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Between the Real and the Imagined:

Tadeo Ando’s Adaptations and Extensions of Modernism

Dr. Gerry Coulter

In a world where global stars dominate contemporary architectural culture (not without good reason in most cases), Tadeo Ando (b. 1941) has quietly emerged as one of the preeminent architects of our time by innovating and carefully elaborating Modernist form and materials. During the 1960s Ando taught himself to be an architect while devising his core values which have remained firm against kitsch, trends, and some of the excesses of the postmodern architectural scene. In 1995 he received architecture’s highest global honour – the Pritzker Prize. Important to his approach has been a successful effort to humanize the use of modern materials (especially concrete, glass, and steel). more...

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On Both Sides of the Lens

Women and Contemporary Photography

Victoria Z. Alexander

This essay concerns the imagery of five contemporary women photographers who excel in making images of women: Céline van Balen (b 1965), Elina Brotherus (b 1972), Helen van Meene (b 1972), Janaina Tschäpe (b 1973), and Helen von Unwerth (b 1954). Here is a re-envisioning of women as subjects of photography which appears when women are present on both sides of the lens. These photographers record women in transition, mythical images of women, women reclaiming natural and public spaces, women who were once conspicuous in photography only by their absence behind the lens, and women disturbing traditional dichotomies as they move into erotic image making. more...

Feature Artist

Vladislav Scepanovic

Vladislav Scepanovic was born in Niksic (Montenegro) in 1971. He finished primary and secondary school in Belgrade. He graduated in Faculty of Fine Arts, in 1994 in Cetinje, as a student in Profesor of Professor Ratko Lalic’s class.. He got the Master studies diploma, at Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade in Profesor Gradimir Petrovic’s class. more...

Art Blog

Obsessions Collective

For more art by Ashley Thayer and other members of the collective:

The Obsessions Collective is an non-profit alternative to the commercial Art scene - a special online gallery where you can come face to face with some of the world's most elusive and cutting edge living artists, learn more about their process, view and purchase work directly from their own studios. Founded and curated by New York composer John Zorn, who is an eclectic Art Collector and has befriended and encouraged many young up and coming artists around the world, the OBSESSIONS COLLECTIVE was created in 2010 to support artists. more...

Singular Objects

Tadeo Ando

"We have to realize that the "age of discovery" has brought with it a disruption of the environment. Now architects are facing the "age of responsibility." When you design and build something, you have to consider what you are taking away from the earth or the environment in order to make something new. At the same time, I would add that the American people have a lot of courage. This is embedded within the American spirit, the "frontier spirit." You always want to try to make something new, and, of course, America is the world leader in economics today. I hope America can also be the cultural leader of the world, and use this frontier spirit to lead and show others that we need courage to go places where we have not gone before " more...

Singular Objects

Tadeo Ando – Sayamaike Historical Museum (Water)

Video of amazing entry sequence to the Sayamaike Historical Museum by Tadao Ando in Osaka, Japan. The Sayamaike Historical Museum is located on the edge of Sayamaike Pond, an artificial lake that dates back to the 7th century. The Sayamaike was constructed as an agricultural reservoir for flood control measures but was remodelled into a flood control dam. During that process, various kinds of precious heritage were found. The museum is dedicated to the relics and techniques of ancient Japanese water engineering along with the history of the community, through conservation of the bank strata and exhibition of various historical items excavated from the pond. more...

Singular Objects

Warhol/ Basquiat

This is from the final episode of State of the Art, a series of documentaries about the visual arts in the 1980s Filmed in Europe, the United States and Australia in 1985-6, the six programmes feature many key artists including -- in addition to Basquiat and Warhol -- Cindy Sherman, Antony Gormley, Hans Haacke, Eric Fischl and Joseph Beuys. The films also explore the intellectual context of the time and the ideas of post-modernism. more...

Floating Object

Tadeo Ando

Langen Foundation (Neuss, Germany)

The Langen Foundation is located at the Raketenstation Hombroich, a former NATO base, in the midst of the idyllic landscape of the Hombroich cultural environment. Visitors enter through a cut-out in the semicircular concrete wall, opening up the view to the glass, steel and concrete building. A path, bordered by a row of cherry trees, guide visitors around the pond to the entrance on the longitudinal side of the building. more...

Light Object

Tadeo Ando Interview (CNN)

Japanese Architect, Tadao Ando is featured in the CNN series, Talk Asia. His designs have stood the test of time as 35 of his buildings were still standing despite the devestating earthquake that took place in Kobe in 1995. This segment features his designs, "The Church of Light" and other designs in Venice, Italy and Dallas/Forth Worth, Texas. more...

Light Object

Tadeo Ando – Glass Box (Time-lapse)

Tadao Ando is a Japanese architect whose approach to architecture was once categorized as critical regionalism. Ando has led a storied life, working as a truck driver and boxer prior to settling on the profession of architecture, despite never having taken formal training in the field.He works primarily in exposed cast-in-place concrete and is renowned for an exemplary craftsmanship which invokes a Japanese sense of materiality, junction and spatial narrative through the pared aesthetics of international modernism. more...

Conceptual Objects

Tadeo Ando

Concepts

He is a Japanese architect whose approach to architecture was once categorized by Francesco Dal Co as critical regionalism. Ando has led a storied life, working as a truck driver and boxer prior to settling on the profession of architecture, despite never having taken formal training in the field. He visited buildings designed by renowned architects like Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Kahn before returning to Osaka in 1968 and established his own design studio, Tadao Ando Architect and Associates. more...

4 X 4 Object

Ando 4 x 4 House

The initial house was the result of a contest organized by a magazine and approached the client with the famous architect, Tadao Ando. The 4x4 House perfectly adapts to the site requirements. A decisive factor in the project was the Hanshin earthquake, which caused terrible devastation in the area. Once the first house was finished, a second customer asked Ando to build a similar house in the neighboring site. With this second order, the architect was able to complete his original idea of the two houses, but with no communication between them as he had previously thought. more...

Performance

Dan Dunn: Paint Jamming

A native Houstonian, Dan Dunn has a background in painting, illustration, design and caricature. He received worldwide attention when his teenage daughter posted a video of his performance art “Paintjam” on youtube. She spread the word on social networking sites and it took off like a rocket. The video of Dan painting Ray Charles has received over 13 million hits and propelled Dan into a full time career performing all over the globe, proving that the three fastest forms of communication are: telephone, television and tell a teenager! Dan studied painting at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. He specialized in oil painting and watercolor and also enjoyed sculpture and life drawing. more...

Performance

Olivier de Sagazan

"Clayface, for real"

"For more than 20 years, Olivier de Sagazan has developed a hybrid practice that integrates painting, photography, sculpture, and performance. In his existential performative series Transfiguration, which he began in 2001, de Sagazan builds layers of clay and paint onto his own face and body to transform, disfi gure and take apart his own fi gure, revealing an animalistic human who is seeking to break away from the physical world. At once disquieting and deeply moving, this new body of work collapses the boundaries between the physical, intellectual, spiritual and animalistic senses." more...

Performance

Mona Qaddoumi

"Peaceful but Primitive"

"My most challenging move that I acquired would probably be hooping on one leg. I had a real hard time learning that. Leg hooping was fascinating, but seemingly impossible for me. I can remember the day I got the one legged hooping though. I practiced probably for 6-7 hours in the hot humid sun of a New England summer hooping on my knees and pulling one leg out, over and over. I hit my ankle so many times, banged up my foot real good and hit myself in the nose a few times, but at the end of the day I got it. Only once, but I was raging with excitement for the rest of the evening. My contributing techniques: concentration and relentlessness." more...

Performance

Veronique Doisneau / Jerome Bel

Veronique Doisneau, 42 years old, married, with two children, winding up her career as a sujet in the corps of the Paris Opera Ballet. This middle-class worker is the subject of what film-maker Jerome Bel calls an “application of Marxist theory to a monarchical organization.” In 37 minutes “Veronique Doisneau” reveals the toll a lifetime of physical and emotional discipline takes on a beautiful young woman. But the film-maker is a dancer himself, and his portrayal does not slight the sublime nature of her toil. The result is a dancer’s story, told with a dancer’s exquisitely refined sense of balance. more...

Performance

Cryptomnesia - A Short Film by Pete Williams

"Ever felt like you where born to do something bigger than what you're doing now? BLAKE (Tom Ford) is dissatisfied with his uncreative corporate existance. His only escape is a vision of artistic perfection, which possesses his mind. His fantasies has such a power over him that it dramatically affects his work and he's faced with a choice; continue on his soul destroying path or persue his dream of becoming a contemporary artist. With the support of the office PA POPPY (Rachael Chambers) he takes one brave step toward self-actualisation, only to discover that setting your spirit free may not be an original idea... This was my graduation film from Met Film School (Ealing Studios) London, 2009." more...

Performance

Picasso on Film

Uploaded by FigaroMagazine on Dec 10, 2010 Picasso, Henry-Georges Clouzot, Le Figaro Magazine, Arte Vidéo, peinture, Mystère Picasso, couleurs. Uploaded by FigaroMagazine on Dec 10, 2010 Picasso, Henry-Georges Clouzot, Le Figaro Magazine, Arte Vidéo, peinture, Mystère Picasso, couleurs. Uploaded by FigaroMagazine on Dec 10, 2010 Picasso, Henry-Georges Clouzot, Le Figaro Magazine, Arte Vidéo, peinture, Mystère Picasso, couleurs. Uploaded by FigaroMagazine on Dec 10, 2010 Picasso, Henry-Georges Clouzot, Le Figaro Magazine, Arte Vidéo, peinture, Mystère Picasso, couleurs. more...