The latest documentary on PBS from Ken Burns starts this Sunday, and will likely get your foot tapping. “Country Music” is an eight-part series, featuring never-before-seen footage and photos. Amna Nawaz sat down with Burns, who has now had more than 30 films on PBS telling the stories of America. The conversation is part of our ongoing series on arts and culture, Canvas.
Category Archives: Arts & Literature
Top Upcoming Exhibitions: “Paul Klee – 1939” At The David Zwirner Gallery NYC Sept. 10 – Oct. 26
From the DavidZwirner.com online listing:
The works on view illustrate how Klee responded to his personal difficulties and the broader social realities of the time through imagery that is at turns political, solemn, playful, humorous, and poetic. Ranging in subject matter, the works all testify to Klee’s restless drive to experiment with his forms and materials, which include adhesive, grease, oil, chalk, and watercolor, among others, resulting in surfaces that are not only visually striking, but also highly tactile and original. The novelty and ingenuity of Klee’s late works informed the art of the generation of artists that emerged after World War II, and they continue to hold relevance and allure for artists and viewers alike today.
David Zwirner is pleased to present Paul Klee: 1939, the gallery’s inaugural exhibition of Paul Klee’s (1879–1940) work since announcing its exclusive collaboration with the Klee Family. On view at 537 West 20th Street, New York, the exhibition focuses on Klee’s art from 1939, the year before he passed away, which marked one of the artist’s most prolific periods.
To read more: https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/1939#/installation-views
Short Film Documentary: “Achille Salvagni” Is An Artistic Look At The Renowned Designer
Achille Salvagni is recognised as one of the most sophisticated and innovative creatives working today. His influences range from the rich heritage of generations of master designers before him, to cutting-edge contemporary design tendencies. Combining Italian craftsmanship with his passion for noble materials, Salvagni’s timeless interiors reflect his unique approach and the understated elegance of his aesthetic.
For the past 18 years, Salvagni has been at the forefront of his field, tailoring bespoke interiors for some of the most influential personalities, and commissioned to lend his expertise to prestigious international residential projects in New York, Miami, Paris and London, amongst other leading global cities. Salvagni continues to delight and surprise through his careful and considered juxtaposition of objects, materials and tones.
His London Atelier draws from a selection of now iconic pieces and places them in an intimate domestic environment allowing collectors and design aficionados to experience their craftsmanship first-hand. Using only the noblest materials — mahogany, rosewood, royal oak, laurel, onyx, bronze and gold — the works are realised by Rome’s rich collection of unparalleled artisans found in the Vatican City and amongst the cabinet makers of the Quirinal Palace. With a couturier’s approach to design, even the smallest details of the Atelier’s works are the result of an exacting attention to detail, from the patina selection through to custom door handles and hinges.
In this film, Salvagni offers an insight into the philosophy behind his works and how his Roman heritage has influenced his craftmanship.
Top Exhibitions: “Félix Vallotton: Painter of Disquiet”, Metropolitan Museum NYC October 29
From the MetMuseum.org website:
Witness to the radical aesthetics that gripped Paris in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Vallotton developed his own singular voice. Today we recognize him as a distinctive artist of his generation. His lampooning wit, subversive satire, and wry humor is apparent everywhere in his artistic production. Vallotton’s trenchant woodcuts of the 1890s solidified his reputation as a printmaker of the first rank while boldly messaging his left-wing politics.
Félix Vallotton: Painter of Disquiet will present pivotal moments in the artist’s career as a painter and printmaker. Painted portraits, luminous landscapes, and interior narratives that pulse with psychological tension join the exhibition from more than two 
dozen lenders. Swiss-born and Paris-educated, Vallotton (1865–1925) created lasting imagery of fin-de-siècle Paris.
For the first time ever, this exhibition will display Picasso’s legendary portrait of Gertrude Stein, from The Met collection, alongside Vallotton’s rendering of this formidable collector, which was painted a year later. Vallotton finished his portrait in a matter of weeks and gave it to Gertrude Stein.
To read more: https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2019/felix-vallotton-painter-disquiet
Destinations: Walk The Streets, Parks And Palaces Of Beethoven’s Vienna
From a Wall Street Journal online article:
Beethoven moved nearly 70 times while living in Vienna. Two of his former homes are open to the public, and many more are marked with commemorative plaques.
High above Vienna’s historic center, at the edge of the hilly Vienna Woods, the city’s Beethoven Museum, is housed in a onetime bakery complex dating back to the late Middle Ages, with an 18th-century annex containing a small apartment where Beethoven spent the summer of 1802. While living here, he composed his tragic “Tempest” piano sonata and began work on his 3rd Symphony, the “Eroica.”
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN is as Viennese as apple strudel. Though born in Bonn, Germany in 1770, he moved to the Austrian capital when he was in his early 20s, and then spent the rest of his 56 years changing the course of Western music from the city on the Danube. A quirky, cantankerous celebrity in his own time, he premiered his groundbreaking symphonies and concertos in Vienna’s grand palaces, escaped the summer heat in what are now its sleepy suburbs, and moved around between dozens of supposedly squalid apartments that sprawl across much of the city.
To read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/where-to-binge-on-beethoven-in-vienna-11568303745
Top New Short Films: “Maestro” By French Animation Collective Illogic Is “Remarkable”
Animated and Directed by: Illogic http://illogic.fr/portfolio/maestro/
Produced by: Bloom Pictures https://www.bloompictures.tv/portfolio/maestro/
For decades, Disney has been the de facto master of the animated animal orchestra — as seen in classics like Fantasia, The Little Mermaid, and The Lion King. However, this week’s Staff Pick Premiere, “Maestro,” from animation collective Illogic, sets out to change the tune. The film features a photo-realistic rendition of forest animals belting out songs from a Vincenzo Bellini war opera. And it’s remarkable.
Best known for their 2018 Oscar-nominated short “Garden Party,” which features impressive amphibian animation, Illogic expands their animal exploration with “Maestro” to include birds, squirrels, hedgehogs, and deer. As in their previous work, the collective continues to explore the question of what animals do when humans aren’t watching, and the animations continue to be surprising.
Exhibitions: Bertoldo di Giovanni – Renaissance of Sculpture in Medici Florence, Opens Sept. 18 At The Frick Collection NYC
This fall, The Frick Collection will present the first-ever exhibition on the Florentine sculptor Bertoldo di Giovanni (ca. 1440–1491), a renowned student of Donatello, a teacher of Michelangelo, and a great favorite of Lorenzo “il Magnifico” de’ Medici, his principal patron. More than twenty statues, reliefs, medals, and statuettes — constituting nearly his entire extant oeuvre — will be on view exclusively at the Frick, which houses the only sculptural figure by Bertoldo outside of Europe. The exhibition will
highlight the ingenuity of the artist’s designs across media, including bronze, wood, and terracotta, and provide the first chance to fully explore longstanding questions of attribution, function, groupings, and intended display. Bertoldo di Giovanni: The Renaissance of Sculpture in Medici Florence will bring into focus the sculptor’s unique position at the heart of the artistic and political landscape in fifteenth-century Italy.
Collectible Books: “Gold” By Sebastião Salgado Chronicles The Brazilian Gold Rush (Taschen)
From a Taschen.com online release:
“Salgado’s photographs project an immediacy that makes them vividly contemporary. We know that the mine at Serra Pelada is now closed, yet the intense drama of the gold rush leaps out of these images.”
For a decade, Serra Pelada evoked the long-promised El Dorado as the world’s largest open-air gold mine, employing
some 50,000 diggers in appalling conditions. Today, Brazil’s gold rush is merely the stuff of legend, kept alive by a few happy memories, many pained regrets—and Sebastião Salgado’s photographs. This signed edition gathers the complete black-and-white portfolio in impeccable, grand-scale, museum-quality reproductions.
To read more: https://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/photography/all/86908/facts.sebastio_salgado_gold.htm
Top Exhibitions: William Blake At Tate Britain (Sept. 11, 2019 to Feb. 2, 2020)
From a Tate Britain online description:
Although Blake was considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, he is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of the Romantic movement and as “Pre-Romantic”. A committed Christian who was hostile to the Church of England (indeed, to almost all forms of organised religion), Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American Revolutions.
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. What he called his prophetic works were said by 20th-century critic Northrop Frye to form “what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language”. His visual artistry led 21st-century critic Jonathan Jones to proclaim him “far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced”. In 2002, Blake was placed at number 38 in the BBC’s poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.
To read more: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/william-blake-39
World’s Top Exhibitions: “The Deep Listener” By Danish Artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Serpentine Galleries, London (2019)
Designed as an augmented reality and spatial audio work downloadable as an app for mobile devices, it is both a site specific public artwork and a digital archive of these species, using tools and platforms from a range of fields including video games, computer generated images and film. Inspired by ecological science-fiction and scientific research, Kudsk Steensen creates a form of ‘slow media’ that uses the technological to foster attention rather than distraction.
...a journey to both see and hear five of London’s species: London plane trees, bats, parakeets, azure blue damselflies and reedbeds.
Kudsk Steensen has collaborated with the field recordist and sound designer Matt McCorkle to represent five species as sound. The audio and visuals within the project are drawn directly from organic source material gathered from a period of embedded research within Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. These organic materials are then transformed through digital processes to be re-embedded within the same context.
Download brochure: https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/files/press-releases/the_deep_listener_tdl_a5_digital_v2_final.pdf
Website: https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/serpentine-augmented-architecture
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