Archive for the 'Interviews' category
Tuesday, May 8th, 2007
Interview with Thomas Olbricht (Quicktime-Video)
Interview in Deutsch (Quicktime-Video)
The passion of the art collector
Collecting is a passion and -or- the compensation of a lack, like Sigmund Freud says. Which lack it is will be a sheltered secret of every collector. Except the coldish, calculated collector who always takes a side look to the art market and the upgrading of the possessed art work. There are collectors who really collect art as a pleasure of collecting and who are neutral to whether an art work is a financial investment. Their purchases are intuitive and some of the collectors make the collecting of art their purpose in life. But there are some more causes to buy art. According to Christina Karasek´s book: “Make artists? Aspects of the art-market.” there are six reasons:
1. financial interest
2. decorative needs
3. show a group membership
4. aesthetic experience
5. experience different views of life
6. art sponsorship
John Issacs. Thinking about it. 2002. (more…)
Fine Art, Interview: Art, Interview: Art Collector, Interviews, Photography |
Monday, April 30th, 2007
Concert with Markus Zugehör (Quicktime-Video)
Interview und Konzert in Deutsch (Quicktime-Video)
The Aim of Art
And of course a man may enjoy himself in now producing over again by his own work, skill, and assiduity what otherwise is there already. But this enjoyment and admiration become in themselves the more frigid and cold, (more…)
Interview: Art, Interviews |
Saturday, March 17th, 2007
Interview with Maurizio Cattelan (Quicktime-Video)
What does the spectacle of a phallic pink costume, worn by the Parisian art dealer Emmanuel Perrotin, have in common with the spectacle of corpulent art dealer Massimo de Carlo being taped to the wall of his gallery? What does a wax pope, struck dead from a meteorite, have in common with a squirrel that committed suicide at the kitchen table? These works of art or jokes were all created by the Italian artist or fool Maurizio Cattelan.
He says that he became an artist because of the assured income and the attractive women. In fact, he came to art very late, at 30. His numerous and varied jobs have prepared him very well for the absurdities of the art world. Among other things, he has worked in the souvenir shop of a monastery, in a morgue, in a laundry and now as a world-famous artist. He frequently gets fired over his jokes. In his current work, he feels secure that he can do what he wants. This is what he is doing. Sometimes he does nothing, as for example when he opened one of his exhibititions with an empty gallery and no artist. Other times, he steals from an artist of a neighbouring gallery, claiming the artwork as his own. Has Maurizio Cattelan no ideas, a lack of creativity? No. The critics, art dealers and collectors say this is conceptual 
art. In conceptual art, you can create a wax grandma for a rich English art collector and put it in somebody’s fridge. There she will sit ’till the end of her days — or his days — or longer. If an art collector comes into a museum and appoints something “really cool” by Cattelan, she may get something cool, in the truest sense of the word. So what if Maurizio cut a caper as he got his pay? Anyway, he didn’t have to do that much work for the “Betsy” sculpture, because he always assigns professional craftsmen to make his works of art. In this way, the kneeling and praying Adolf Hitler, one of his most unsettling works, was made. Cattelan told the craftsman only that he wanted a 12-year-old boy with the head of Adolf Hitler. He not only employs others to sculpt, he also has someone else speak for him. In his rare interviews, he is sits beside his double, nodding to his answers. Sometimes there is only the double. Is Cattelan just shy, or is he suffering from psychosis?
Another conceptual art work by Cattelan looked like this: from November 10th to November 17th in 1999, he invited ten international artists to vacation in St. Kitts, West Indies. He declared this spectacle the “6th Caribbean Biennial”. Additionally, there was a little hurricane, which forced the group to stay longer. The participants showed nothing and discussed no art. They vacationed, exactly like Cattelan had announced.
Once again, the art critics, (more…)
Fine Art, Interview: Art, Interviews |
Tuesday, February 6th, 2007
Interview: James Nachtwey (Quicktime-Video)
James Nachtwey : war photographer
It is said that as a war photographer, you either become cynical or holy. If there are indeed only these two ways of existing as a war photographer, James Nachtwey belongs to the holy. Nachtwey, a tall and elegant man, appears within the terror which he photographs as if he is surrounded by an aura of being untouchable. He has been everywhere where there have been wars and atrocities have been committed during the last decades: Somalia, Sudan, Bosnia, Rwanda, Chechnya, Kosovo, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Israel, Iraq and many other countries. But of course, he is not untouchable at all. Serveral times he has been severely injured or illnesses have torn him down. Nevertheless he continues working because of his strong belief that his pictures can make a difference. Nachtwey, convinced of the effect his pictures have on viewers, has never stopped hoping to fight war, hunger and poverty with his work.
What Nachtwey has seen can hardly be described. It is bare horror. And his pictures convey only a part of it, because a picture can not reproduce the sound of a machine gun and the stink of a rotting corpse. These pictures, though, are so strong and overwhelming that they burn into the mind of the beholder. And that is what Nachtwey wants. Nobody should forget the atrocities going on in the world every day, and everybody should — according to his abilities — do something about them: a sublime ideal and a powerful motivation.
James Nachtwey. Chechnya. 1996. Ruins in the center of Grozny.
(more…)
Fine Art, Interview: Art, Interview: Photographer, Interviews, Photography, Politics |
Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
Interview with Harald Falckenberg (Quicktime-Video)
The private collector
Collecting is a passion or according to Freud a compensational act – to be traced back to the detachment of a child from ist mother. And when the time of cuddly toys is over the grown up child can collect stamps or in the best case art. A private person collecting art, for which reason ever, has a big advantage over an institutional collector. The private collector can follow his intuition, trust his gut feeling. He doesn´t owe an explanation even if he decides to purchase subversive art: obscene, pornographic, violent – mind you – in an artistic context.
The collections of private art lovers are often more thrilling and versatile than the collections of some bank corporations or companies which certainly would not have discovered Jonathan Meese. Although courageous buyers are not always able to estimate quality, they are an extraordinary important part of the artmarket.
Keith Haring. Untitled (Nuclear Sex Series). 1981.
Harald Falckenberg, lawyer and private collector, lives in Hamburg. In his 6000 sqm exhibition space and warehouse there are genuine treasures of modern and postmodern art. Joseph Beuys, Keith Haring, Gerhard Richter, Nam June Paik, Martin Kippenberger, Jonathan Meese are just a selection of the artists whose art works are owned by Falckenberg. At 50 he started to collect and he is certainly not going to stop it anymore.
The infantil artist (more…)
Fine Art, Interview: Art, Interview: Art Collector, Interviews, Photography |
Tuesday, December 19th, 2006
Dresdner Kreuzchor. December 2006.
It´s christmas. It´s time for J. S. Bach. God will bless you.
Christmas Oratorio. (more…)
Interviews |
Tuesday, November 28th, 2006
Interview with Carla van de Puttelaar (Quicktime-Video)
A new star on the sky: we have met the photographer Carla van de Puttelaar in Amsterdam. Her passion are women and beauty; or rather the beauty of women. Her models are not for the cover of the high gloss magazines for they are not perfect. Their “stain” is what Carla van de Puttelaar defines as beauty: a very human beauty. A beauty with dignity.
Carla van de Puttelaar. Untitled. 2006. C-print. (more…)
Fine Art, Interview: Art, Interview: Photographer, Interviews, Photography |
Tuesday, October 17th, 2006
Interview with Will McBride (Quicktime-Video)
Will McBride is one of the big painting photographers, or better photographing painters. Frankly, he donates his life to art, and create grand pictures.
In 2004 his photographic lifework was honored with the famous price “Dr.-Erich-Salomon-Preis” of the Deutschen Gesellschaft für Photographie (DGPh).
“Show me”
Cover of “Show me”. German edition. 1973.
The church spoked of his sex-educational book “Show me” as “work of the devil” and tried to ban it from getting published. It tells a story of sexuality which detecs nakedness as a taboo in our so called tolerant society. It tries to find a new approach to a sex education book for children. The punchline of the book Will McBride tells us in our interview.
Because of changed moral views his book “Show me” – similar to Jock Sturges and Sally Mann – is being fight against. Meanwhile the book is banned in the US, in Germany all attempts of conservative groups failed to censor or ban it from publishing. The Bundesprüfstelle (German Agency for the Examination of Media for Young People) has so far rejected the ban.
Will McBride works with a mission: He wants to free man from his sexual immaturity. In restraint sexuality of man he assumes the basic evil of our society.
The end of the world. Will McBride. 1970.
Romy Schneider by Will McBride. (more…)
Fine Art, Interview: Photographer, Interviews, Photography |
