David Bowie is... in Victoria and Albert!

"David Bowie is" is the title of the new exhibition presented in Victoria and Albert Museum in London. It opened on March 23rd, and will take place till August 11th.
It so happens, that the new David Bowie album, "The Next Day" has just had its premiere on March 11th. It is his first album in a decade and  was promoted by a wonderful clip starring Tilda Swinton, which made everyone talk about it, that's how stylish they both are.
Victoria and Albert Museum is the best possible spot to show Bowie, he is a musician, but also an actor and style-icon, always being ahead of everyone else.
As the museum states in their exhibition statement, the exhibition is the first international retrospective of Bowie's career, and includes plenty of his handwritten lyrics, costumes, fashion, photography, videos and set designs. Even his instruments! Yes, David Bowie really is...

Roy Lichtenstein in Tate Modern

Good things come to those who wait - and Lichtenstein comes in glory to Tate Modern in London, in a great retrospective. I will see it myself very soon, but since it will be there only for a very limited period of time, it is really worth reminding all of this great opportunity to catch a glimpse of this wonderful pop artist in Tate Modern. 

The exhibition called simply "Lichtenstein: A Retrospective" (details here) can bee seen from February 21st till May 27 th 2013, and the entrance is L14 (L12 concessions). 

The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize

One of my favorite galleries in London, the National Portrait Gallery is the proud home of some of the most exquisite examples of the art of portrait. Every year it holds countless wonderful exhibitions. I like BP Portrait Award perhaps even more, because of the extraordinary use of paints and brushes by those masterful artists, but nevertheless, the level of photographs in the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize makes you want to see more and more and more. Below are a few examples of this year's rich exhibition, that takes place only until February 17th, 2013, so get there at once!
For more information: The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize.

Eduardo Kac waters plants with his blood

Someone told me during a lecture on technophobias and cyborgs that there is an artist or, should I call him, bio-engineer, who makes experiments on living things, which he then calls art. Well, I wouldn't be so sure about it, but since I'm very open-minded about art, there must be something to it. This artist is namely Eduardo Kac, an American contemporary artist, who has been experimenting since the 1990. For example, one of his projects included himself having implanted a microchip inside his own body (he was then one of the first people to do such a thing). One of his most famous works was entitled "Alba", which was a rabbit. Kac implanted a green fluorescent protein inside the rabbit, a specific gene from a jellyfish, which made the rabbit green-fluorescent (creepy!). No one knows if the rabbit is still alive though.

"Warsaw under Construction" Exhibition

"Warsaw under Construction: City for Sale" is an exhibition entirely devoted to advertising in Warsaw. Outdoor advertising, to be precise. People from other countries might not be aware of that, but outdoor advertising is actually a huge problem in the city. It deprives us from nice views, it disfigures and deforms the buildings, is responsible for utter lack of atmosphere to the otherwise beautiful capital city. Personally, I can understand movie or theatre posters around, but huge billboards with clothes, cars, banks make me really nervous, to say the least. Several movements have acted against it, and the exhibition is a part of the social response to the politics of aesthetics of the city. An important voice of the urban-dwellers. Too bad "Warsaw under Construction" ends on December 9th 2012 already...
SAY NO TO OUTDOOR!!!
Official link.

British hoaxes that fooled the public

British newspaper The Telegraph has just recently published a list of curious cases that caused confusion among the public. Lots of people were fooled to believe in impossible stories of fairies, false identities, giving birth to rabbits and so on. That only shows the naivete of some, but naivete based on actual news that appeared in newspapers. True magic of the press - and most of the cases were revealed even if there still was no TV, not to mention Internet! Hoaxes, that's what the Telegraph calls such incidents. And some of them are really curious. Some other include famous people. Here is my subjective selection of cases, and for the whole story go to the official page of The Telegraph, who knows, you might find something more to it.

Divine Marilyn's photos on auction in Warsaw

Just two days ago, on November 7th, 2012 a very unique event on a grand scale of things took place in Warsaw's one of the auction houses (Desa Unicum). A set of 250 photographs taken by Milton Greene went on auction, and on the majority of the photos, there was Marilyn Monroe. Such a treat! The auction was possible only due to a huge hoax from the 1990s, but nevertheless the interest was huge! The original prices ranged from 500 PLN (around 130 euro) to as much as a few thousand, but the most expensive photograph turned out to be the one in which Marilyn wears a too-tight ballerina dress (60.000 PLN, around  15.000 euro). On the photographs there was not only Marilyn, but also Marlene Dietrich, Gene Kelly, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, and many more. Most of them were taken in early 1950s, when Marilyn was at her very very best.

A Pole damages Rothko's masterpiece

Just today it has been confirmed that a Polish "artist" Wlodzimierz Umaniec (that's what he calls himself), aged 26, was the one who damaged Mark Rothko's mural "Black on Maroon" from 1958, that can be appreciated in London's Tate Modern. That is like the saddest news of the week, if not a year, because now it seems that the Polish go to galleries to damage things.
However, Umaniec (calling himself an inventor of 'yellowism' whatever that is) claims to have done Rothko a favour, by "increasing the value of the piece." I don't want to live on this planet anymore...
Ps. the information can be found on some web portals under a tag "Poles in the UK"... Now the whole nation on the Isles is represented by a delusional megalomaniac pseudo-artist...
Ps.2. Someone dug deep enough to notice that Vladimir Umanets is an anagram of "I'm true vandalism," but for an "artist" that's not original at all, vide Tom Marvolo Riddle - I am Lord Voldemort.

 

Millais and his Ophelia

One of my absolute favorites when it come to British art, oh, why, art in general. The Pre-Raphaelites, as are commonly known today, were a group of English artists: painters, writers, critics, established by John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. They wanted to reform art and go back to a refreshed Classical poses and elegance in style. They looked up to the compositions of Raphael, hence the name. Ophelia that can be seen in London's Tate Britain is one of the most exquisite examples of the movement. Why mention her now?

Diane Arbus and Dennis Hopper

Diane Arbus, a great American photographer and writer, took her pictures mostly in black and white, and usually her subjects were people different from "normal." She liked watching dwarfs, transgender people, nudists in various locations, and so her photos are extremely interesting not only from a historical or cultural perspective. The exhibition of her most famous works has been collected and shown in Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin, from June, until the end of September 2012. A magnificent set!

But it also seems that at Martin Gropius Bau they already have another great event coming, since on September 20th they launch "Dennis Hopper: The Lost Album," "a spectacular portfolio of over four hundred vintage photographs taken by Dennis Hopper (1936-2010) in the 1960s."
This sounds like a treat! It will be open until the end of December 2012.

       

 

     Diane Arbus in Martin Gropius Bau                            Dennis Hopper in Martin Gropius Bau