, inviting the viewer to submerge in her art work, as in her abstractions with ostriches that were showcased last year during the exhibit “Realities of Abstraction” in Project_210 in Pasadena. ”People feel uncomfortable if they can’t recognize what an art work is," Madzoeff says. "I’ve been always fascinated with ostriches. I love their faces and expressions. They look very curious to me. I wanted the viewer to look at my paintings the way ostriches take in the world through their eyes.”

In a fashion similar to Jackson Pollock, Madzoeff creates paintings utilizing pouring techniques, which she later contours with a palette knife. In one of her works, “Hive of vestige," she creates a bright green shape on a white background that looks like a parrot, whose left wing extends to a mountainous grey ground. In front of the painting, on the gallery's floor is a pile of dirt, providing the work a life in three dimensions. “I was so fascinated by the shapes that I created through the pouring of the paint," observes Madzoeff, "because they are things I would have not thought about on my own. And then I had this idea of worship and looked at my piece as a narrative. I don’t worship in my life, but I’m fascinated, because so many people take it seriously and there are wars over this. So, it’s kind of mocking worship.”

Aside from painting, Madzoeff, who studied film as an undergraduate, also does sound installations. In “21^st Century Indexing," the viewer is surrounded by three white walls bearing an indistinct pattern in shades of green, orange, black, and blue. Fourty-two little speakers installed in the walls - each play something different - creating a chaotic sensation that refers to the overwhelming effect of the media on the human being. “I had to work in advertising and make senseless advertisements for movies. I could see how the ads and news were manipulating and bombarding people. And most people are not aware of its exhausting power. Also, in the air there is all this wireless activity happening, and we don’t see it, but it’s all over the place and I wanted to demonstrate how these multiple activities are coming at you.”

In another piece, “24 986 Miles," Madzoeff took about 4500 photos over a year, shot out of her car window during her daily four-hour commute between Orange County and the Mid-Wilshire district in Los Angeles. “I was sitting there wasting hours away in my car and then started taking pictures and documenting, and became really excited about it. Suddenly it became this big story of commuting and Los Angeles and the freeways and the trucks, and so I thought it is interesting that all our things come on trucks, yet everybody hates these trucks, because they’re big and they go slow, but on the other hand we want things in the store.”

Madzoeff belongs to the third generation of Armenian immigrants in the United States. When I asked her, if her Armenian roots come into play in her work, she said “The third generation doesn’t feel completely Armenian or American. I think one can find a relationship to this in my work. I don’t like to belong to any one thing. I’m a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Being Armenian-American gave me a different perspective and I feel I can relate to everything.”

Madzoeff is currently working on different projects, including a photography book about “24 896 Miles.” She’s also preparing for an exhibit on June 11^th at the City Council Art Gallery and Performance Space in Long Beach titled “Ménage à Trois – an evening of Art, Music and Wine, benefiting a woman’s cancer foundation (for further information please visit the website http://www.facebook.com/pages/Liberty-Lounge-Productions/454094120656). “I first wanted to show my abstractions with the ostriches that I had shown last September in Pasadena and I was going to have them framed. But then I've felt I’m kind of passed that work and wanted to go back to pure abstractions, which I’ve done in the past and moved away from.”

http://www.madzoeff.com/

Edited by Peter Frank

All contents of this site (c) belong to Simone Kussatz

Artist Warren Long - lover of life and appreciator of nature

2010-05-07T13:17:00.000-07:00

Artist Warren Long – lover of life and appreciator of nature

By Simone Kussatz

Artist Warren Long has been working as a professional artist for more than 20 years. He’s a regular at Hamilton Galleries in Santa Monica, which has showcased his work since 1996. Aside from numerous other galleries in California, his paintings have been exhibited in Milan, Italy and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

However, before Long got into painting, he first started out as a functional artist, making sculpted furniture, such as carved peacock chairs and large fish tables for Tops Gallery in Malibu. Influenced by artist Jim Wagner, known for his Santa Fe style furniture and paintings, Long explained that working with furniture became too labor intensive for him. “I’m not a carpenter,” he said. “What I wanted to do was to splash paint onto canvas. There is an immediate gratification in that.”

The California artist has also been known for his murals. One of his largest ones can be seen behind a high-school at Morning view Drive in Malibu. "They're a lot of work, but I like doing them. I use scaffolds."

Yet, Warren Long hasn’t always followed an artistic path. Before his brother’s death, he wanted to become a doctor and majored in ecological systematic biology at San Francisco State University. He only minored in art. But the frequent visits in the hospital to see his brother, who was an artist, made him realize that he’s more inclined to the artistic world. “I couldn’t see myself being so exact, doling out medicine. I’m too casual for that. Yet, medicine and anatomy still interest me and I often apply this to my paintings.”

Long- a prolific and versatile artist - spent part of his childhood in Mexico. His collection of work consists of animals, flowers, figurative, landscape and seascape paintings, in which he often adds skeletons and skulls to his imagery. “It’s probably, because I lived in Mexico, where they celebrate the Day of the Dead. To me death is a natural thing. I find skulls striking. You certainly will notice them.”

Long has developed his own style. He combines beauty and nature with unusual settings. Therefore his style is easy to recognize and one cannot pigeonhole him. From humorous images such as hula hooping penguins or a floating pig to elegant water ballet swimmers and lavish flower bouquets, Long knows how to express himself visually in a unique way, allowing his mind to fantasize without limits. “This is what’s going on in my head”, Long explained. “I like pigs. They are sweet. They’re kind of god’s jokes. My brother actually raised some. As far as the swimmers in the ocean - my wife was a synchronized swimmer and I tried to do that, it’s a lot harder than it looks. But I think it’s beautiful. It’s kind of funny too. It’s hilarious and beautiful.”

In addition Long has a collection of works where different atmospheres dominate the canvas, such as “Moonlit” or “Blue Number 18”, one depicting a lagoon at night and the other a life-guard station. “My wife and I like to go out swimming a lot. I find the life-guard stations comfortable and beautiful. Often there is not even a person in there, but just the fact they exist turn them into sanctuaries. Theoretically, they are there to help you if you’re drowning. There is something pretty about them. I’ve done quite a few of those with different color combinations.”

Aside from being an established artist, Long also teaches art. Among his students were actor Mel Gibson’s children who came to learn from him, when he was still teaching at a private school in Malibu. Now Gibson’s son has followed in his teacher’s footsteps and also exhibits his art work at Hamilton Galleries.

Among Long's collectors are Harry Shearer & Judith Owen, Brooke Adams and Tony Shalhoub, Robert and Leslie Zemeckis, Ozzie & Sharon Osborne.

For more information please visit http://www.warrenlong.com/, http://www.hamiltongalleries.com/

The contents of this website © belong to Simone Kussatz

The "Invisible Siegfrieds" ended their four-day march

2010-04-20T12:36:00.000-07:00

The “Invisible Siegfrieds” ended their four-day march

By Simone Kussatz

For four days, the “Invisible Siegfrieds”, who were part of composer Georg Nussbaumer’s innovative Ring project “Invisible Siegfrieds Marching Sunset Boulevard,” marched down Sunset Boulevard, pulling a cart on which alto Christina Ascher sat on, hidden behind a silver awning. The appearance of the helmeted Siegfrieds along with the strange sounds deriving from Ascher - who was listening to the Ring over headphones and only accompanied specific tones of the opera - had put many passersby into a state of astonishment. The reactions had been versatile, from people stopping and taking photographs to a driver rolling down her window, playing “Die Wallküre” full blast.

Yet, the participation in the project had been less than expected. “I’m a bit surprised about the low number of “Invisible Siegfrieds” we were able to recruit,” Nussbaumer said. “I thought that in a metropolitan city we would find at least ten people marching with us, because then the interplay between silence and singing would have been more effective. It would have given Ms. Ascher a counterbalance. It’s also a pity, because artists could have had a truly unique and interesting experience.“

The event ended Tuesday, April 20th at 7:45 p.m. at Will Rogers State Beach in front of Gladstones. CNN was there and about 30 people awaiting the Siegfrieds to participate in the last part of the project (Horn! Drop! Drink! ) and to watch Ascher dressed as the Statue of Liberty sing into the surf.

The contents of this site belongs © to Simone Kussatz

The works of Mark Hix

2010-04-14T07:28:00.001-07:00

The works of Mark Hix

Like Jack Vettriano, Séraphine Louis and Henri Rousseau, Philadelphia-born artist Mark Hix is self-taught. His collection of art work, including oil paintings, works on wood, mixed media, and drawings, can be viewed at Bleicher/Golightly Gallery in Santa Monica in June 2010. Influenced by contemporary, neo-expressionist and independent artists, Hix’s works are a reflection of his life experiences and spiritual growth, created in his downtown Los Angeles studio at the Brewery Arts Complex.

What stands out most are his portrait paintings from “series paintings 1,” made of thick layers of oil paint. Among them are writers from the Beat Generation, Alan Ginsberg, Willam S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. “More than being fascinated by the Beats,” Hix explained “I’m fascinated with individuals that are desperate to be heard and brave enough to try.” Furthermore, the 46-year-old emerging artist did a series on American folk singers, including Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie. “Although I appreciate American folk music, I’m more interested in who they were and what they did - ambitious restless souls.”

Although it might occur that Hix paintings carry political statements, especially in his portrait paintings of Sitting Bull, he looks at them more from a general philosophical perspective. “There was someone that stood in the face of enormous opposition, unwilling to let go of his principles.” For portrait paintings, Hix doesn’t use life models, but photographs. He mostly works with a palette knife and developed a unique technique by painting his works upside-down. “It helps me to focus on shapes and values,” he said.

One of his paintings “The Journey,” from “series paintings 2” shows a mostly black and white image with an elderly man, walking over a bridge in a winter landscape. Hix emphasized that “The Journey” is a metaphor for life. “The individual aged, still continues on his path alone,” he said, “making his way through the dense cold brush and trees of the forest (nature). There is a strange comfort there.”

Two of Hix’ paintings “After Cezanne” and “After Van Gogh” - the one showing a still life, the other a landscape - are studies and copies of works by Cezanne and Van Gogh. “After Cezanne” was inspired by Cezanne’s “Still Life with Red Onions,” although a cropped version of it, “After Van Gogh” by Van Gogh’s “A wind-beaten tree.” However, they’re not an homage to these renown painters, “but simply exercises,” he said. Whereas his copies look as if they were made by brush strokes similar to the originals, Hix stressed that he only used a brush to draw and lay them out. Only sometimes he went back and cleaned something up with the brush, yet he never models or blends with it.

Despite the fact, Hix has worked primarily on paintings in recent years, he likes to stay flexible.

His earlier work consists of a series of mixed media pieces - made out of burlap, plaster, oil paint, sometimes using photos and other objects. His piece “Moonlit,” an image mostly in blues and purples with a silhouette, is from his series “Shadow Figures”. The line of the Silhouette is created by the quick application of the plaster onto the burlap. “This allows me to create an illusion of depth in a new way,” he said.

Hix’ works on wood appear to have had an Asian influence. One piece called “Tree on a Hill” shows a tree on a slope that’s firmly rooted, but slightly crooked. There are three areas in the painting, where the wood is exposed, which are meant to project a metamorphosis. “In my eyes, they are romantic pieces,” he added.

Hix also has a collection of drawings, which depict speople he admires, Cezanne, Keaton, Modigliani and Thoreau. They were drawn upside-down like his paintings - with an ink pen, fast and free.

By Simone Kussatz

All content of this site © belongs to Simone Kussatz

The Chinese monk

2010-04-11T22:28:00.000-07:00

It was during Moonfestival, the streets were filled with people, when I decided to take off for a hike behind Nanputuo temple in Xiaman in Southern China and suddenly found myself lost. It was a hot and humid day.

Nervous for a moment, I looked to the left and right and through the dense forest, when I suddenly heard someone's gentle footsteps walking over small fallen off branches and foliage on the ground. Suddenly a Chinese monk appeared in front of me. And although I wasn't able to explain myself to him in words he quickly could pick up from my gestures that I needed his guidance to find my way back. So, he invited me to follow him. But as we kept hiking and climbing over rocks, I realized he was lost like me.

We kept on moving, stopped in between, and smiled at each other, and kept on moving, stopped in between, and smiled at each other.

We then hiked around the mountain, when a young Chinese woman came across us. She spoke English and knew the way back to Nanputuo temple. Enthusiastic to meet a Westerner, she decided to join us. Later, I found out she was a student at the university, where I taught at. I was glad to have an interpreter on my side, although I would have preferred to communicate directly. The monk walked ahead of us and we followed him. We started laughing joyously, as I was trying to take pictures of the monk and his feet. His gown sometimes floated in the wind within trees and bushes, which seemed mysterious and poetic to me.

When we took a rest on top of the mountain, the monk sat down cross-legged and told us the story how he once was in love with a young woman, before he turned into a monk. However, the woman's mother didn't want her daughter to be with him, because he was a vegetarian. Heartbroken over this he turned into a monk. Years after though the mother and daughter turned into vegetarians themselves, so that the daughter was looking for him. And when she found him, she learned it was too late for them to rekindle their relationship, because as a monk he no longer could be with a woman.

There was a moment of silence.

Before our paths split down at Nanputuo temple the monk offered me to go on a journey with him to another monastry a bit further up north. I kindly refused the offer, although the idea of it seemed adventurous. Before I left, he asked, if I could send him copies of the photographs, but then we realized it would be difficult, he had no home and an e-mail address and was moving from monastry to monastry.

Story and photos by Simone Kussatz

All contents of this site (c) belong to Simone Kussatz

Zen moments

2010-04-09T20:27:00.000-07:00

During my stay in China, I was looking for places, where I'd be undisturbed, away from the crowds of people. I felt intrigued by the light and played around with it. Some of the images were shot around Nanputuo temple - a Buddhist temple in Xiamen - others on campus of Xiamen University, or on the piano island "Gulangyu" and at the "Forbidden City" in Beijing. The blue bench with the pink bougainvillae was taken in the Bangkok zoo, when I was trying to escape from China during the holidays. I tried to apply these moments that I call "zen moments" to my life in the U.S. During Thanksgiving 2009, I took a trip by car to the Grand Canyon and stopped at Red Rock in Nevada on my way to go for a run. I came across this rock and felt fascinated by nature's beauty with clouds hanging on top of it and decided to change the color photo into a black-and-white one to add a more dramatic appeal to the image.

All content of this site (c) belongs to Simone Kussatz

Photos by Simone Kussatz

Georg Nussbaumer ueber Klang, Musik und "Invisible Siegfrieds Marching Sunset Boulevard"

2010-03-29T08:19:00.001-07:00

Georg Nussbaumer über Klang, Musik und „Invisible Siegfrieds Marching Sunset Boulevard“

Von Simone Kussatz

Der Wiener Komponist Georg Nussbaumer, der am 17. bis zum 20. April sein Werk „Invisible Siegfried’s Marching Sunset Boulevard“ zum Wagner-Ringfestival in Los Angeles aufführen wird, sprach mit BLOG über Musik, sein Verhältnis zu Wagner und seinen Opern und warum die Veranstaltung am 20. April - dem Geburtstag Hitlers – enden wird.

BLOG: Sie haben im Konzertfach Blockflöte studiert, sind aber Komponist und werden als Klangkünstler bezeichnet.

Georg Nussbaumer: Ich habe mich schon immer für andere Bereiche der Kunst interessiert als die instrumentale Musik. Noch zur Blütezeit der alten Musik bin ich von der Querflöte auf die Blockflöte umgestiegen. Es hat sich damals Musik aufgetan, die bis dahin keiner kannte - zumindest nicht als lebendige Musik. Bis in die frühen 80er Jahre wurde Musik aus Barock, Renaissance und Mittelalter sehr fad und leblos gespielt. Komponiert habe ich auch schon immer. Das hätte ich auch studiert, wenn ich für die Aufnahmeprüfung gut genug Klavier gespielt hätte. Aber das war bei weitem nicht so - zum Glück! Heute bin ich froh darüber, dass ich als Komponist nicht in den Genuss universitärer Deformation gekommen bin - und so andere Zugänge zur Musik gefunden habe.

BLOG: Und warum Klangkünstler?

Georg Nussbaumer: Soweit ich das mitbekomme, gibt es besonders in Deutschland Diskussionen darüber, was unter Klangkunst zu verstehen ist. Da mische ich mich lieber nicht ein, weil es mir wichtiger ist, das zu machen was ich machen will, als darüber nachzudenken, wie andere das nennen wollen. Mir ist die Bezeichnung Komponist lieber. Die Beschreiber von 5-linigem Notenpapier haben diese Berufsbezeichnung nicht für sich gepachtet und im Wort " komponieren" steckt viel, viel mehr, und Musik hat mit Klang nur am Rand zu tun. Ich sehe das als plastischen Vorgang, der sich eben auch, unter anderem, als Klang mitteilt.

BLOG: Wer ist auf die Idee gekommen, etwas zum Wagnerring zu machen?

Georg Nussbaumer: Die Villa Aurora ist eine der Institutionen, die sich am Ring Festival Los Angeles (www.ringfestivalla.com) beteiligen. Da ich 2004 Stipendiat an der Villa Aurora war, wurde ich von ihr eingeladen ein Werk beizusteuern, weil ich mich schon öfter und ausgedehnt mit Wagner beschäftigt habe. Zum Beispiel mit Parsifal in einer großen Operninstallation im OK Kulturhaus Linz, mit Tristan mit einem Projekt mit schwimmendem Publikum im Schwimmbad zur flieβenden Musik. Das war in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Mannheimer Museum. Aber der Ring ist da natürlich die Königsklasse und vermutlich meine letzte Wagnerarbeit, weil die anderen Opern mich nicht anziehen.

BLOG: Und wie Sie sind sie auf diese spektakuläre Idee gekommen?

Georg Nussbaumer: Von Kunstwerken träumen kann jeder wie er will. Die Umsetzung von

Kunst hängt aber immer mit den Möglichkeiten zusammen, die man hat. Klar war, dass ich nicht eine Tonne Gold im Pazifik werde versenken können - obwohl das auch ein schöner Ansatz wäre. Deshalb hab ich nachgedacht, was man in Los Angeles umsetze könnte, das dem Format des Rings und auch der Größe der Stadt entspricht und zugleich mit den Produktionskosten auskommt, die wir auch stemmen können. Ein Klavierstück vor 50 Zuhörern wäre nicht adäquat. Mir bereitet es Vergnügen, mit einem Budget, das der Abendgage eines Starsängers entspricht, auf die Beine zu stellen, das mehr Leute besuchen werden, als ein Starsänger jemals Publikum hat.

BLOG: Würden Sie sich als Wagnerliebhaber bezeichnen?

Georg Nussbaumer: Darauf gibt es zwei Antworten. Erstens: nein, um Himmels willen! Ich habe mir noch nie Wagner in der Oper angesehen und werde das auch nicht

tun - weder eine konservative noch eine "avantgarde"-Inszenierung. Was die sogenannten Wagnerianer für sich da rausholen, kann ich nicht nachvollziehen. Zweitens: was heißt "Liebhaber"? Lieb haben kann man das nicht, das ist eine gefährliche Liebe, die einen sofort erschlägt. Aber man kann versuchen, sich nicht ganz erschlagen zu lassen, sondern in einer bestimmten Form von Masochismus bis zum Ende durchzuhalten. Eine Orgie,

eine Droge, die in jedem Takt und auch in jedem Wort – wenn man die heute lächerlich empfundene Sprache ausblenden kann und beim Inhalt bleibt - soviel an

Überaschung und "Aha"-Effekte bietet, dass man es wieder und wieder lesen und hören kann. Je tiefer man eindringt, umso interessanter wirds . Da sieht man dann, was das für ein raffinierter Architekt und wie gewagt er war. Er hat seinen Nachnamen ja auch geändert von Geier auf Wagner, weil er alles wagen wollte - aber ein Geier ist er doch geblieben. Wenn ich im Auto Wagner höre, dann werde ich immer langsamer und langsamer, bis mich die Lastwägen überholen. Ich mach das nicht mehr!

BLOG: Wagner ein Geier?

Georg Nussbaumer: Na der hat doch geplündert und ausgenutzt was und wer immer dafür in Frage kam. Den König Ludwig hat er sehr geschickt belauert und den Schnabel aufgehalten -
und und und. Wenn Juden Musiker oder Dirigenten waren, die er geschätzt hat oder brauchte, war er plötzlich kein Antisemit.

BLOG: Wieviele Leute wünschen Sie sich für das Projekt teilnehmen sehen, damit es zum gewünschten Effekt kommt?

Georg Nussbaumer: Es kommt mir nicht auf die Anzahl der Personen an, sondern darauf, dass das Vorhaben durchgeführt wird. Ich wünsche mir auch keinen Effekt, weil ich keine Vorführung eines Stückes im Sinn habe, das dann bestaunt wird. Natürlich ist es schön, wenn viele Menschen mitmachen. Das zeigt, dass es Leute gibt, die ohne finanzielle,

religiös-missionarische, therapeutische oder ähnliche Ziele einer Einladung zu einem Moment der Konzentration folgen. Ich habe den Glauben an eine homöopathische Wirkungsweise. Ich glaube, dass etwas, das in der üblichen Wahrnehmung gar nicht da ist, auf einer ganz anderen Ebene wirkt. Es freut mich natürlich sehr, dass bereits schon Menschen aus Europa und von der Ostküste mitmachen wollen. Die Anzahl der Siegfrieds auf dem Sunset Boulevard müssen wir auch mit den Behörden abstimmen.

BLOG: Die Sängerin Christina Ascher wird Brunelda sein. Wird sie nur am Ende oder auch zwischendrin singen?

Georg Nussbaumer: Sie wird immer singen, aber nicht zu sehen sein - weil sie - wie Brunelda in Kafkas Amerika in Decken eingehüllt ist und transportiert wird. Sie ist die einzige die während des Marschierens über den Sunset Boulevard den ganzen Ring über Kopfhörer hört.

Meine Komposition schreibt ihr vor welche Töne sie mitsingt - das ist sozusagen "gesiebter" Wagner. Das heisst auch, dass sie manchmal für etliche Minuten ganz still ist, dann wieder mehr singt. Erst am Ende wird sie dann enthüllt und singt wie eine Freiheitsstatue mit Megaphon in die Brandung. Schön ist bei dieser Zusammenarbeit, dass Frau Ascher die Brunelda in Roman

Haubenstock Ramatis Skandaloper "Amerika" gesungen hat. Hier ist sie wieder als Brunelda dabei, aber ganz anders. Solche Verbindungen finde ich wunderschön. Das ist mir sehr wichtig, dass sich alles organisch zueinander findet.

BLOG: Werden die „Invisible Siegfrieds auf der Straβe oder auf den Bürgersteigen marschieren?

Georg Nussbaumer: Nur auf den Bürgersteigen und ohne Störung des Verkehrs.

Die Klärung der "permissions" hat ungefähr ein halbes Jahr gedauert, schlieβlich führt unser Weg durch mehrere Stadtteile Los Angeles. Es geht nicht darum in die Abläufe der Stadt zu intervenieren, sondern darum in die Tagesabläufe der zufälligen Passanten ein kleines Erlebnis zu implantieren. Nichts soll gestört sein, nur bereichert werden! Keine Demonstration, nur eine

leichte Hinzufügung - wie ein paar Schneeflocken.

BLOG: Was werden die „Invisible Siegfrieds“ tun während andere die Klänge machen und etwas fallen lassen?

Georg Nussbaumer: Die Siegfrieds machen bei den Klängen mit. Sie sind sogar das Zentrum, der Kern! Sie werden kurz davor ihre Helme absetzen und als Klangobjekt benützen. Diese Gieβkannen-artigen Kopfbedeckungen kann man nicht nur als Tarnhelm, sondern als Horn benutzen. Was den Teil DROP! betrifft: Jeder Siegfried wird ein Objekt während des Marsches über den Sunset Boulevard finden, das er dann fallen lassen kann. Darauf bin ich gespannt. Das gibt eine Geschichte.

BLOG: Was werden die Siegfrieds sonst tragen?

Georg Nussbaumer: Was sie wollen. Ein Mensch ohne Gesicht - und das sind die Siegfrieds - sagt sehr viel über seine Kleidung, seinen Gang, seine Haltung aus. Darauf freue ich mich: ein Siegfried im Bikini, ein weiterer im Business- oder im Tarnanzug oder im Kaftan! Das wäre schön!

BLOG: Was passiert, wenn am Schluss alle etwas fallen lassen, aber keiner etwas hört?

Georg Nussbaumer: Es kommt nicht darauf an, dass man es hört, sondern dass es durchgeführt wird, weil das einen Einfluss auf die Welt haben wird. Jeder der mitmacht hat eine Vorstellung davon was fällt, fallen könnte, was noch passiert. Ist man der Einzige, gibts zehn gleichzeitige Fälle oder Tausend oder mehr? Das ist mir wichtiger als der Moment in

dem die Seismographen etwas aufzeichnen - obwohl, das wär schon was! In einer Gegend wie Los Angeles ist das was anderes als in Wien - etwas fallen zu lassen in dem Bewußtsein, dass das wirklich der "Tropfen auf dem heiβen Stein" sein könnte, der die Erde beben lässt, dass die kleine Energie einer fallenden Kartoffel ein Erdbeben auslöst. Nicht dass ich das wünschen würde, aber die Spannung interessiert mich.

BLOG: Warum endet der Marsch am 20. April dem Geburtstag Hitlers, der Wagner liebte. Ist das reiner Zufall?

Georg Nussbaumer: Wenn das unbemerkt und reiner Zufall wäre, dann wäre das erschütternd. Der April musste es aus organisatorischen Gründen sein. Wenn Mai oder September als Termin zur Debatte gestanden hätten, dann wäre das Thema nicht aufgetaucht. Im April wäre es möglich gewesen dieses Datum zu umgehen. Mein Gedanke allerdings war: wir stehlen uns um diese Frage nicht herum, wir "übergehen" den Geburtstag im wörtlichen Sinne (ein Wortspiel, das nur auf Deutsch so klar funktioniert). Also, wir übergehen diesen Geburtstag indem wir etwas

exzessiv friedfertiges, helles machen. Etwas Lebendiges! Wenn die Siegfrieds den Pazifik am 20sten April erreichen, dann ist das alles andere als eine Huldigung an den bekanntesten Wagnerverehrer aller Zeiten - es ist ein Zeichen, dass in der Interpretation und

Verarbeitung von Wagners Gesellschaftsmodell im Ring vieles zu finden ist, das wert ist, weiter verfolgt zu werden - aber dass es auch an der Zeit ist, diese Werke zu verlassen, sie nicht nur zu interpretieren und an ihrer in diesem Fall fatalen Wirkungsgeschichte zu messen, sondern dort

loszugehen wo sie enden - um mit Wagner zu sprechen: "Kinder,

schafft Neues!"

BLOG: Warum findet der Marsch in Los Angeles statt?

Georg Nussbaumer: Es gibt einige Verknüpfungen zwischen Wagner, dem Ring und Amerika: die Arbeit an Rheingold begann im gleichen Jahr wie der kalifornische Goldrausch. Wagner dachte daran nach Amerika auszuwandern, wenn ihm dort jemand sein Leben und seine Arbeit finanziert hätten. Kalifornien ist die "Endstation" der alten europäischen Kultur. In China würde das glaube ich nicht passen - aber hier sind „Siegfried“ oder die „Walküre“ ein Begriff – zwar belastet, aber ein Begriff. Auβerdem ist Los Angeles eine Stadt der Mythen, auch der sich dauernd verändernden Mythen. Der Ring ist die Oper der Mythen, sogar selbst schon ein Mythos. Und welche deutsche Stadt hätte eine Straße anzubieten auf der man 4 Tage lang gehen kann? Der Sunset Boulevard ist eine Straße von Wagnerscher Dimension.

BLOG: Müssen die Siegfrieds den ganzen Marsch gehen, oder lösen sie sich ab?

Georg Nussbaumer: Sie müssen den Marsch für je einen Tag gehen. Ich glaube dass jemand, der eimal zu gehen begonnen hat, das gerne weiter macht. Das wird eine Erfahrung sein! Am ersten Tag dauert es leider nur gute 2 Stunden, wie das Rheingold. Aber die nächsten Tage bedeuten immer gute 4 Stunden langsamen Gehens. Das ist eine schöne Sache. Man ist ganz für sich und doch als Rudel. Rundherum der Ablauf der Stadt und man geht ganz in sich gekehrt dahin, horcht, träumt...

BLOG: Am Ende wird Rotwein getrunken. Was hat das mit dem Etikett auf sich?

Georg Nussbaumer: Nicht nur die Siegfrieds sollen oder dürfen trinken. Das

ist weltweit gedacht. Das Etikett druckt man aus und klebt auf eine Flasche Rotwein. Man kann das alleine machen und sich eine Flasche reinkippen oder - und das ist klanglich sicher oppulenter - mit mehreren Leuten und Flaschen. Im Ring gibt‘s Umtrünke aller Art. Das ist als Hippieoper eine Drogenoper: Vergessen, lieben...für alles gibts den entsprechenden Trank. Also man klebt das Etikett auf seine Flasche und die einzige Technik die man beherrschen muss, ist, auf einem Flaschenhals Töne anzublasen. Auf dem Etikett steht wie viele Töne man spielt, wie viele Atemzüge man wartet, wann man wieder einen Schluck trinkt. Das Trinken hat 2 Effekte: zum einen wird der "Interpret" immer "illuminierter" zum anderen wird der Ton, der auf der Flasche produziert wird immer tiefer. Wenn das mehrere Leute gemeinsam machen hat das etwas Passacaglia-haftes, ein unerbittlicher Abstieg, eine Entspannung.

BLOG: Auf der Webseite sehen wir ein Bild. Was ist der Zusammenhang?

Georg Nussbaumer: Auf dem Bild sieht man eine große, ganz gemischte

Gruppe von Leuten - so wie es in der Wagneroper ist. Man sieht "Indianer" und "Weiβe", Menschen die verreisen, ankommen oder halt machen. Man weiβ nicht, ob sie abreisen müssen, wer welche Rolle hat. Man sieht Menschen verschiedener Ethnien, und man sieht,

dass es innerhalb dieser Gruppen (nicht nur zwischen ihnen) gewaltige Statusunterschiede gibt. Dieses Bild hat mich sehr an die Gesellschaft im Ring erinnert. Als ich begonnen habe diesen Menschen, die irgendwo in Kalifornien zu Beginn des 20sten Jahrhunderts fotografiert

wurden Rollen/Namen aus dem Ring zuzuordnen hat sich herausgestellt, dass es sich um eine Ringbesetzung handelt. Auf dem Bild sind genausoviel Menschen zu sehen, wie Rollen im Ring vorkommen. Ein Objet-trouvée, das sich bei genauerer Untersuchung als sehr stimmig erwiesen hat.

BLOG: Warum müssen die Siegfrieds unsichtbar sein?

Georg Nussbaumer: Der Tarnhelm ist ein Requisit im Ring, der von verschiedenen Personen/Rollen getragen wird. Er ermöglicht sowohl in anderer Form zu erscheinen

(Alberich und Fafner verwandelt er in Kröte und Drachen, Siegfried in Gunther) als auch - wie beim "beamen" – große Distanzen blitzartig zu überwinden. Natürlich sind meine Siegfrieds nicht wirklich unsichtbar, es geht um die Vorstellung, wie bei einem Kind, das die

Augen schlieβt und dann behauptet es sei weg.

BLOG: Und warum so viele Siegfrieds?

Georg Nussbaumer: Siegfried ist ein Archetyp. Es ist nicht eine Figur, ein

Einzelner, sondern ein Prinzip. Er steht für "etwas". Für jemanden, der die Oper gut kennt steht der für sehr viel, aber die allgemeine erste Assoziation ist wohl "deutsch, blond und muskulös", in Heldenpose und unverwundbar. Nietzsche schrieb ungefähr: Die Wagnerschen Helden haben die Nerven von übermorgen und die Muskeln von vorgestern. Also wie erträgt man das? Durch Multiplikation!

Das Gespräch führte Simone Kussatz

All the contents of this site © belong to Simone Kussatz

Getty's "Leonardo Da Vinci" Art and Sculpture: Inspiration and Invention

2010-03-28T11:54:00.001-07:00

Getty's "Leonardo Da Vinci”Art and Sculpture: Inspiration and Invention”

Here’s the plan. We take the day off to go on a mini vacation, jump on the tram leading us to the top of the hill of the Getty Center, surrounded by Italian travertine and Mexican cypress trees and enjoy the view towards the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Monica mountains before entering the focused exhibit “Leonardo da Vinci” Art and Sculpture: Inspiration and Invention.” The result of it? Within an hour we feel transformed by the mix of Californian nature and Italian culture. Latter presented to us by 17 drawings and one painting by Leonardo, along with sculptures by the Renaissance masters, Donatello, Andrea del Verrochio and Giovanni Francesco Rustici.

The exhibit, organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta and the J. Paul Getty Museum, is located on the ground floor in the West Pavilion. In the right gallery close to the entrance door we get to see the marble “Bearded Prophet” by Donatello, who was the most important living sculptor at that time and master of Leondardo’s teacher Verrochio. Hence Leonardo was influenced by both of them. The sculpture is one of the five statues for the Campanile of Santa Maria del Fiore and had never before been seen outside of Florence. It served as a model for a standing figure in Leonardo’s unfinished painting “Adoration of the Magi.” What catches one’s eye, while looking at the life-sized statue, are the enlarged hands, feet and the head.

There are many sides to Leonardo, the son of a notary and a peasant woman. Leonardo the painter of the most famous painting “Mona Lisa”, the sculptor, architect, designer, writer, engineer, inventor, and geometrician; and although he made himself learn many things, he abandoned them after having begun them, yet never ceased drawing. Two adjacent galleries feature a collection of those drawings, most of them borrowed from the royal collection of Elizabeth II. Magnifying glasses attached to the wall allow us to get a close look of the fine and masterfully applied lines of each work.

In the first gallery, there’s a sketch of a child in profile that may have been a study for a bust, as one could find them on sideboards or above doors by other Florentine artists. Furthermore there’s a sketch with Michelangelo’s David with seahorses added to transform it into a figure of Neptune, the god of the sea. We also see Leonardo’s studies of the human head to show optic and aural nerves and a sketch of a head sectioned to show the cerebral ventricles and layers of the scalp compared to an onion.

The other gallery features preparatory drawings for sculptures which were never made. For instance the studies for the Sforza Monument, a work which was supposed to be an equestrian monument, if the war between the French and Milanese hadn’t come in between, showing the Milanese duke Francesco Sforza on a horseback.

A gallery across from the hallway is dedicated to one of Leonardo’s paintings, of which there are less than a dozen in the world. The unfinished painting in a mixed technique of oil and tempera on Walnut panel called “Saint Jerome in the wilderness “ has been associated by art historians with a difficult and melancholic period in Leonardo's life, an observation they based on his diary: "I thought I was learning to live; I was only learning to die.”

The exhibition continues with the three bronze statues of Leonardo’s friend and associate Rustici. Placed in one of the high-ceilinged galleries, where natural light falls on them, the statues are the most impressive part of the exhibit, depicting a Levite, John the Baptist and a Pharisee. The statues were modeled between March and September 1508, when Leonardo and Rustici were working together. Therefore, they are essential to the exhibit, since they show Leonardo’s impact on the art world at that time. According to biographer Giorgio Vasari, Rustici finished them with Leonardo’s advice. By taking a close look, one can see similarities between a Levite and Saint Jerome, both of them having bald heads. The statues are particularly beautiful, because of their details, the folds and creases in their gowns and the various facial expressions and postures, suggesting cogitation, indignation and attention. Like “Donatello” the statues are also being shown for the first time outside of Italy.

Although the exhibit is tantalizing in many ways, since we get to see Leonardo from the point of view of a genius who left us with many ideas and unfinished works, the title of the exhibit does not reveal this. Instead one is searching for his sculptures, but ends up standing in front of Rustici’s bronze statues looking at them with awe. And in an absurd way having them there at the Getty and being outside of Italy for the first time, it takes a bit the light away from Da Vinci, although they were created under his influence and possibly based on his ideas as the exhibit suggests.

The show will be on display from March 23 -June 20, 2010

Reviewed by Simone Kussatz

Images from the Getty Center

From left to right, A Pharisee, A Levite, John the Baptist Preaching by Giovanni Francesco Rustici (1506-1511).

Study for the Sforza Monument by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

All contents of this site (c) belong to Simone Kussatz

Farewell party for Anna-Maria Hora and Markus Adrian

2010-03-20T22:26:00.000-07:00

Berlin filmmakers Anna-Maria Hora (31) and Markus Adrian (31), who've been fellows at VILLA AURORA in Los Angeles for the past three months, celebrated their farewell party on Friday evening, March 19, 2010.

The party took place outdoors, in the beautiful garden of Villa Aurora with its view over the Pacific Ocean, located on top of the Palisades mountains on Paseo Miramar.

During their three-month-stay at VILLA AURORA , the newlywed filmmaker couple were busy. There was the welcoming reception in January, where Hora and Adrian were showing and discussing their documentary film “Klang der Freiheit” and a month later the screening of their film “Narrenspiel” (A Foul’s Game) at Goethe Institute, where they were participating in a Q & A session afterwards. On top of that they were driving down to Watts shooting a short music video “Coming from the Projects”, they've also been working on their documentary film “After the violence – Nach der Gewalt”, which is in its final stage now. The film, inspired by a photography book "Mugshot" by Jonas Mohr and Jason Porath, is about former gang members who turned into artists. Aside from this, one could see Adrian honing his skills in a screen-writing workshop, but also as a guest at the Foreign Language Film Award Nominees Symposium at the American Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In addition, both of them were networking at the Pre-Oscar Party at Villa Aurora.

Hence, Hora and Adrian, are certainly Doers. They're living their dream and do as much as they can to make it come true. With Anna-Maria Hora already having the experience of being a camera assistant in Roman Polanski’s Academy Award winning film "The Pianist", and both of them being Villa Aurora fellows, there is a good chance we'll hear quite a bit about them in the near future.

VILLA AURORA’s new director Imogen von Tannenberg, who used to be in charge of the translation department at Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation was at the party, as well as many of Hora's and Adrian's friends, including British screen-writer Nathan Parker (Moon), German consul Klaus Fimpel and his wife Susanne, German sound editor Michael Dressel and German actor Ronald Nitschke.

Hora and Adrian will be leaving Villa Aurora and therefore Los Angeles on March 27, 2010 to go on their well-deserved honeymoon to Panama.

written by Simone Kussatz

Farewell party for Anna-Maria Hora and Markus Adrian

2010-03-20T21:55:00.000-07:00

1. Photo: Director of Villa Aurora - Imogen von Tannenberg (left), filmmaker Anna- Maria Hora (right)

2. Photo: Filmmaker, Markus Adrian

3. Photo: Filmmaker Anna-Maria Hora (left), Actor, Ronald Nitschke (right)
with children

4. Photo: Digital media expert, Aldo Ortiz

5. Photo: Standup comedian/producer/writer Robert Klinger and girl-friend Senior Graphic Designer at Disney, Mariya Stepanyau (left), Oscar Magallanes with girl-friend (right)

6. Photo: Villa Aurora garden

Photos by Simone Kussatz

DNJ's exhibit "Night Lights"

2010-03-16T17:27:00.000-07:00

1. Image (Bill Sosin), 2. Image (Ginny Mangrum), 3. Image (Helen K. Garber)

Three American photographers currently exhibit their work at DNJ Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, Bill Sosin, Ginny Mangrum and Helen K. Garber. The exhibit "Night Lights" is a collection of night photography, made by using completely different approaches.

Bill Sosin’s “urban impressions” were taken mainly in Chicago, shot from the inside of his car in the rain, while his windshield wipers were turned off. We see droplets either resting or dripping down his window in different directions. Whereas the backgrounds of Sosin’s images - the streetlamps, red car brake lights, pedestrians on the streets underneath pendulous umbrellas or lonely objects in storefront windows - are out of focus, the raindrops on the windows are in focus. This dual presentation gives his photographs a pointillist appeal similar to George Seurat’s paintings. Although the exhibit is called “Night lights”, the lights are not the main subject in Sosin’s images. They only play a secondary role, creating the various colors in the water. And the water in its different shapes, either in liquid or vapor form, appearing in different colors, contain an energy which Sosin felt intrigued by and experimented with. Sosin’s images are not manipulated or retouched. He conducted small color adjustments on the Camera RAW file (a hi-res file format used by professionals) and altered the color and contrast of the images according to his emotional response towards them. Through the colorful presentation of the rain in a painterly manner, Sosin’s images appear positive and poetic.

The atmosphere in Ginny Mangrum’s work is quite different. The photographs were shot in black and white and then cut and pasted onto a black canvas in Photoshop. Hence, black dominates the images. As opposed to Sosin, Mangrum shot her pictures looking from the outside in. There is no energy like that in Sosin’s rain drops; instead, everything stands still. The interiors of the public places in Mangrum’s photographs, whether a hotel lobby in Honolulu or a cabin of the Bart station at the San Francisco airport, are empty and inert. Whereas Sosin played with the rain, Mangrum played with the darkness and the psychological elements of empty spaces. After several people close to Mangrum died, she experienced a sense of the void. This is reflected in her work, where she shows how powerful the presence of living beings can be by depicting their very absence. Another aspect that distinguishes Mangrum’s work from the two others' is her conscious choice not to take pictures of people who may have wandered into the frame, to avoid the tension that creates.

While Sosin and Mangrum focused on one city at a time, Helen K. Garber put two cities together. Displayed as diptychs, she juxtaposed images of Venice, California next to images of Venice, Italy. As opposed to Sosin and Mangrum, Garber presents her black and white photographs on canvas, which gives them a painterly quality. Garber’s work -- inspired by an old photograph from 1922 showing her great aunt and uncle sitting in a gondola in the canal in the Italian Venice -- are not just beautiful presentations of two cities. They deal with issues of globalization and Garber’s shattered image of Venice in Italy. When Garber visited there for the first time in 2006, she was shocked by the throngs of tourists in crowded corridors. Hence she regards globalization critically, thinking it destroys rather than adds something to both cities. This reflects in Garber’s work, which shows both Venices with the daytime tourists gone and belonging again to their permanent residents.

Written by Simone Kussatz

Edited by Peter Frank

All contents of this site (c) belong to Simone Kussatz

Sandra Bullock won her first Oscar

2010-03-08T10:17:00.001-08:00

Sandra Bullock won her first Oscar

Sandra Bullock received an Oscar for her role as Leigh Anne Tuhoy in the film the "Blind Side" (2009), where she plays a Caucasian wife and mother of two children, who adopts a homeless African-American teenager she then helps to succeed in school and in football.

Bullock, who is known through films such as "Speed" (1994) and "The Lake House" (2006), accepted her speech with gratitude.

"I would like to thank the Academy for allowing me in the last month to have the most incredible ride with rooms full of artists that I see tonight and that I've worked with before and I hope to work with in the future, who inspire me and blaze trails for us."

Since the film is based on a true story, Bullock also thanked the real family Tuhoy who adopted Michael Oher (the main character in the film "Blind Side"), who now is an American football offensive tackle of the Balitmore Ravens of the National Football League.

"Thank you for giving me the opportunity to play the mother of your family. This gave me the opportunity to do something different."

When Sandra Bullock talked about her missed opportunity to thank her German mother Helga Bullock, a former opera singer who died in 2000, for all the things she had done for her, tears filled her eyes.

"I would like to thank what this film is about for me which are the moms that take care of the babies and the children no matter where they come from. Those moms and parents never get thanked. I, in particular, failed to thank one. So if I can take this moment to thank Helga B. for making me practice every day when I got home. Piano, ballet, whatever it is I wanted to be. She said to be an artist, you had to practice every day, and for reminding her daughters that there's no race, no religion, no class system, no color, nothing, no sexual orientation that makes us better than anyone else. We are all deserving of love.... Thank you!"

written by Simone Kussatz

Christoph Waltz won an Oscar for best actor in a supporting role

2010-03-07T22:46:00.001-08:00

Christoph Waltz received an Oscar

Austrian actor Christoph Waltz known through German TV series including "Tatort", "Derrick" and "Der Alte" won an Oscar for his role of the sagacious and cruel SS Colonel Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino's Film "Inglorious Bastards" (2009).

Waltz received this Oscar in the category Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role and felt delighted, when Spanish actress Penélope Cruz handed him the Oscar. "Oscar and Penélope that's an über (more than) bingo."

Waltz, who studied at the Lee Strasberg Theater in New York and lives in London, accepted his Oscar with an emotional speech in fluent English, where he thanked Brad Pitt and others who helped him to be on board.

"Everybody helped me find a place. And this is your welcoming embrace and there's no way I can ever thank you enough, but I can start right now. Thank you."

Written by Simone Kussatz

Photo by Todd Wawrychuk / © A.M.P.A.S.

The Academy Awards 2010

2010-03-06T22:03:00.001-08:00

The 82nd Academy Awards

The "Hurt Locker", a film based on accounts of Mark Boal, a freelance journalist who was embedded with an American bomb squad in the war in Iraq, won best picture Oscar during the 82nd Academy Awards, while its director, Kathryn Bigelow, became the first woman to win the directing award.

Although "Avatar" a film made by James Cameron - former husband of Kathryn Bigelow - had a vast budget and an enormous popularity, the war film won over the science fiction one.

“I would not be standing here if it wasn’t for Mark Boal, who risked his life for the words on the page and wrote such a courageous screenplay,” said Ms. Bigolow in accepting her award, which was presented to her by Barbara Streisand. "And I'd just like to dedicate this to the women and men in the military who risk their lives on a daily basis in Iraq and Afghanistan and around the world. And may they come home safe. Thank you.”

Films that were also featured in the best film category include "Up in the Air", "The Blind Side", "Precious" and "District 9".

Among other winners, Christoph Waltz took best supporting actor for his performance in "Inglourious Bastards", where he played a Jew hunting Nazi officer. Mo’Nique took best supporting actress for her role as a dysfunctional and abusive mother in the film “Precious” based on the novel “Push” by Sapphire. Aside from her husband, Mo’Nique thanked Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey, “because you touched it, the whole world."

Jeff Bridges, took best actor for his portrayal of a destitute country music singer-songwriter who tries to change his life after beginning a relationship with a young journalist. Although he had been nominated five times and grew up in a showbiz family, this was Jeff Bridges first Oscar. Bridges received a standing ovation. In his acceptance speech, he thanked his parents who had a great influence in his life. “Oh, my dad and my mom, they loved show biz so much. I remember my mom, getting all of us kids to entertain at her parties. You know, my dad sitting me on his bed and teaching me all of the basics of acting for a role in Sea Hunt.”

Sandra Bullock, won best actress for her performance as a loving surrogate mother in “The Blind Side.” Like Bridges, she was clearly one of the most popular ones in the auditorium, though she had never been nominated or received an Oscar before and had been best known for romantic dramas like “The Lake House “and the action film “Speed.”

"Did I really earn this or did I just wear you all down?" Bullock asked her cheerful audience.

The show had several Las Vegas style dance scenes and ended after three and a half hours. The highlight of the show was Ben Stiller who came dressed up head-to-toe as a Na’vi and spoke in Na’vi language to “Avatar” director James Cameron. The stage was bathed mostly in blue. During the In Memorian, Patrick Swayze, David Carradine and Michael Jackson, but not Farah Fawcett Majors was mentioned.

Where the tribute to Horror movies seemed too long, the tribute to Lauren Bacall, who received her Long-Time Achievement Award, seemed too short. The show also presented excerpts of nominated screen-plays that were projected onto a screen and read by an invisible narrator.

George Fletcher won his first Oscar for adapted screenplay and was so taken by it that he kept his acceptance speech short. "I don't know what to say. This is for everybody who works on a dream every day." In the category best documentary short subject, the Oscar went to Roger Ross Williams, who made a film about a physically disabled woman from Zimbabwe, who became part of an Afro Fusion band called Liyana, after her family had neglected her. Roger Ross William was cut off in the middle of his acceptance speech by Elinor Burkett. Since this seemed strange, he was invited by Larry King the following day to give his full speech.

The best documentary feature , presented by Matt Demon, went to Fisher Stevens and Louie Psihoyos for “The Cove”, which is a film that describes the annual killing of dolphins in a National Park at Taiji, Wakayama, in Japan. In his acceptance speech Stevens said: “I just want to say it was an honor to work on this film and to try to make an entertaining film that also tries to enlighten everybody.” Other than expected the best foreign language feature did not go to Michael Haneke's "White Ribbon" but to Argentinian filmmaker Juan José Campanella for “The Secret in Their Eyes” (“El Secreto de Sus Ojos”). “It is on behalf of a crew and cast that comprise mostly of people that I love and that are very close to my heart that I want to thank the Academy for not considering Na'vi a foreign language, first of all. And for letting us spend three great days in the company of incredible filmmakers.” The award was presented by Pedro Almodóvar and Quentin Tarantino.

Going into the evening the cameras kept on focusing on a somewhat grim looking George Clooney (Up In the Air) who had run along a fence and shaken hands with cheerful fans before he came into the Kodak Center. In addition, there was a short humerous film clip with Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin as they were sharing a bed together and being in each other's space.

The 3-D blockbuster science-fiction film "Avatar " received an award for best art direction and went to Rick Carter, Robert Stromberg and Kim Sinclair. Stromberg gave a moving acceptance speech "You know, 13 years ago, the doctors told me I wasn't going to survive and I thought that this dream of standing here would never come true." The award was presented by Sigourney Weaver, who came to fame through the science-fiction film "Alien."

However, one of the most inspiring speeches in the evening came from Michael Giacchino, who received an award for Achievement in Music written for "Up", a feature which received an animation Oscar. "Thank you, guys. When I was... I was nine and I asked my dad, "Can I have your movie camera? That old, wind-up 8 millimeter camera that was in your drawer?" And he goes, "Sure, take it." And I took it and I started making movies with it and I started being as creative as I could, and never once in my life did my parents ever say, "What you're doing is a waste of time." Never. And I grew up, I had teachers, I had colleagues, I had people that I worked with all through my life who always told me what you're doing is not a waste of time. So that was normal to me that it was OK to do that. I know there are kids out there that don't have that support system so if you're out there and you're listening, listen to me: If you want to be creative, get out there and do it. It's not a waste of time. Do it. OK? Thank you. Thank you."

Written by Simone Kussatz
Photo: by Simone Kussatz

Mark Johnson and Michael Haneke the day before the Oscars

2010-03-06T21:58:00.001-08:00

Mark Johnson and Michael Haneke the day before the Oscars

After a short welcome by Bruce Davis (Academy Executive Director), Mark Johnson (Foreign Film Award Executive Committee Chair ), took over the 82nd Academy Awards Foreign Language Film Award Nominees Symposium on Saturday March 6, 2010 at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The symposium started with the screening of excerpts of the films "Ajami", "The Milk of Sorrow", "A Prophet" , "The Secret in Their Eyes" and the "White Ribbon". All directors of the films were present, including Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani, Claudia Llosa, Jacques Audiard, Juan José Campanella and Michael Haneke.

In the beginning of his introductory speech Johnson stressed that those five nominated films were carefully selected by a committee that consists of about 300 members. He also defended the Academy for not being prejudice.

“In talking earlier this week to Claudia Llosa and Juan José Campanella, the directors of the nominated films from Peru and Argentina, they expressed to me their surprise and delight that the Academy would nominate two movies from South America. When I asked why, one of them told me that’s what many film-festivals would never do and that never before had two films from South America been Oscar nominated. I was both surprised and somewhat defensive, because they might have thought we sat in a conference room upstairs in this building and pointed at a map and pick our nominees. We’re not strategic enough and quite frankly that smart enough to really care from where our nominated films come. I firmly believe that all of our selections are based pure and simply on the value of submitted films regardless of the country. We really don’t care, where a good film comes from, just that it’s good.”

Furthermore, Johnson stressed that due to the inability of Americans to embrace subtitled films, the Academy would try to do whatever they can do to draw attention to these movies that are worth the effort. He also said that the nominations can have a huge significance "not just in the pride that brings to the films of the filmmakers, but often to the film making community of that country itself. Often the nominations of the movie will ignite governmental support of its national cinema."

Johnson, who almost forgot to introduce German director Michael Haneke, said that this would be his favorite category of the Academy Awards and that this has been the strongest year, since he's been the chair in that committee.

Director Michael Haneke came to the Academy with three of his producers of the film "White Ribbon," including Stefan Arndt. Main actor Burghart Klaussner, as well as Haneke's son and grandson were there.

Mark Johnson: All of your films have been so heavily prized and given so much acclaim throughout the world and won film festivals and your equivalence of the Oscars and so on, to what degree is any of that meaningful to you as filmmakers, or is it really something more for the producers or the distribution companies?

Michael Haneke:

Ich kann nur anschliessen, an das was die anderen vorher gesagt haben. Man macht ja Filme um zu kommunizieren und jede Art von Anerkennung seien es Besucherzahlen, seien es Preise ist natuerlich ein Zeichen, dass irgendetwas an dieser Kommunikation funktioniert. Das ist sozusagen der emotionale Teil, dann gibt es aber einen praktischen Teil wir sind alle in dieser Branche, immer so gut, wie unser letzter Erfolg und da sind natuerlich Preise unglaublich wichtig fuer die zukuenftigen Projekte.

Well, I can only agree with what has been said up till now. You don’t make films to win prices, you make films to communicate and so every kind of recognition is an aspect of that, whether it’s prizes or whether its success in terms of box office and that shows then that the film has worked in terms of communication. That’s the emotional aspect of the prices, the practical aspect is that in this branch you’re always as good as your last film, and so the prices are a recognition of that and may make it easier to make a next film.

Michael I see that your film is a screen-play that you wrote but there is a credit to the famous writer Jean-Claude Carrière. How did that come about?

Der Film, also das Drehbuch wie es urspruenglich geschrieben war, war ueber 3 einhalb Stunden lang und die Produzenten sagten natuerlich dass man 3 einhalb Stunden Filme nicht verkaufen und auch nicht produzieren kann, zumindest nicht bei uns und deswegen wir koennten den Film nur machen, wenn wir eine Stunde rausschneiden, dann hab ich das versucht, und das 20 Minuten geschafft und dann gesagt, mehr ist nicht drin und dann hatte ich die Idee den Carrière zu fragen, ob er mir beim Kuerzen helfen kann und dann haben wir uns getroffen und das Skript gelesen, er hat ein paar Wochen Zeit gebraucht, dann ist er gekommen wir haben 2 Tage gearbeitet und dann war der Film auf der Laenge, die er jetzt hat.

The original screen-play as I wrote it was 3 and a half hours long and of course the producers told me that there was no way that they get financing and that they can produce this film at least not in Germany, therefore I was told it would be essential for me to cut the film by at least an hour, so I spent a long time wiggling away and succeeded in shaving off 20 minutes and said I can’t do more than that, but then I had the idea to bring Jean-Claude Carrière in and to help me shorten the film. We met, we read the script, Jean-Claude needed a few weeks, he came back, we worked together for two days and as a result to that the film came to its present length.
Mark Johnson:
That’s fascinating so they ended up working just the two days together and then it was a finished script.

Michael Haneke:

Man muss nur an der richtigen Stelle streichen.

It’s just a question of recognizing the right spot to cut out.

Mark Johnson:

Michael you’ve worked with some of the best actors in the world I think of your film with Isabelle Huppert in the Piano teacher. Obviously in White Ribbon there were a number of professional actors, people I’ve seen before, but then the real stars of the film, the most significant characters of the children were the children. There were so many children in the film. They were spectacular, they have some of the most beautiful faces you've ever seen, and yet in the context are quite terrifying. That must have taken you a very long time to cast those children?

Michael Haneke:

"Ja, das war meine grosse Sorge, den Film zu starten und dann festzustellen dass dann diese vielen Kinder, die eine entscheidene Rolle spielen, dass ich dafuer die richtigen Leute gefunden hab. Deswegen haben wir schon ein halbes Jahr vorher mit dem Casting begonnen und haben ueber 7000 Kinder gecastet was relativ viel ist und alle Kinder waren die ganze Zeit waehrend des Drehs da und wurden betreut und vorbereitet und es war auch natuerlich in dem Drehplan eingeplant, dass die Arbeit mit Kindern, vorallem mit kleineren Kindern mehr Zeit braucht. Wir hatten das gleiche Problem mit den Statisten, also sie haben ja da ein paar Gesichter in der Kirche gesehen. Der Film spielt zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts auf dem Lande, die Leute damals kennen wir von Fotos, wir wissen wie sie in den Zeiten aussahen. Die Bauern, die heute in Norddeutschland leben, haben ihren klimatisierten Traktor und sehen aus wie jemand der aus der Stadt kommt. Wir haben also ueber 200 Statisten aus dem Norden von Rumaenien per bus kommen lassen, um diese Gesichter eben zu finden. Und beim Casting der Kinder war natuerlich erstmal das Talent entscheidend, aber in zweiter Linie schon auch die Gesichter, die halt Gesichter sind, die man sich in dieser Zeit vorstellen kann.

That was my greatest concern of course that we start with the pre-production of the film and that I have to call back my producer one day saying, I’m sorry we have to stop I haven’t been able to find the right faces, the right actors for their parts. This is why we started with the casting half year before we started shooting the film. We met with over 7000 children for the roles. When they were all present during the shoot, we prepared them, we worked with them before the shoot, they had people looking after them and we also planned this in our shooting schedule. We knew that working with children would require more time, especially with the youngest children so we allowed them more time during the shooting."

We had the same concern with extras. You've seen the faces in the scene in the church. The film plays in the beginning of the 20. Century. The people we know from that time, we’ve only seen on photographs, however, the farmers you find working in Germany today, real farmers, spend all day sitting in air-conditioned tractors they don’t look at all like farmers from that time. And for that reason we traveled to Northern Romania and chose 200 extras there who came by bus to us. Our main concern in casting the children was of course that they would be talented, but second that we’d find the right children that looked like the faces we’d come to know from photographs in that period.

Mark Johnson:

These are really remarkable faces and a fascinating detail that you needed the faces with the lines from the sort of weather beaten qualities that perhaps you can’t find today.

Mark Johnson: Michael, you’ve done your film in black and white

Michael Haneke:

Ja, ich hab das von Anfang an entschieden. Ich hab gesagt, wenn ich den Film mache moechte ich ihn in schwarz-weiss machen. Da bin ich anfangs auf eine grosse Gegenliebe gestossen, sowohl bei den Produzenten als auch bei den Verleihern. Und weil ich ein sturer Mensch bin, hab ich’s durchgesetzt und jetzt sind wir alle gluecklich.

I decided that from the very beginning. I said, if I make the film, I do it in black and white, of course the producers and distributors didn’t welcome that. But since I’m a rather stubborn individual I got my way.

Simone Kussatz:

Mr. Haneke, I felt intrigued by your character Karli, the little boy with down-syndrome, what made you decide to have a mentally retarded child in your cast?

Michael Haneke: I just wanted to resemble how village people looked like and in earlier times there were sometimes several mentally retarded children living there.

Article with Interview by Simone Kussatz

Photo by Press department of American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

All content of this site (c) belongs to Simone Kussatz

Luncheon with Jonathan Lasker at the LA Louvre

2010-03-03T22:23:00.001-08:00

Photos by Simone Kussatz

Artist Gertrud Fleck under the Nazi regime

2010-02-23T15:36:00.000-08:00

Page 81

The handling of Epilepsy patients during the Nazi regime

2010-02-16T14:57:00.001-08:00

Herb Alpert's Black Totems

2010-02-05T14:53:00.000-08:00

Herb Alpert - known as a trumpeter and A&M records co-founder and as one of the most generous stars (according to the BBC his foundation spent $13m on education, including the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music) - has currently an art exhibit at ACE Gallery in Beverly Hills. There was a reception for the artist Thursday evening February 4, 2010 at 7:30-9:pm, where Alpert himself and curator Douglas Chrismas were present, as well as prominent people from the entertainment industry, including actor Michael York (Cabaret & Three Musketeers). The event was filmed by the BBC and Alpert's own press team.

The art show contains 3 small and 13 large black totems, as well as 10 small white terracotta totems. The smaller totems range in height from 8" to 36" the taller ones from 12 to 18 ft. They are made out of wet clay, which Alpert shaped with his own hands and then molded into vertical forms. The larger ones he then casted in bronze. Those are arranged in a forest-like environment and gain intensity by being presented as a group.

Although Alpert's work looks rather abstract, one can recognize forms that look familiar. For instance, on one of the totems there is an eagle form seemly emerging from the top, on others they appear to have human body parts, such as noses, delicate bones or the inside of an ear.

Alpert's work was inspired primarily by the totem poles of the Pacific Northwest such as the ones of the Haida, Tlingit and Kwakiutl tribes. He felt intrigued by the enormous history they contain, sometimes serving as symbols that watch over a family, clan or tribe, at other times functioning as crests of families or chiefs honoring major events or occasions, or acting as guides, which accompany one through life, both in the physical and spiritual worlds.
However, one can also see his influence by Alberto Giacometti's extended figures and Louise's Bourgeois' slender wooden sculptures, which she made during/after a trip to Africa in the late 1940's.

Michael Haneke's "White Ribbon"

2010-01-20T14:00:00.000-08:00

Haneke's film about violence and the beginning of fascism received a Golden Globe award

By Simone Kussatz

On January 17th, 2010, the film “The White Ribbon” (Das weiße Band – Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte), set in Northern Germany on the eve of World War I, directed and written by Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke received the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film at the 67th Annual Golden Globe Awards. Therefore “The White Ribbon” will advance to the next round of voting in the Foreign Language Film category for the 82nd Academy Awards along with eight other foreign films. The result of the next voting process will be announced on February 2, 2010 during the 82nd Academy Awards nominations inside of the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

A day before Michael Haneke received his Golden Globe for “The White Ribbon” he was invited to a panel discussion at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. The event was organized by the American Cinematheque. On Haneke’s side were also filmmakers Giuseppe Tornatore ("Baaria"), Jacques Audiard ("A Prophet"), and Sebastian Silva ("The Maid”) The fifth nominee, Pedro Almodovar (“Broken Embraces”) wasn’t present due to another commitment he had in Paris. All nominated filmmakers were assisted by interpreters except for Sebastian Silva. The discussion that started at 1 p.m. was moderated by Mike Goodrich, editor of Screen International and an HFPA member.

When Goodrich started the discussion by telling Haneke how he wondered about how the children in the film could have turned into Nazis, Haneke said that his film is not exclusively about German fascism, "but rather shows an example of how people are prepared to take part of totalitarianism." He also said that although the film is for German audiences, "it’s not pointing a finger at Germany specifically, because it would be foolish of people from other countries to think that it doesn't apply to them."

Haneke also said that the casting was the most difficult part in the filmmaking. For the extra work he had Romanian farmers come by bus to Germany. He said it took him half a year to find the perfect cast. It had been particularly difficult to find the right child actors, because they didn’t only need to be talented, but they also needed to have faces from that time period. Finding the right cast, “Ist die halbe Miete,” (is half of the rent) Haneke said.

Haneke also mentioned that he didn’t want to follow a certain film formula that others use, for instance Hollywood. At the end he didn’t want to give away the answer as to who committed the crimes. It was rather a film that would pose questions, so that viewers could reflect about them later on. He also used an element of alienation by shooting the film in black and white. “The aesthetics of photography from that time period makes it easier for the viewer to empathize with the characters,” he added. Also he wanted to create a distance to that time period to insist on the uncertainty of things. “I don’t like films who pretend how things were,” Haneke explained.

Asked about the role that religion plays in his film, Haneke said that he wanted to become a minister at age 14. Towards the end of the panel discussion the filmmaker mentioned his new film, which will be "about the depressing realization of one’s old age and the suffering caused by it."

ICELANDIC AMBASSADOR TALKS ECONOMY in BERLIN

2009-11-01T09:18:00.000-08:00

http://icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_news/?cat_id=16567&ew_0_a_id=351271

Los Angeles in shock and grief

2009-10-24T08:33:00.000-07:00

Beiträge auf ZEIT ONLINE.

Los Angeles in shock, grief and acceptance over Jackson’s
death

by Simone Kussatz

When the news came out that Michael Jackson (50) had died on Thursday June 25th, 2009 in Los Angeles, a Hispanic sales clerk in a grocery store in Culver City shed tears. “It’s so sad,” she said. “He was just one year younger than me, “one of her customers replied. About an hour after Jackson’s death was confirmed, news reporters from Eyewitness News, Fox and NBC among others were waiting for details from the press conference in front of the Medical Plaza at UCLA. Meanwhile, throngs of people were standing next to them in a daze, some were singing Michael Jackson songs, others were pushing themselves into the spotlight of the media. Not even the summer heat could prevent people, mostly tourists, from lining up on the Hollywood Walk of Fame to see the side walk “star” of Michael Jackson, to put down flowers and to speak a few words into surrounding cameras. A Jackson impersonator gave his usual moonwalk performance. This was not only filmed from the obvious cameras in front of the Chinese Theater, but also from a secret place on top of the Roosevelt Hotel across the street. Five days after the legend of pop music died, police officers are still guarding Jackson’s former mansion, which is blocked off with police tape, located, just a bit off Sunset Boulevard, close to UCLA Medical Center in
Westwood. Paparazzi and reporters are still eagerly waiting to see relatives and others getting in and out of Jackson's house. Unless VIP, people can only get to a memorial site on the corner of Carolwood and Sunset, where his fans left flowers, cards and candles for their beloved idol.

Yet is this collective grief appropriate, and did Jackson’s death deserve so much media attention?

Opinions diverted. Stefanie Sneed, a UCLA undergraduate student of Psychobiology and African American Studies thought that the media attention about Jackson was well deserved. “He was an icon, positive and theatrical,” she said. “Being a black person, I felt empowered by him, but I feel angry that the media is looking for the negative things in his life.” Javier Arteaga, a UCLA undergraduate student of Psychology, however, felt different about this. Arteaga was only a block away from the hospital on his way towards his friend’s apartment, when he received a text message, saying “they just brought in Michael Jackson in an ambulance.” Instead of staying with a crowd in front of the Medical Plaza that had built up from 10 to 20 to a 100, Arteaga hurried home to gather information via CNN. “I feel sad about Michael Jackson’s death, especially since he died at a young age, but I also feel that the media didn’t respect his family’s privacy. I was upset how people were bragging as to who was the first to set the traffic cone on the entrance to the hospital. It was unimportant. I feel Michael Jackson deserved more respect than this.” Lindsay Guzman, a hairstylist from Colorado who is currently visiting L.A. was not surprised about Jackson’s death “I thought he was actually sick for a while, but when he died, they had to say something.”

From the perspective of the people working for UCLA Medical Center, Jackson’s death seemed not so much a matter of grief as it was a matter of inconvenience in their daily lives. For one thing, their integrity was tested. A nurse at the Ronald Reagan Medical Center said “I can’t give you any information. Journalists are escorted out, if they’re found here.” Another nurse claimed it was too hard for her to get into the hospital. “For me, every patient is a VIP,” she said. A staff at Patient Services pointed out that employees of UCLA Medical Plaza are not allowed to give out any information about Jackson’s death, other than referring to Media Relations at 924 Westwood Plaza, a department that seems overwhelmed by the requests of reporters.

People who have been working in the Hollywood industry for a long time and achieved considerable success, stressed Michael Jackson’s great talent, and put the incidence in the context of current politics. Film-maker Henry Jaglom, known for “Hollywood Dreams” a film about a fame-obsessed person who becomes a tragic victim in a fame obsessed culture, said “Like everyone in Hollywood I was stunned by the news, but then with the flood of old videos on Television and the Internet I was grateful to be reminded how truly extraordinary he was, how profoundly talented a dancer, as no less an authority than Fred Astaire pointed out, how significant and influential an artist in developing a generation of children who would grow up so free of race prejudice as to vote Obama in as president 25 years later. Many of us had forgotten all that in recent years after being endlessly told about his eccentricities, his weirdness, his countless cosmetic surgeries and all the distorted sex stories, according to everyone I know who knew him well he was the sweetest creature who ever lived, good-hearted and naive to a fault, never having had a childhood so being obsessed with being with children and staying a child forever.” Composer, William Goldstein, who had scored all the episodes of NBC’s FAME and was brought under contract to Motown, as Michael Jackson, said “His death was tragic. He was a brilliant artist, very gifted, but a troubled soul. Yet, there seems to be a budding revolution in Iran and it was wiped out by the media.” Therefore, Michael Jackson’s death has been perceived as a great loss by most Americans. The media coverage about his death will still go on to a great extent, especially with the upcoming funeral, for which reporters have already driven up North to Jackson’s Neverland Ranch, according to an ABC news reporter.

Written by Simone Kussatz. Freelance journalist. Los Angeles.

June 29th, 2009

Yesterday, Friday July 3, 2009, African American pianist Larry Nash of the Larry Nash and The Jazz Symphonics, played a tribute to Michael Jackson during the free Friday Night Jazz Concerts at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Nash gave a beautiful and sensitive performance of Jackson's "She's out of my mind." The concert was held outdoors underneath palm trees and a gradual sinking sun in front of LACMA's permanent outdoor installation of a large number of Los Angeles street lights, facing Wilshire Boulevard.

Written by Simone Kussatz. Freelance journalist. Los Angeles.
July 4, 2009

CABARET - Vincent Paterson

2009-10-22T07:01:00.000-07:00

http://www.theworldly.org/ArticlesPages/Articles2005/November05Articles/Paterson.html

Liza Minelli winning an Oscar for CABARET
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFstpIKW7A4

ART REVIEW - Sebastio Salgado

2009-10-21T08:43:00.001-07:00

Sebastião Salgado’s “Africa”

by Simone Kussatz

Peter Fettermann Gallery, Santa Monica Bergamot Station

The interplay between pristine beauty and human suffering in the latest gallery exhibit of Brazilian humanitarian photographer Sebastião Salgado encourages us to take action. One feels moved by the compelling sights of white cattle herded together by Dinka tribesmen, zebras lined up at a river, faces of refugees and victims suffering from diseases and famine and the children of Africa. These stunningly beautiful black and white silver gelatin prints are a small selection of Salgado’s work photographed over the past four decades.

In a 24x 20” photograph, displayed in the first exhibit room on the left wall in the Fettermann Gallery, Salgado shows us an image of a woman blinded by sandstorms with a chronic eye infection who is waiting for food distribution. The light falls mainly on the woman’s face on her blind and infected eye on her left. Her other eye is covered by a dark veil. This particular angle suggests that one of her eyes is invisible to us as life is invisible to her through her blindness. The strong contrast in the picture derives from the white areas on the woman’s face, neck and arms caused by the light and the dark areas caused by her black veil that merges with the dark background, building one black unity. Standing in front of the image one feels her sorrows and pain. It literally invites us to learn more about Mali, a country that belongs to the 25 poorest in the world and had just suffered its second episode of severe drought, when the picture was taken in 1985. In its overall sensibility the photograph is similar to some of the etchings of women by German Expressionist artist Käthe Kollwitz. Therefore, the real strength of Salgado’s photographs is that they show a deep care and understanding of the societies he presents to us.

Left picture:

Sebastião Salgado Blind woman. Woman blinded by sandstorms and chronic eye infections, this woman is waiting for food distribution. Goundam region, Mali, 1985. silver gelatin print 24x20”
Sebastião SalgadoDinga Group at Pagarau Cattle, Camp, Southern Sudan, 2006silver gelatin print 20x24”

Right image:

Sebastião Salgado

Dinga Group at Pagarau Cattle, Camp,

Southern Sudan, 2006

silver gelatin print

20x24”

Interview with Daniel Rotman - Social activist in L.A.

2009-10-07T02:02:00.001-07:00

http://www.theworldly.org/ArticlesPages/Articles2006/August06Articles/HomelessLA.html

London/China - Beijing Olympics

2009-10-07T01:47:00.001-07:00

http://www.common-talk.com/Common_Talk_Material/CommonTalk/08-9-2/opinions.htm

Olympic baton passed to LondonArticle and photo by Simone Kussatz Translated by Xu Ming

Thousands of people gathered around Trafalgar Square on August 24, 2008 to watch the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. Inclement weather that varied between heavy rain and bright sunshine could not dampen the spirit of viewers seated around the giant screen in the center of the square.

The crowd was a colorful and enthusiastic mix of people from all over the world, including some of London's 60,000 Chinese residents.

Mr. Miao from Shenyang city in Liaoning province has been living in London with his wife and daughter for the past four years and said: “I feel better now. For a century, we were waiting for the Olympics to come to China. Now it has finally happened.” Chinese fans were delighted that the country garnered 51 gold medals. However, Mr. Miao conceded that Chinese athletes had an advantage over competitors from other nations: "They don't have as much of a support system." A female student from Hong Kong who studies at the University of Southampton, said: “The Beijing Olympics were well organized and I feel proud of my motherland.” A Beijing expatriate was particularly pleased about London’s effort to bring the Beijing Olympics to Trafalgar Square: “I’m glad I could see everything here and celebrate with all these fans.”

The crowds roared when the screen showed Beijing mayor Guo Jinlong at the side of IOC president Jacques Rogge handing over the Olympic flag to his London counterpart Boris Johnson. Perhaps the biggest applause came when soccer superstar David Beckham kicked a soccer ball from atop a red London double-decker bus.

伦敦庆祝北京奥运会闭幕2008年8月24晚，成千上万的人们挤在特拉法尔加广场观看北京奥运会的闭幕式。尽管天气状况很不稳定，一会儿大雨倾盆一会儿阳光明媚，还时不时下着小雨，但也没挡住人们坐在为这次奥运会特设的广场大屏幕前观看闭幕式。这些来自世界各地的人都热情洋溢，其中有一些是华人，代表着居住在伦敦的六万中华儿女。他们当中有许多人看到精彩处不禁欢呼雀跃。苗先生来自中国辽宁省沈阳市，与妻女在伦敦已经生活四年了。他说：“现在感觉好多了，我们等奥运会来中国等了一百年了，现在它终于来了。”这些华人为自己国家能获得51枚金牌兴奋不已。不过，苗先生也承认，比起远道而来的外国运动员，中国运动员更有优势。“相比而言，他们没有那么强大的后方支持”，苗先生说。一名来自香港在南安普顿大学求学的女生说：“北京奥运会组织得非常到位，他们为此付出了很大努力。我为我的祖国感到自豪。”一个来自北京的华人表示，伦敦把北京奥运会搬到特拉法尔加广场让人尤其感到欣慰。“在这里什么都能看到，而且还能跟这么多人一起庆祝，真让我开心极了。”当大屏幕上显示站在国际奥委会主席罗格一侧的北京市市长郭金龙把奥运会会旗交给伦敦市市长鲍里斯·约翰逊的时候，全场欢呼。当足球巨星贝克汉姆从红色的伦敦双层巴士车顶上把一只足球踢下去的时候，欢呼声达到了高潮。

ART REVIEW - NIHAO GALLERY CHINA

2009-09-29T12:19:00.001-07:00

http://www.common-talk.com/cms/node/1573

Film review: Seraphine

2009-09-29T12:16:00.000-07:00

Séraphine

http://www.break.com/movie-trailers/seraphine-trailer.html

by Simone Kussatz

Movie biographies can be tricky. We only get to see a fictionalized version of what has once actually been. To please the majority’s tastes, biopics often focus too much on the external, instead of getting down to a character’s core. Undaunted by such constraints, “Séraphine”, a film directed and written by Martin Provost in 2008, which is an homage to French artist Séraphine de Senlis (Yolande Moreau), won multiple Césars (France’s version of the Oscar), although sobriety and discretion are its dominant tones. In her César winning role as the former shepherdess and housekeeper turned painter, Belgian actress Yolanda Moreau slowly blurs the tenuous gap between artistic genius and madness.

The film concentrates on the later years of devoutly catholic Séraphine’s life in Senlis, France, where she works as a servant in the temporary home of German avant-garde art dealer Wilhelm Uhde (Ulrich Tukur), who is impressed by her artistic ability. With Uhde’s encouragement and financial help, Séraphine receives her first group show exhibit with her work being displayed alongside Henri Rousseau’s.

Provost’s nuanced portrait leads us gently into the inner worlds of Séraphine. With her eagerness to evolve, her sensuality and authenticity, her need for artistic expression and love for nature, which is her source for comfort and inspiration, we learn to understand how Séraphine’s vulnerability will also soon break her.

Séraphine sheds light on a unique friendship between two people, who exist on the fringes of society. Uhde, because of his closeted homosexuality and Séraphine, because her social class does not allow her eccentric behavior. She hugs trees and swims nude in the rivers other women wash their clothes in. Their friendship is broken, however, when Uhde can’t keep up with his promise to exhibit her work again. Distressed about the news, Séraphine meanders deliriously through the streets, where people see her dressed in a wedding gown. Diagnosed with a mental illness, she’s locked up in the Clermont-de-l'Oise psychiatric hospital, where she dies alone after numerous straight jacket treatments.

This aspect of the film is particularly interesting and disturbing at the same time, considering that Europe had not only been overshadowed by the depression, but faced with Hitler’s gradual rise to power with the understanding that the mentally ill and homosexuals were the first groups he wanted to exterminate.

Provost’s mise-en-scène seems slightly withdrawn. Costumes, upholstery and all other objects are kept in subtle colors, mostly pastels, except for Séraphine’s canvases, which are covered with warm and radiant colors. Most scenes are shot outdoors in the natural light of a lush European summer landscape. Film music is kept to a minimum; instead natural sounds prevail. For example, one hears birds chirping, wind rustling through trees and church bells ringing. This choice in mise-en-scène adds vast dimension to the overall tenor of the film, a complex depiction of a simple woman, who was also an artist.

(Edited by Aparna Bakhle-Ellis)

Managing editor of FABRIK Magazine Los Angeles

Film review - Sandra Vaghe Stelle Dell' Orsa

2009-09-29T12:14:00.000-07:00

SANDRA

Vaghe Stelle Dell'Orsa, 1965 (a film by Luchini Visconti)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqrGVU7WNcA

by SIMONE KUSSATZ

After a brief scene of a party given by SANDRA and her husband ANDREW with an international crowd of people, conversing in different languages and mingling in front of a grand-piano played by a classic pianist, the viewer witnesses a long scene of a fast ride in a convertible going through Geneva, the Alps in Northern Italy to Florence and Toscana to the small city of Volterra. During the scene of the ride the camera is positioned inside of the car, so that we don't see the occupants, but just their view, passing freeway signs, bridges, facades of buildings and everything that surrounds them.

Volterra is where Sandra grew up. There is the house of her childhood, the place where her mother betrayed her father and turned mentally ill, where her father was picked up by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz where he died, where Sandra's husband Andrew finds out about her and her brother Gianni's incestuous games, it is Gianni's final destination, where he commits suicide, and the place where Sandra wishes to pay homage to her father through a bust of her father placed in the garden. As much as the incidents in SANDRA are gloomy and mysterious, so is the aesthetic of the film. Shot in black and white many scenes play at night, or in dimly lit rooms. In one scene, for instance, Sandra walks alone through a completely dark garden at a windy night towards the bust of her father covered with a white piece of cloth. As she is embracing the bust, and the white piece of cloth is lifting up in the air, one thinks she is embracing a ghost. The fast ride in the car towards Volterra seems symbolic. It is a journey from the present into the past, a dive into the subconsciousness where the tragedy is imprinted in Sandra's mind. The reference to Sophocles' Electra is obvious, although slightly modified. There is Sandra, Electra and Gianni, Orestes and their dead father epitomizing Sophocles' Agamemnon who was killed by his wife's lover. Although Gianni becomes mad as Orestes does, in Visconti's film he doesn't kill his mother but himself. In Visconti's version of Electra, The Trojan War is World War II and the city of Delphi Volterra. The film does not go into detail about World War II and Auschwitz. Therefore it doesn't serve, as many war films do, as a tool to overcome a traumatic past, but to provide the film with more complexity and an interesting perspective.

The interaction between the characters is more visual than verbal. The characters' eyes and body language tell us more than their words. Although furnished with antiques, Sandra's home leaves a void. Large rooms that have stayed unused for a long time express feelings of loneliness. The monotone sound of a ticking clock, only once in a while interrupted by classical piano music such as a nocturne by Cesar Franck adds to the sadness that accompanies the characters' lives.

ART REVIEW - JACK RUTBERG

2009-09-29T11:55:00.000-07:00

http://www.theworldly.org/ArticlesPages/Articles2005/MarchApril05Articles/MarchApril05FrameSet.html

DANCE REVIEW - TSUNAMI

2009-09-29T11:50:00.001-07:00

http://www.theworldly.org/ArticlesPages/Articles2005/February05Articles/RememberingTsunami.html

LARRY JOHNSON AT THE UCLA HAMMER MUSEUM

2009-09-29T11:35:00.001-07:00

Larry Johnson at the UCLA Hammer Museum of Art, Westwood

by Simone Kussatz

Celebrity culture is the main theme running through Larry Johnson’s retrospective exhibit. Johnson’s celebrities are faceless and shown to us in a most outré way. We see them through the eyes of their creators, the machinery of mass media, which not only profits from their early and tragic deaths, but, as the exhibit suggests, may have also caused them. This sinister and ironic view can be felt throughout the sixty-work show, organized by adjunct curator Russell Ferguson and spanning Johnson’s career since 1982.

The overview opens with Johnson’s reworking of a Paul Rand video in which the individual letters of the word “women” move up and down like the horses in a merry-go-round, accompanied by circus music. In the very next room, Johnson’s six-panel breakthrough work Untitled (Movie Stars on Clouds) (1982/1984) is installed high up on the wall, showing a light blue sky with puffy clouds and actors’ names — Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo — superimposed on them. From one’s earthbound perspective the names have a god-like quality to them but at the same time remind us of their unhappy lives, cut shockingly short like Michael Jackson’s, who died five days after the exhibit opened.

Cartoon-style animals appear in subsequent works, including a goat and a donkey with a bee stinging its rear. The four panels comprising Untitled (Land w/o Bread) (1999–2000), are ironically named after Luis Buñuel’s sober 1933 documentary Land without Bread. Two of the photographs show Johnson’s finger in front of the camera’s lens, admitting to the artist’s technical and conceptual imperfections. Johnson’s goat images, as noted by Christopher Knight and others, relate to Greek mythology but also carry a gay subtext.

What stands out most in Johnson’s display are his text-based works. Some of them feature bright, multi-colored or constantly changing lettering on colorful backgrounds, rendering texts artful and decorative, similar in approach to Jenny Holzer but deliberately more tasteful. Johnson’s fragmented texts derive from different genres and sources (some he appropriated, others he wrote himself). Since celebrities are made and known through the media, words logically play a key role in Johnson’s approach. As Johnson put it himself, “To master celebrity is to master language.”

Edited by Peter Frank

Peter Frank is Senior Curator at the Riverside Art Museum and Associate Editor for Fabrik and The Magazine. He was born in 1950 in New York, where he served as art critic for The Village Voice and The SoHo Weekly News, and moved to Los Angeles in 1988.

Larry Johnson,
Untitled (Winter Me)
Color photograph
45 1⁄2 x 61 in. (115.6 x 154.9 cm)
1990

Edition of 3

Private collection

Astronaut Interview: Stephen K. Robinson

2009-09-29T11:33:00.001-07:00

http://www.theworldly.org/ArticlesPages/Articles2005/October05Articles/Robinson.html

http://www.oscars.org/events-exhibitions/events/2009/astronaut.html

Quotes by Michael J. Massimino taken by Simone Kussatz July 14, 2009 at the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

"It's a chance of a lifetime to look at the world like that."

"There are no words to describe what it's like to be out in space. If you're in heaven that's the view, but it's more beautiful than heaven."

"Things go wrong. When it was dark, I broke the handrail off, which made me think of my uncle Frank and when I was 14 years old.......... but to overcome the obstacles that's the success. "

Full quote will come shortly.

Artist Interview: Melanie Pullen

2009-09-29T11:31:00.000-07:00

http://www.theworldly.org/ArticlesPages/Articles2005/October05Articles/Pullen.html

Artist Interview: DANIEL BEN-HUR

2009-09-29T11:27:00.000-07:00

http://www.theworldly.org/ArticlesPages/Articles2005/November05Articles/BenHur.html

http://212.227.189.105/sara-asperger-gallery.de/vita.php?thema=1&id=Daniel%20Ben-Hur

ART REVIEW: ITURBIDE - MEXICAN ART

2009-09-29T11:24:00.000-07:00

http://www.theworldly.org/ArticlesPages/Articles2005/MayJune05Articles/Iturbide.html

Juedische Allgemeine: BAHMA & HENRY JAGLOM

2009-09-29T11:17:00.000-07:00

http://www.juedischeallgemeine.de/cgi-bin/search_jaz.cgi?ps=20&q=Henry+Jaglom&finden.x=8&finden.y=1

Filmmaker Henry Jaglom

2009-09-29T11:14:00.001-07:00

http://www.theworldly.org/ArticlesPages/Articles2005/MarchApril05Articles/Mendelssohn.html

Book review: Nicole Krauss - The History of Love

2009-09-29T11:07:00.000-07:00

http://www.theworldly.org/ArticlesPages/Articles2005/December05Articles/Krauss.html