NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF THE ARTS

Women from Tokyo & Paris | (top)

Exhibition, 7 July - 22 October 2006, van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam Netherlands

After Japan opened up in 1854, Europe became acquainted with Japanese art on a major scale. Japanese prints aroused particular interest at the Paris Expositions of 1867, 1878 and 1889. Dealers, collectors and critics introduced these prints to a wide audience. That was how the French art movement known as Les Nabis, founded in 1888, and their circle, including Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Edouard Vuillard, Paul Elie Ranson and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec learned of this art form.
Women from Tokyo & Paris reveals the influence of 19th-century Japanese prints and paintings by leading artists such as Eizan, Eisen and Kunisada, on paintings and especially lithographs by the Nabis and their circle. It is clear from the juxtaposed exhibits that Japanese influences were not limited to the familiar aspects of so-called Japonism, such as the two-dimensional fields, cropped compositions and colour contrasts: Les Nabis also drew inspiration from the themes employed by Japanese artists.
Besides paintings and prints, the exhibition also features objects such as kimonos, robes, toiletries and musical instruments, showing how women lived their everyday life. The show traces a woman’s day from early morning to late in the evening: dressing and putting on her make-up, her various daytime activities, and the bustle of nightlife.

Internationalism and the Arts Anglo-European Cultural Exchange at the Fin de Siècle| (top)

Conference, 3 - 5 July 2006, Magdalene College, Cambridge United Kingdom

This conference addresses two interrelated issues which are central to our understanding of European cultural and national identities, past and present: the nature and extent of artistic and intellectual exchange between Britain and Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century; and the rise of a (Eurocentric) internationalist cultural identity in an era of competing nationalisms. Flanked by the Franco-Prussian war (1870-71) and the Great War, the fin de siècle stands out as an epoch of rising European militarism. Themes of national consolidation, isolation and aggression have become key to any analysis of the period. What this conference seeks to explore is the concomitant drive toward an international political and cultural identity. Interdisciplinary panels will examine how artistic and intellectual exchange contributed to a sense of a common European, even world culture, and to a counter-current of political, internationalist optimism.

Discussions and topics are: The visual arts and their international infrastructures; cosmopolitan architecture and interior design; the international Arts and Crafts movement; international exchange in the performing arts; Anglo-German cultural relations; Anglo-Belgian cultural relations; international journals; cosmopolitan individuals.

Conference Programme

Diasporic Futures: Women, the Arts and Globalization | (top)

Conference, 3rd July 2006, Victoria and Albert Museum, London United Kingdom

This one day conference is designed to assess and evaluate the specific relationship between women, the arts and globalization on the articulation of diasporic and migrant identities, past, present and future.The conference seeks to test the limits of extant maps of globalization, contemporary art practices and migration by exploring how women artists and women's creative practices operate within the dominant patterns of the marketplace and how they map the world against the grain, developing alternative networks and new meanings. The ways in which women negotiate diasporas and migration and articulate their specific position as sexed subjects, challenges us to look again at women's practice and cultural agency in the context of global networks of exchange and their impact on the arts.

War and Sexuality in 20th Century Europe: CONIH International Conference | (top)

Conference, 28 June - 1st July 2006, University of Southern Denmark, Esbjerg Denmark

War forces changes in sexual norms and behaviour. The First World War resulted in a flourishing brothel industry, and the propaganda often carried more or less subtle sexual undertones. The world war also caused booming venereal infection rates in the armies. During all 20th century, conflicts in Europe authorities tried to control moral and to regulate sexual behaviour - but not always to restrain sexuality. In the spring of 1945, German women were exposed to the revenge of the Red Army, and thousands were raped. The women were reduced to war booty, and the perpetrators, the Soviet soldiers, were free to break peacetime morals. During the Bosnian War in the 1990's, organized mass rape reached another level as a deliberate instrument in the politics of ethnic cleansing. All this demonstrates to the extreme the close relations and interaction between war and sexuality and of the changing attitudes towards sex and sexuality during conflict.
The aim of this international conference is to focus on perceptions and attitudes towards sexuality as well as sexual behaviour during war in 20th century Europe, and will analyse the topic of war and sexuality from different angles - with the ambition to combine and confront broad reflections with concrete analyses.
The conference is organised with two major themes:
1) Development and changes in perceptions of and attitudes towards sexuality during war
2) Sexual violence and "Horizontal collaboration" during and after conflicts and occupations

Conference Programme

Single Women in History: 1000 -2000 | (top)

Conference, 23 - 24 June 2006 University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom

The 12th annual conference of the West of England and South Wales Women’s History Network will focus on women and their social status as single. Speakers will discuss different categories of female singleness including spinsters, lone mothers, widows and divorcees and discuss conceptual problems in defining marital status within the law and in other social and cultural contexts. Other papers will discuss single women’s involvement in areas such as politics, work, religion, sexuality, art, film, literature, family, friendships, partnerships and networks.
Plenary speakers are Amy Froide, University of Maryland-Baltimore County, and Katherine Holden, University of the West of England. For the full programme please consult:

Conference Programme

Capitalism and / or Patriarchy? Gender in post-Soviet space (top)

Conference, 22 - 24 June 2006 Centre for Gender Studies, European Humanities University International, Vilnius, Lithuania

The Centre for Gender Studies at European Humanities University International holdes a conference on “Capitalism and/or Patriarchy?”, aimed at exploring issues of gender in the post-Soviet region. The demise of state socialism, some scholars maintain, resulted in the reconfiguration of gender relations and the rise of a systemic privilege of men over women in countries in transition. Other theorists argue that the most important event of the late 20th century was the disintegration of the Soviet Union and intensive nation-building in new independent states. Still others are focused on economic inequality and class stratification as the formative processes of post-communism. Some theories interpret the emergence of post-Soviet “masculine privilege” as patriarchal renaissance. According to another point of view, men and women are equally marginalized by capitalism: it is class, not gender, that matters. There is also a tradition of rethinking capitalism as just a form (or a reincarnation) of patriarchy. Conference organizers are hoping for an interdisciplinary academic debate of the interception of (post-Soviet) capitalism and patriarchy within the following topical areas:

1. Gender and post-Soviet social stratification: Class and gender stratification in post-Soviet societies. The new rich and the new poor. Unpaid women’s work and global capitalism. Men at the margins of "new economy". Market and the welfare state.
2. Gender and post-Soviet nations: The ultimate connection between constructions of and ideas about gender relations and post-Soviet nation-building. The fraternity of the nation and construction of patriotic manhood. Gender and citizenship. Nationalism and motherhood. Women, the invention of tradition, and cultural reproduction of the nation. Sexuality, demography, and nationalism. Global religions, gender and nation-building.
3. Gender and social movements/collective actions: Gender and the problem of a political subject. Whom do women in political parties and decision- making bodies represent? “Women’s issues” as a political issue.
4. Women’s movement and the reasons for its weakness: structural or cultural? Is a common ideology for postcommunist women’s groups possible?
5. Rethinking gender in postcommunism: post-Soviet and Western scholarship.
6. Capitalism, lifestyles and cultural practices: Anthropological dimension of transition.
7. Transformation of daily life: class and gender differences in lifestyles. Post-Soviet consumption practices. Sexuality as a commodity. Gender, mass media and popular culture.

John Constable: The six-foot Landscapes | (top)

1st June – 28th August 2006 Tate Britain London, United Kingdom

This major event offers the rare opportunity to see John Constable's six-foot canvases together. The 'six-footers' are among the best-known images in British art and comprise the famous series of views on the river Stour, which includes The Hay Wain 1820–1, as well as more expressive later works such as Hadleigh Castle 1829 and Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows 1831. These paintings lie at the very heart of Constable's achievement and not even in the artist's lifetime were they ever brought together.
Highlights will include the bringing together of the six river Stour pictures for the first time, allowing the visitor to appreciate how, as the series progresses, Constable succeeds in developing a single thematic concept – the life of the Suffolk river he had known since boyhood – and gradually invests it with a greater sense of drama, heroic action and narrative weight.

Tate Britain John Constable Exhibition

Hans Holbein der Jüngere: Die Basler Jahre 1515 bis 1532 | (top)

31. März 2006 - 01. Juli 2006 Kunstmuseum Basel, Schweiz

Hans Holbein gehört zu den bedeutendsten Künstlern des frühen 16. Jahrhunderts. Er steht gleichrangig neben Albrecht Dürer, Hans Baldung Grien und Matthias Grünewald. Von Augsburg nach Basel gekommen, schuf er hier bedeutende religiöse Altarbilder und Porträts. Bald schon zog es ihn nach Frankreich, dann nach London, wo er versuchte, als Hofmaler Fuss zu fassen; 1535 wurde er Hofmaler Heinrichs VIII.
Im Basler Kunstmuseum besteht die einzigartige Möglichkeit, die sonst verstreuten Werke nebeneinander zu sehen, sie unmittelbar zu vergleichen und in ihren Besonderheiten neu wahrzunehmen. Mit rund vierzig Gemälden, über einhundert Zeichnungen und zahlreichen druckgraphischen Werken wird das einzigartige Oeuvre des Künstlers aus seiner Basler Schaffenszeit vor Augen geführt. Zu den hochkarätigen Leihgaben gehören die berühmte „Darmstädter Madonna“, die „Solothurner Madonna“ und der „Oberried-Altar“. Hinzu kommen Bildnisse aus dem ersten Englandaufenthalt wie das der Anne Lovell aus der National Gallery London und des Thomas Godsalve mit seinem Sohn John aus der Gemäldegalerie Dresden. Ende September 2006 bis Januar 2007 wird Tate Britain London die in England entstandenen Werke ausstellen.

La bottega di Tiziano | (top)

Centro Studi Tiziano e Cadore, Convengo internazionale a Pieve di Cadore (BL), 6 - 7 aprile 2006

Giornate di studio: confronto tra studiosi e presentazione dei risultati della ricerca in corso.
Alcuni argumenti del convegno: Paul Joannides (University of Cambridge) Titian and the Extract; Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo (Università di Verona) La Bottega di Tziiano: sistema solare e buco nero; Sylvia Ferino-Pagden (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) Indagini tecniche sui dipinti di Vienna e qualche appunto sulla collaborazione della bottega; Andrew John Martin (Monaco di Baviera) Titian and his workshop in Germany: Questions and proposals, with focus on the Portarit of Charles V. seated; Lionello Puppi (Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia) Cristo portacroce: anatomia di un dipinto; Augusto Gentili (Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia) Ancora sull’Allegoria della Prudenza;  Matteo Mancini (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) Tiziano e la bottega in Spagna: catalogo, committenti, strategie.

Samizdat and underground culture in the Soviet block countries | (top)

"The Cold War Project at the University of Pennsylvania" Conference April 6 - 7, 2006 Philadelphia

This is the first scholarly gathering in the United States dedicated to the specific practice of underground anti-establishment literature and artistic activities that flourished from the mid-1950s through the 1980s. The conference aims to assemble experts in the field from both the US and abroad to offer a comparative study of the variety of literary and artistic practices in the Eastern Block countries, and to offer a critical approach towards their national specificity and formative socio-political factors.

Human Rights Nights | (top)

International Filmfestival Bologna Bologna March 17 - 30, Forlì April 1-5, 2006

The Human Rights Nights Film Festival is an international film festival dedicated to human rights issues. It provides a forum for filmmakers who use their cameras as instruments of "visual resistance" against an unjust world. Having focused on the denunciation of human rights abuses for the first five years of the festival, this edition builds upon past themes and examines the broader concepts of respect and consideration for human dignity. Through films, roundtables and art exhibitions, it will seek to promote a vision of the world that is ethical and oriented towards peace by investigating the issues that threaten our sense of humanity.
The theme of this year is Respect. Besides a general overview on the most recent cinema productions, the films, conferences and external events are centered around the following themes: Latin America, a New Model of Development; Terrorism of War and Structure of Peace; AgriCulture vs. AgroBusiness; Community and Human Rights; Human Trafficking.

Italian cinema during the 1960s | (top)

"The launch into new dimensions" International Conference Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany 6.3. – 8.3.2006

The international conference hold at Mainz from 6.3. untill 8.3.2006 is dedicated to the contribution of Italian cinema to the changes in European cinema around 1960. It is an attempt to fill a huge research void as German film and media studies have hardly payed any attention to this period of Italian film and its still uncalculable significance for the history of film aesthetics and the emerging of auteurfilm.

The central focus untill was and is on the French Nouvelle Vague and on the British Free Cinema. And yet, the "Renaissance" of Italian cinema of that decade has the features of a launch into new dimensions. Many productions, parts of oeuvres and genres have the same significance like Italy's Neorealismo after the war. It is not to be forgotten that also the films of the 1960s had a similar international influence.

The subject of the conference are first of all the films of the 1960s of the in-between-generation of Italian filmmakers from after Neorealismo as such the works of o Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini, to add are o the new works of the "Neorealists" of the first hour like Luchino Visconti and Roberto Rossellini. Further the films of younger directors also grouped under the term "Second Neo-realism" like Francesco Rosi, Elio Petri, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Ermanno Olmi, Marco Ferreri, the Taviani Brothers, Lina Wertmuller, Ettore Scola as well as Bernardo Bertolucci or Marco Bellocchio or rather directors that have started their career at the beginning of the 1960s. o but also the works which have continued the tradition of the Italian comedy and other genres (Pietro Germi, Dino Risi) o or a new path like the Italowestern.

The conference aims to capture a) the aesthetic innovations of the Italiain cinema of the 1960s after the stagnation fo the 1950s and b) to trace their influence in the Italian as well as international film landscape (untill today). This way, the visual film memory, especially of the German film studies, is to be recovered. Also, c) the contextual covering of previous film historic periods, especially Neorealismo, will be present as well as d) general historic background on the Italian economic miracle, the speedy industrialisation, the political coalitions and the new modility of the Italian culture and ideology. The conference is organised by the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz / Department Film Studies (Thomas Koebner) and the University of Bremen / Cultural Studeis and Arts (Irmbert Schenk).

 

Gender, politics, and culture in Europe and beyond | (top)

workshop at the University of North Carolina "Gender, war, and nation in 20th century Europe" February 3rd, 2006

At the Center for European Studies, the Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies, the Curricula in Women's Studies and Peace, War,and Defense, and the Dept. of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill the second event of a new workshop series entitled,"Gender, Politics, and Culture in Europe and Beyond," is to be held at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The theme of this semester's workshop will be "Gender, War, and Nation in 20th Century Europe."

"Engendering a Republic: Women and Men in Austria after the Great War,"
"Identity on Trial: Slander Trials in Northern Transylvania during World War II,"
"Babies and Bombs: Gender and Experience of 'Total' War, 1914-1945"

The aims of this workshop series are to promote gender history in studies of Eastern and Western Europe, to foster a European history reflecting the borders of the new Europe and to think beyond them, and to intensify comparative and transnational research that systematically includes the gender dimension.

Ivan Milev and the journal Vezni | by Rada Bieberstein (top)

modern art in Bulgaria during the 1920s and contemporary art criticism

The academic study on Ivan Milev and the art-journal "Vezni" (1919 - 1922) reflects on the developments of modern painting in Bulgaria from the beginning of the 20th century and the influence European Modernism had on Bulgarian art.

The cultural context of Bulgaria during the 1920s, the art theory and art criticism of the avant-garde journal "Vezni" and the work of Ivan Milev are discussed. The publication is enriched with an extensive bibliography covering Eastern and Western European research, a number of reproductions of Ivan Milev's works, the complete work-catalogue of the paniter's oeuvre and an appendix making available detailed historical data, biographical details, summaries in English and German from late Bulgarian research on the topic and translations in German of art historical writtings from critics of the time.

The elaborated debate on Modernism questions the artistic relationships and channels of exchange between Bulgaria and the Western states at the time. A close look is taken at the European art movements and styles to which Bulgarian artists responded. The critically-comparative approach of the investigation considers historical, political, social and psychological factors in order to further a comprehensive discussion on Bulgarian modern art, taking in account a new understanding of European Modernism, its influences and developments.