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ONLY BE MADRILENIAN
Only-Be Madrilenian
Val del Omar exhibit in the Reina Sofia
Visit the Reina Sofia Museum to see an exhibition about Val Del Omar, an artist, filmmaker and inventor from Granada. National Center director Manuel Borja-Villel would like to introduce this figure to a wider audience. The show runs through February 28th, 2011 and presents seven chronological sections which showcase his work since 1930 until his death in ´82. Why is this show so important? Because, according to Borja-Villel, the artist is one of the “great unknowns of Spanish culture.” In fact this is the first time a major museum and the Reina Sofia have undertaken a major retrospective of this nearly forgotten cult artist. The artist managed to break with traditional Spanish cinema and that is why many failed to understand his work. Being a misunderstood genius is a terrible fate to suffer; however retrospective exhibits ameliorate the collective guilt felt by those who live on after an underappreciated artist dies unrecognized. Show your remorse by attending the exhibit on Val Del Omar, which will deepen your understanding of his work. Val Del Omar was not only well known as a filmmaker, his technological innovations and inventions are also hailed. His passion for recording, playback, micro-projectors and different formats led to techniques that were later used by some of his colleagues. If you want to attend the exhibit about one of Spain’s most important forgotten artists, rent apartments in Madrid and enjoy an exhibition that will delve into his career. More information: http://www.museoreinasofia.es Reina Sofia Museum: C / Santa Isabel, 52, 28012, Madrid,...
Fish out of water
Within the framework of celebrations of the centenary of the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, the book “Peces en la Tierra,” (fish out of water), an anthology of women poets from the “Generation of 27” was published in Seville by Vandalia thanks to Editor Pepa Merlo. This 78-page study serves as a gateway to this unique and pivotal moment in Spanish intellectual history. The book is not only intended to rescue twenty women poets from obscurity, it is also a reaffirmation of the Silver Age of Spanish culture which was cast aside in the decades after the Spanish Civil War and the subsequent reign of Franco. It show that these women shared essentially the same literary atmosphere, trends, concerns and styles as male poets, despite being largely forgotten by the literary establishment. Merlo stresses the ease with which these women moved in the same or very similar, circles than men while sharing their broader literary, aesthetic and political aims. Their work not only exhibited the most striking features of their generation (cosmopolitanism, desire for originality, individualism) but also, in general terms, went through the same stylistic stages as that of male poets, passing through neo-popularism, formalist and essentially urban, iconoclastic and experimental poetry. Their work sough out new art forms and themes without losing the balance between tradition and avant-garde until arriving to a final stage characterized by a return to social and political poetry. The book, filled with canonical names, preserves the legacies of poets like Rosa Chacel, Concha Mendez, Ernestina de Champourcin, Josefina de la Torre and Carmen Conde, Elizabeth Mulder, Saornil Lucía Sánchez, Margarita María Ferreras...
Rubens Exhibit at the Prado this Winter
The Prado Museum in Madrid will show almost a hundred works by of one of the most important artists in history, Peter Paul Rubens, until January 23, 2011. In addition, viewers can also enjoy a documentary about the Belgian painter Rubens. Peter Paul Rubens, known in the art world only by his surname, was born in Siegen, Germany, in 1577 and became one of the most celebrated artists in history for his paintings that emphasize the movement, color and sensuality. Common topics in his work range from religious things to classical mythology. The way in which he sought to convey an exalted vision of the ideal life of man was how Rubens became one of the most recognized artists of his time in Europe. The Prado Museum will close its exhibition year with a presentation of the Rubens exhibit on November 3rd. The exhibition will be curated by Alejandro Vergara, Chief Curator of the Flemish Painting School and will feature nearly a hundred works. One of the most interesting features is that the sample will allow viewers to see many Rubens masterpieces such as “Battle of St. George and the Dragon”, “San Pablo”, “The Garden of Love,” “The Three Graces,” ” Nymphs and Satyrs, “” Hercules and Cerberus, “Saturn Devouring his Son “,” Dance of villagers ” and ” Diana and her Nymphs surprised by Satyrs ” among others. Moreover, the Prado Museum is presenting a documentary directed by Miguel Angel Trujillo produced in conjunction with the Center for European Studies and Angular Productions about the artist’s life. If you want to see the best works of Rubens and...
Subversion of images
With photographic and audiovisual works of surrealist artists as Manray, Boiffard, Painlevé, Tabard and Bresson, the curators and Clément Quentin Bajac Cheroux, present the exhibition “The Subversion of Images” in the MAPFRE Foundation This exhibition, with over 300 photographs, 100 documents and about 10 films organized into nine sections, attempts to address the processes of research and experimentation that made the surrealist movement through photography, film and all possible variants of visual work. The surrealist movement was determined to change life through art and to achieve the indissoluble union of art and life. That is why its experimentation crossed all levels of life to discover the “ beyond”. This need to transform the look, to contemplate the environment and the point of view from which we observe revolutionized the possibilities of the image. The first section of the exhibition entitled “Collective Action” and it presents the surrealist movement as such, and as first the collective over the individual. Hence the display of collective writings, manifestos, exquisite corpses, collage and multiple photographic images of the group. Secondly we find the “Theater of the unreason” that shows how the theatricality, which shows how drama, a pillar of the aesthetics of surrealism, applied to photography. “The real, accidental, how wonderful,” is the section which deals with the street. Windows, mannequins, deserted streets at night become subject to portrayals of the hidden or secret. “The mounting board” brings together images, photographs, clippings or postcards collages, photomontages and exquisite corpses that were published regularly in magazines of the time. The tension generated between what we see and its reality or the surreal look of...
Renoir exhibition at Prado Museum Madrid
The Museo del Prado, one of Europe’s most important museums, is going to open the first Renoir exhibition in Spain in October, the 19th to be more precise. The show is titled “Renoir (1841-1919)” and will present one of the world’s biggest collections of works by the French painter, owned by the Clark Art Institute from Massachusetts, which worked closely with the Prado Museum in order to set up this amazing exhibition. The exhibit will show 31 pieces owned by Robert Sterling Clark (1877-1957), founder of the Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute. The exhibition is meant to highlight the rich diversity of Renoir’s oeuvre, by showing his most relevant periods between 1874 and 1900. The artist was interested in different themes, such as: landscapes, flowers and dead nature, portraits, nudes, and feminine figures. Sterling Clark inherited a huge fortune in 1910 and moved to Paris, where he started collecting art works. Without a doubt, Renoir was one of his favorites and, currently, the Clark collection is one of the biggest collections of the French painter in the world. Pierre-Auguste Renoir is one of the most important painters of the French impressionism. And although the impressionism is based on the representation of the world through a spontaneous and subjective perspective, Renoir wasn’t always faithful to this paradigm and added a great amount of sensuality to his style, which was linked to oriental art and feminine beauty, though without distancing himself too much from the impressionist manifesto. Without a doubt, “Renoir (1849-1919)” is one of the most important exhibitions that have been shown at the Prado lately, so if you...
Guy Bourdin has first exhibit in Spain
Guy Bourdin is one of the most relevant photographers of the 20th century, and is coming to Spain for the first time to present his work in an exhibition in Madrid, that will show the most important moments of his career. Guy Bourdin is one of the most famous fashion and advertising photographers in the world, and although a lot of his colleagues are experts as well, he is also one of the most influencing artists around. For the first time, his work will be shown in Spain in the Sala de Exposiciones Del Canal Isabel II de la Comunidad de Madrid from the 14th of September until the 14th of November. The title of the show “A Message for You” alludes to the complex mind of a photographer, and tries to dissect what it is that he wants to communicate and show to the world. Now the work that he did during his career, that lasted over three decades, will be shown in different art galleries and museums all around the world. For instance in the Victoria&Albert Museum in London, the Jeu de Paume in Paris or the National Museum in China. For this French artist fashion photography has been a means to communicate a message, conveying it by images with a background history, fascinating compositions full of colour. But this doesn’t mean that his imagery and messages were easy to decipher. On the contrary he was deeply influence by the absurd and surrealism. Thereby he changed the way in which fashion and advertisement photography was conceived and this is the reason why he became so famous and...
Precious Velázquez painting found in the basement of Yale University
Velazquez is one of the world´s most famous painters and also recognized as one of the most important and influential Spanish painters. It comes as truly amazing news that Yale has found an alleged work by the artist stored away in the basement of the university. John Marciari, a curator who was working to archive art during the renovation of the University´s Art Museum found the painting back in 2003 but did not want to believe it was Velasquez. For a long time he paid no attention to his gut feeling and doubted his own discovery. He thought he was crazy, but followed his hunch that the it was an early work of Velasquez, hallowed painter of “Las Meninas”. Previously the painting, called The Education of the Virgin, had been attributed to an anonymous artist of the Spanish school of the seventeenth century, but Marciari wrote a 40 page article, partially published in the next edition of Ars Magazine, where he explains what were the indications that encouraged him to think that it was in fact an early work of Velasquez. The actual structure of canvas that was used to paint the work was the same those often used by Velazquez early in his career. According Marciari this painting was made in 1617 when the artist was only was 18. Current director of the Velazquez Center, Benito Navarrete, said that this is a very important find, but Marciari is still waiting to hear back from the Museo del Prado, which is the highest authority in the world in relation to the painter. The Museo del Prado now has the...
Juergen Teller Show in Madrid
While strolling around Madrid I saw a photo of Juergen Teller with British actress Charlotte Rampling. He is naked and sprawled on a piano while she plays the piano. He was in Spain recently to inaugurate his exhibition “Calves & Things” at the PhotoEspaña festival Born in Erlangen, Germany in 1964, he studied at the Bayerische Staatslehranstalt für Photograhie of Munich and in 1986 he moved to London which is where he currently resides. He is well known as fashion photographer and has portrayed celebrities like Naomi Campbell and Cindy Sherman and has worked for major brands such as Marc Jacobs or Yves Saint Laurent. He has a reputation for being a bit rude and aggressive, and is known for being a povocative exhibitionist. This celebrated artist discovered one day that it was more interesting for him to photograph himself than others and has done it consistently since 2000. In this exhibition we will see some 140 works by this renowned creator, divided over two floors. On the ground floor you will find collections such as “Go Sees”, “Louis XV” and “Paradis” in which Teller appears with Parisian models, posing completely naked in compromising positions. Charlotte Rampling will also see his naked walk through the Louvre. Upstairs there is a series of portraits, along with books, articles and a video. Among these portraits we can see as a naked Juergen Teller is shaved in a bathroom, Victoria Beckham´s legs poking out of a Marc Jacobs bag, and the famous model Kate Moss. In the video “Do not Suffer to much”, he is watching the final of the 2002 World...
Anti-Karaoke in Barcelona and Madrid: Let it rock, yeah!
Come on, take off your slippers and stop playing singstar with your play station. Singing along all alone in front of the TV at home is just nonsense. Well, doing it with some friends can be entertaining, but be honest: There’s nothing more boring than that! Explore the incredible world of the anti-karaoke in Madrid and discover the hidden rockstar in yourself! Let it rock, yeah! It’s very difficult to explain in one sentence what this mega event offers you. You just have to go and participate by your own. Anti-karaoke is a spectacular mix of underground karaoke, Broadway shows, rock concerts and a freaky party with a crazy crowd. The completely madness in a state of exception which you can enjoy each Monday in the famous Apolo Club in Barcelona and in Madrid each last Wednesday of the month. Before going you should know that it is a lot more than a conventional karaoke party. The highlight of the anti-karaoke parties is without any doubt the amazing and totally freaked out show presenter: Rachel Arieff. Rachel seems to have first seen the light of day with a certain mission: to rock the stage and entertain the audience. And she is more than talented in doing so. During the party, she changes her outfit many times; she flirts without limits and takes the breath of everyone. At the beginning of the show, all braves can put their names down to the songs they would like to sing. Later they will be presented and celebrated like real rock stars by Rachel and the crazy crowd. Do you think you’re just...
