As the, then, still plain Walter Scott, so nearly opined in 1806: "November's sky is chill and drear, November's leaf is red and sear: Late, gazing down the steepy linn That hems our little garden in, I thought, what an excellent month to visit an architecture or design exhibition."1 Our five retreats from the chill and drear of November 2024 can be found in Chemnitz, Brussels, Winterthur, Krefeld and New York....... "Reform of Life" at the Kunstsammlungen am Theaterplatz, Chemnitz,
read more"In his work the designer seeks to find the constancy of the good", wrote Karl Clauss Dietel in 1973, a lightly articulated yet not so straightforward task for, as he continues, not only is the assessment of such dependent on a myriad varying factors, but "the search for what defines design, what it grows from, where it comes from and where it wants to go, takes on new dimensions against the background of our cultural upheaval".1 With the exhibition Simson, Diamant, Erika. Formgestaltung von
read more"I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it is always June", ponders Anne Shirley in Lucy Maud Montgomery's 1915 novel Anne of the Island. "You'd get tired of it", sighs her adoptive mother Marilla Cuthbert by way of reply. "I daresay", responds Anne, "but just now I feel that it would take me a long time to get tired of it..." Thoughts we very much concur with as we survey and contemplate the varied profusion of new architecture and design exhibitions sprouting forth in June
read moreThat joining the Women's Department weaving workshop was for many a female Bauhäusler not so much an active wish as the response to a take-it-or-leave-it proposition, shouldn't be confused with the workshop producing work of an involuntary, unloving, uncaring nature, of it playing second fiddle to the rest of the institution. Far from it. The quality and relevance of the work created in the Bauhaus weaving workshop being in many regards attested by the fact it was one of the more productive and
read moreUntil February 22nd the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz is presenting the exhibition Andy Warhol: Death and Disaster, according to the organisers "the first European museum exhibition devoted exclusively to this topic" Correct. The first European museum exhibition. But not the first European exhibition devoted exclusively to this topic. On January 13th 1964 Andy Warhol's first solo exhibition in Europe opened at Galerie Ileana Sonnabend in Paris. Although officially titled "Warhol", the exhibition
read moreSuch was the quality of the new products we saw during our autumn tour they kept us going well into November; indeed it wasn't until a cold dank Friday in Chemnitz ahead of the opening of the exhibition Andy Warhol – Death and Disaster at the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, that we even realised it was November.
read moreMuch as Andy Warhol predicated we'd all be famous for 15 minutes, he also understood we'd all be dead forever. And that he dealt with the inevitably of death in all its poetic, brutal and unjust facets in works of art every bit as lively, critical and complex as those he created to deal with the vagaries of celebrity, trash culture and consumerism can currently be experienced in the exhibition "Andy Warhol – Death and Disaster" at the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz. Much like displaying a
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