What's on at Europe's Museums
October 4, 2004
From stockbroker to artist
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
The Thyssen Museum Spain is currently hosting one of Europe's major art exhibitions this season: Gauguin and the Origins of Symbolism traces the career of the former stockbroker from Paris who was widely acknowledged as the leader of the Symbolist movement that paved the way for 20th century art. The show features 186 works, paintings and sculptures, most by Gauguin but many by those who taught him how to paint, such as Camille Pissarro, Paul Cezanne and Edgar Degas; those who worked alongside him, like Vincent Van Gogh and Emile Bernard; and those who embraced him as their guru, such as Maurice Denis, Edouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard. The show focuses on the period when Gauguin and other artists of his time began to move away from impressionism and develop a new visual language, including the period he spent in Tahiti, when he produced what many believe to be his best, and certainly his best-known work.
Gauguin and the Origins of Symbolism is open daily except Monday from Sept. 28 to Jan. 9, 2005 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Everyday life across time zones
Tate Modern, London
Presenting works by leading contemporary artists working with film and video, this groundbreaking exhibition is the first at Tate Modern devoted to the moving image. It takes a look at contemporary works that demonstrate that different time zones have very different stories to tell. Works included reflect the different "times" of the localities represented, including Albania, Turkey, Mexico, and China, and frequently allude to the contradictory effects of commercial "progress." Featured artists come from several countries and include Francis Alÿs, Fikret Atay, Yael Bartana, Yang Fudong, Fiona Tan, Jeroen de Rijke and Willem de Rooij, Anri Sala, Bojan Sarcevic and Wolfgang Staehle. Their naturalistic representation of events highlights fascinating and significant details often overlooked in the highly-edited, accelerated rendering of time which has become the norm in our commercial, MTV-obsessed culture.
Time Zones: Recent Film and Video runs from Oct. 6 – Jan. 2, 2005, and is open from Sunday to Thursday from, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
The fascination of German Expressionists
Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag
A selection of German Expressionist drawings, water colours and prints are set to go on display at the Gemeentemuseum, including works by artists such as Paul Klee, Erich Heckel, Ernst-Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Franz Marc, Vasily Kandinsky, Käthe Kollwitz, Max Pechstein and Paula Modersohn-Becker. As an artistic group, the Expressionists used color and lines to represent their experience of reality, as filtered through their own perceptions and emotions. Working in the turbulent decades around the World War I, they produced many socially and politically engaged works, but also tackled other subjects, such as man in urban environments, biblical figures, female nudes, animals frolicking in fairy-tale landscapes, and portraits of themselves and other people. Many of the over 200 prints and drawings in the Gemeentemuseum's collection were acquired in the period between the two world wars -- a time when many other Dutch museums were undecided about the lasting value of the genre.
German Expressionists runs from Oct. 9, 2004 to Jan. 31, 2005
An Englishman in Italy
Museo Correr, Venice
Italians are standing in line to see an exhibition that explores William Turner's relationship with Venice, a city with a strong appeal for generations of artists - not only on account of its dramatic setting, but also its literary and historical associations. It's no wonder the artist famous for his luminous depictions of light on water was drawn to the Italian city. He painted it as a magical place, suspended in time. The show spans the 20 years between Turner's first visit to Venice in 1819 and his last in 1840 and brings together around 55 oil paintings and over 100 watercolors as well as prints, maps and Turner's Venice sketchbooks. Some of the watercolors are displayed for the first time, including several of the romantic and mysterious studies Turner painted of Venice by moonlight. Among other highlights is the chance to see pairs of pictures that were conceived as pendants, but which have been separated since they were sold shortly after being completed.
Turner and Venice runs through Jan. 23, 2005 and is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
From the Nile to Switzerland
Museé Dauphinois, Grenoble
The Swiss museum is currently home to an exhibition devoted to the discovery in 1904 by Georges Legrain of a cache in the temple of Amon Re in Karnak. A selection of items belonging to this treasure, now part of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, is on show for the first time in Europe at the Treasures of Egypt exhibition devoted to the Karnak Cachette.
Tresors d'Egypte: La Cachette de Karnak runs through Jan. 3, 2005 and is open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.