Category: arts and crafts

  • Funkelnde Schönheit

    Funkelnde Schönheit

    Glanzstücke im MAK (Scroll down for the English text.) Ich muss gleich zu Beginn etwas gestehen: Schmuck gehört nicht unbedingt zu meinen Spezialgebieten. Natürlich kann ich schönen Dingen durchaus etwas abgewinnen, aber ich gehöre nicht zu jenen Menschen, die sich mit berühmten Schmuckhäusern, historischen Kollektionen oder besonderen Schmucksammlungen auskennen. Bevor ich die Ausstellung Glanzstücke. Van…

  • Individual nature – Kiki Smith

    Individual nature – Kiki Smith

    Before it´s too late (just one more week), I absolutely had to go see the exhibition of Kiki Smith´s large size canvases and other works at the Lower Belvedere museum.  The Belvedere is showing about sixty works of this American artist´s multi-facetted oevre in the exhibition Processions , including sculptures, large tapestries, and objects and…

  • Japanesery

    Japanesery

    Before 1854 trade with Japan was confined to a Dutch monopoly and Japanese goods imported into Europe were for the most part confined to porcelain and lacquer ware. But when the 200-year-old Japanese foreign policy of Seclusion ended and trade between Japan and the West opened up, a sort of collection craze of Japanese art…

  • Celebrating life – and death – at Semperdepot

    Celebrating life – and death – at Semperdepot

    It hard not to be sad when thinking about the passing of loved ones, but the Mexicans make a pretty good job of it.  The Day of the Dead, Día de Muertos, is a celebration of life and death.  On All Soul´s Day, when central Europeans somberly visit their dead at graveyards, putting candles and…

  • Abstracting nature – variations on a photographic theme

    Abstracting nature – variations on a photographic theme

    Something a little different today.  Last Saturday, in glaring sunshine, I participated in a thematic photo walk along the Donaukanal near Kunsthaus Wien – Museum Hundertwasser.  From time to time the museum offers photo walks based on themes in their current exhibitions.  “Some Plant Volatiles” by Hamburg-based photographer Jochen Lempert provided the foundation for Saturday´s…

  • Vienna in gold – A Jane´s walk

    Vienna in gold – A Jane´s walk

    Who´s Jane? I´ve been asked this.  So here is a bit of background on the Jane´s Walk Vienna 2018 festival.  These walks are named for Jane Jacobs, who was an American-Canadian journalist, writer, and activist who had great influence on American urban studies, sociology, and how people thought about urban development in the 1950s and…