September 21st, 2007
Interview with Hellen van Meene (Quicktime-Video)
Deutsche Version (Interview Sender in deutscher Sprache)
Hellen van Meene, a global photographer.
Not everyone finds access to poetry. Sensual beauty appears useless to some of us. In times of controllers man is reduced to his function.
As man is a creature that reaches beyond his plain function in the society, he has – among other things – created art. Art is one of the highest achievements of mankind and describes ever again the core which represents humanity.
Photo by Hellen van Meene.
In the images of the dutch photographer Hellen van Meene fragility, beauty Read the rest of this entry »
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Fine Art, Interview: Art, Interviews, Photography |
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. Read the rest of this entry »
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Fine Art, Interview: Art, Interview: Art Collector, Interviews, Photography |
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, Read the rest of this entry »
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Interview: Art, Interviews |
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, Read the rest of this entry »
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Fine Art, Interview: Art, Interviews |
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.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Fine Art, Interview: Art, Interview: Photographer, Interviews, Photography, Politics |
