editorial

BROADER HORIZONS

Dr. Kubilay Akman

As a bridge between the different faces of Europe our magazine continues its mission. Euroart is the independent, free, inspiring and critical art media of our region... The economic inequalities eventually find their reflections in the artists' world. Should we accept without any critical process what has been produced in terms of arts in the 'central' countries? Does the globalization period not provide a proper environment to 'other' art scenes to be represented in a more equal way in the universal art world? If we compare the arts of today to early levels of modernity we must admit that the conditions are providing a more equal basis to all artists more...

article

The Richness of Ordinary Moments

Asude Çatalbaş

One enters a room. One encounters familiar faces on the murky spaces of its walls. In this cold, public venue every face you glance at among the throngs is in truth a mirror which does not look at you. These faces will never see one another as you can see them. Not even your questioning and persistent stares can break through the walls of the silent room. It is only an angelic white dog standing in the center that talks to you. It is so sincere and so close to you, despite the discomfort of the plastic collar around its neck. And it shoulders the entire troubles of the world. It glances around; as if it has forgotten whom his owner was. more...

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Kees van Dongen and the Power of Seduction

Dr. Gerry Coulter

In Kees van Dongen’s Portrait of A Woman we are met by the confident and self assured gaze of a sitter who shares the stage with the painter. Unlike many nude female models strewn across art’s history she is fully clothed and in charge of the artist who is working for her. She is seductive in the more powerful sense of the term – the sense that is not often used today – in that she presents a challenge to anyone attempting to construct her as a sex object, an art object, an object of liberation – or any kind of object at all. She sits for her portrait as would any confident and powerful man. She allows van Dongen to allude to her sexuality only with a fragment of her shoulder over more...

article

Not everything is as it appears

A review of FOTO: Modernity in Central Europe – 1918-1945

Victoria Z. Alexander

Each year I attend about twenty major art and photography exhibitions in Europe and elsewhere. FOTO is a traveling exhibition [Washington’s National Gallery, New York’s Guggenheim (where I saw it), Milwaukee, and Edinburgh]. It examines photography in Central Europe (Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, and Poland) from the end of WWI to the end of WWII. It is a thought provoking show which is replicated in an superb exhibition catalogue containing over 250 images. On display at the Guggenheim (a thoroughly awful place to view anything except Frank Lloyd Wright’s arrogance), were 170 photographs by more than 100 photographers divided into eight sections. more...

interview

Sculpting the Beauty

Interview with Rahmi Aksungur

Dr. Kubilay Akman

I would answer by emphasizing principally my native resources; and I have often asked myself why. I am speaking of an environment in which one becomes aware of dozens of new things each day, of İstanbul, of Anatolia. We live in a cultural milieu of immense wealth and a very wide range. And what’s more, we have become so familiar with it. I am more impressed by the abstract and the physical values of the land we live on. I believe that making new discoveries each day, some of which lead one to more in-depth quests, lends greater excitement to my life. These are the reasons and as for examples, they can be a timber gate of an inn, carved in the kündekari * style of workmanship, the mass and spatial dimensions of Seljuk architecture or more...

interview

Robert Kushner: The “original, modern, heart felt, intelligent” spirit of arts

Kushner I created and performed in my own performance pieces based on costumes of my fabrication from 1970-1982. Many of the performances were funny, ironic. Some were pageants and masques; many were my own interpretations of haute couture fashion shows. Nearly all of them involved nude performers modeling the costumes. All of them were intended to be entertaining. At the same time I was beginning to draw and paint copying various world traditions of decorative source material. For quite a while the painting and the performance work coexisted. For one series of performances-- Persian Line and Persian Line: Part Two --the costumes themselves were more...

art agenda

The Retrospective of Gustave Courbet

New York, USA 27th February-18th May

This is the first full retrospective of the French artist Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) in thirty years, presenting some 130 works by this pioneering figure in the history of modernism, from his seminal manifesto paintings of the 1850s to the views of his native Ornans and portraits of his friends and family. The exhibition also includes a selection of nineteenth-century photographs that relate to Courbet's work, especially his landscapes and nudes. The works are drawn from public and private collections in the U.S. and abroad. Accompanied by a catalogue. more...

art agenda

The Retrospective of Juan Muñoz

London, UK 24th January-27th April 2008

Spanish artist Juan Muñoz (1953-2001) came to international prominence in the mid 1980s with dramatic sculptural installations that placed the human figure in specific architectural environments. His reputation was built on his power to create an intriguing tension between the illusory and the real, the contrasting acts of looking and receiving, and the poignant isolation of the individual amongst a crowd. This exhibition includes well-known sculptures such as Many Times (1999), The Prompter (1988) and Conversation Piece (1996), the “raincoat drawings”, more...

art agenda

The 19th century in the Prado

Madrid, Spain 31st October 2007-20th April 2008

The new extension to the Museum will provide the perfect setting for this renewed focus on its exceptional holdings of 19th-century art. These works have been inaccessible to the public for many years, during which time they have been the subject of a major research and restoration project which has not only led to the present exhibition but also to the publication of an exhaustive catalogue in which they will all be published for the first time. Through the simultaneous presentation of these two projects more...

art agenda

Craigie Horsfield Exhibition

London, UK 18th January – 27th February 2008

Frith Street Gallery has launched an exhibition of new works by Craigie Horsfield. Made in collaboration with tapestry weavers in Belgium these pieces demonstrate the artist's innovative use of diverse media. Here Horsfield has uncovered the potentiality of a technique which is more often associated with decorative or applied art and used it to create intricate works which continue to explore themes of relation, slow time and the present. The tapestries were begun as a narrative device - the literal weaving together of strands that take on meaning in their relation. They parallel the formal more...

art agenda

Serbian Contemporary Art

Ever since the opening of its public space in February 2000, REMONT – independent artistic association has been gathering the documentation on artists in the course of its everyday work. Our ad hoc archive already includes a number of catalogues, books, portfolios and optical media – a valuable document on happenings on contemporary local and regional artistic scene. In collaboration with the Department of History of Modern Art more...

art agenda

Nathalie Du Pasquier at the Rubicon Gallery

Dublin, Ireland 28th February-29th March 2008

Rubicon Gallery starts to the new year with the exhibition of Nathalie Du Pasquier. The artist’s subject is broadly described as ‘still-life’, she paints directly from life, without photographic go-betweens, and without fantastic inventions. There are two distinct stages of her work: first she constructs her composition - choosing objects and arranging them, observing the play of light and shadow. The second stage sees the artist transfer the drawing onto canvas or paper. Yet there is nothing life-like about her painting, in the common sense of the term, and nothing naturalistic either. more...