http://www.museenbasel.ch/ Sat, 31 Jul 2010 01:01:51 +0200 museenbasel rss en http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5190 Museum der Kulturen Basel
> 03.2011

At present only the permanent exhibition on the Basel Carnival is open to the public. We also have a special information room updating the visitor on the ongoing extension work at the Museum der Kulturen. The other permanent exhibitions, where usually objects from our African, American, European, Southeast Asian and Oceania collections are shown, have been cleared and remain closed during the period of extension work. When the newly designed and extended Museum der Kulturen reopens in 2011, the visitor will again be able to encounter and admire the exhibits from our marvellous collections.]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5190 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=3592 Museum der Kulturen Basel
30.08.2008 – 10.2010

The Museum der Kulturen is being extended. The building project by Herzog & de Meuron includes a new, additional exhibition room, a new entrance hall downstairs and the redevelopment of the museum courtyard. The new exhibition room on the top floor will complement the three existing levels of the main building at the Museum der Kulturen. With its irregular folds the new rooftop fits well into the existing landscape of medieval Basel, creating, at the same time, a new hallmark in the heart of the city. From 2011 on, the museum will have a large, continuous exhibition area at its disposal, offering spectacular views in every sense of the term. An information room on the extension project shows building plans, visualizations and models as well as up-dated and current photographs of the building site (Entrance: Augustinergasse 8, second floor).]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Sat, 30 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=3592 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=4669 Jüdisches Museum der Schweiz
16.03.2009 – 31.12.2010

The exhibition Strange Objects stepping out of line takes you on a journey of the world of Jewish curiosities. Objects from everyday-life, religious ceremonies and history have been chosen as they differ in their material, shape or intended use from the ordinary items in the collection.]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=4669 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=473 Augusta Raurica, Augst
15.04.2009 – 12.2014

Alle sind sich einig: Die Mauerreste im kleinen Schutzbau unterhalb der bestehenden Kirche St. Gallus in Kaiseraugst gehören zu einer der frühesten christlichen Anlagen der Nordwestschweiz. Der in den 1960er-Jahren ausgegrabene Komplex wurde zunächst für die Amtskirche des (in Schriftquellen für die Jahre um 340 n. Chr. bezeugten) Bischofs Justinian gehalten, doch konnte diese Interpretation durch das neuste Forschungsprojekt von Guido Faccani widerlegt werden: Die Kirche scheint erst im späteren 4. Jahrhundert erbaut worden zu sein und das vermeintliche Taufbecken hatte keine liturgische Funktion, gehörte also nicht zu einem Baptisterium, sondern war eher Teil der Badeanlage der bischöflichen Residenz. Die neuen Erkenntnisse mindern die Bedeutung der Fundstätte jedoch in keiner Weise. Im Vordergrund der Ausstellung „Frühe Christen“ im Schutzhaus stehen einige christliche Grabsteine aus dem Kastellfriedhof sowie mit christlichen Symbolen geschmückte Gegenstände des 4. bis 7. Jahrhunderts. Die Mauerreste im Schutzhaus bilden dabei – faktisch und im übertragenen Sinne – den Rahmen der Präsentation: am einen Ende die Kastellmauer, Symbol römischer Macht, am anderen Ende die Mauer der ersten Kirche, Zeichen des Aufstiegs des Christentums. Besuchen Sie die frühe Kirche in Kaiseraugst und lassen Sie sich in die Zeit nach den Römern versetzen. In jene Jahrhunderte, in welchen die römischen, germanischen und christlichen Wurzeln zu unserer europäischen Gesellschaft zusammenwuchsen.]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=473 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=6281 Naturhistorisches Museum Basel
12.02. – 29.08.2010

Der Gesteinsuntergrund der Umgebung von Basel ist vor allem für seinen Fossilreichtum bekannt; weniger ergiebig ist der Boden für Mineralien- und Kristall-Funde. Dennoch ist die Region Basel weitaus mineralienreicher als man allgemein annehmen würde. In einer kleinen Sonderausstellung geht das Naturhistorische Museum Basel den Fragen nach, welches die wichtigsten und schönsten Mineralien in Basels Umgebung sind, wo man sie findet und welche Mineralien wirtschaftlich genutzt werden.]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=6281 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=6899 Museum Tinguely
13.03. – 22.08.2010

The donation made by Professor Roland Bieber in memory of his wife, Karola Mertz-Bieber, who died in 2007, presents a selection of letter-drawings documenting a quarter-century friendship with the artist. Karola Mertz-Bieber shared Jean Tinguely's curiosity, his fantasy, his gusto for life, but also his awareness of limits and of precipices.]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Sat, 13 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=6899 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5834 Anatomisches Museum der Universität Basel
14.03. – 08.08.2010

How does our head look inside? What happens when we see, hear, think, feel or act?]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Sun, 14 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5834 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5818 Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein
20.03. – 19.09.2010

It is in the nature of human beings to seek the simplest solution. In fact, the idealism of “edle Einfalt” (noble simplicity) and “stille Größe” (quiet grandeur) pre-dates classicism, and the “less is more” principle of modern design has remained a guiding notion through the postmodernist era up to the present. The exhibition “The Essence of things” illuminates the influences and motifs of a principle whose impact on design transcends time and place. The diversity of this phenomenon is documented in such examples as the legendary Thonet chair No. 14, furniture and product design by Gerrit Rietveld, Le Corbusier, Charles and Ray Eames, Max Bill, Dieter Rams, Shiro Kuramata and Jasper Morrison up to the iPod and the latest carbon fibre chair from Shigeru Ban. In the exhibition, these objects will be complemented by photos from the fields of architecture, fashion and art. Despite all the rationalisation of method and material, concentration on functional essentials and abstraction of shape up to the very disappearance of things, the principle of simplicity demonstrates its great complexity.]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5818 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5166 Augusta Raurica, Augst
25.03.2010 – 03.2012

Town planning on the drawing board is no modern invention. Whole towns were planned at a desk-top already in Roman times. Augusta Raurica is a typical example of this. Finds displayed around a three-dimensional model illustrate the history of the town from it’s foundation in 44 B.C. until around 600 A.D.]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5166 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=6447 Antikenmuseum Basel und Sammlung Ludwig
26.03. – 15.08.2010

Wie wurde in der Antike geflirtet? Wie haben die Götter mit den Menschen kommuniziert? Und wie funktionierte Politpropaganda bei den Römern? Diese und weitere Fragen beantwortet eine kleine aber feine Ausstellung im Antikenmuseum.]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=6447 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5819 Puppenhausmuseum
17.04. – 03.10.2010

A special exhibition about bridal fashion, customs and traditions associated with weddings. The exhibition presents over 350 objects associated with the most beautiful day in one’s life: enchanting wedding dresses with veils, wonderful wedding shoes, nostalgic bridal bouquets, romantic gloves and bridal wreaths of myrtle with wax flowers and buds. Wedding crowns, bridal crown stands under glass domes, old original photographs and many other items of wedding memorabilia dating from around 1810 to 1960 are on display, too. Exclusive wedding dresses and selected accessories act as contemporary witnesses to customs and traditions, some of which have endured over many centuries up to the present day. Films of bridal fashion shows from bygone decades help visitors to get into the right mood for the special exhibition. Also included are historic moving pictures of royal weddings from all around the world with the original English soundtrack or a German translation. The wedding ceremonies shown include those of Prince Rainier III of Monaco and Grace Patricia Kelly, the Shah of Persia and Farah Diba, as well as Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer. A particular attraction is a 30 cm wide strip from the roll of fabric used to make the bridal veil of Diana, Princess of Wales.]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Sat, 17 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5819 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5549 Kunstmuseum Basel
18.04. – 08.08.2010

In a major survey, the Kunstmuseum Basel will exhibit installations, sculptures, photographs, paintings, and drawings by the Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco, born in 1962. He is considered one of the most important artists of the present, and divides his time between New York, Paris, and Mexico City. His peripatetic lifestyle, and the principle of constant motion characteristic of his generation, is reflected in many ways in his work. This ranges in scope from a photographically recorded trace of breath on a piano, to a Citroën DS that has been cut apart lengthwise and put together again as a one-seater. The exhibition will previously be on view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and will subsequently travel to the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the Tate Modern, London.]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Fri, 16 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5549 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5638 Jüdisches Museum der Schweiz
21.04. – 03.10.2010

Theodor Herzl would have celebrated his 150th birthday on 2 May 2010. The anniversary is a fitting occasion to spotlight Theodor Herzl, especially his importance to Zionism and the foundation of the State of Israel. The main focus of the exhibition is the famous portrait photograph of Herzl on a balcony of the Drei Könige Hotel. Other museum artefacts offer insight into Zionism and the Zionist Congresses held in Basel.]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5638 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5742 Museum am Burghof, Lörrach
01.05. – 01.08.2010

The exhibition illustrates the versatility of Johann Peter Hebel’s creative output in various spheres of influence – in his own epoch and down to the present day. Interactive displays offer young and old a chance to get to grips with these themes.]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Sat, 01 May 2010 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5742 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5781 Spielzeugmuseum, Dorf- und Rebbaumuseum Riehen
05.05. – 22.08.2010

The famous cat with its black boots isn’t the only one to come to pay visit to the museum.]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Mon, 03 May 2010 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5781 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5798 Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel
09.05. – 05.09.2010

The Fondation Beyeler plans a large retrospective to mark the fiftieth birthday of the American painter and draftsman Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988). Originating from the New York underground, the artist had become world-famous for his expressive paintings by the early age of twenty. His friendships with Madonna, Andy Warhol and Keith Haring have become legendary. His powerful compositions, inspired by music, comics and sports, combined elements from popular culture and cultural history.]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Fri, 07 May 2010 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5798 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=7188 Kunstmuseum Basel
12.05. – 19.09.2010

Der geplante Erweiterungsbau des Kunstmuseums schafft dringend benötigten Platz für Sonderausstellungen und ermöglicht eine zeitgemässe Präsentation der wertvollen Kunstwerke aus der Öffentlichen Kunstsammlung. Mit dem Projekt von Christ & Gantenbein Architekten fügt sich der Erweiterungsbau harmonisch in die Stadtstruktur und bildet ein selbstbewusstes Gegenüber zum Stammhaus. Die Eröffnung ist für 2015 vorgesehen. Die Ausstellung im Sieben-Fenster-Saal im Erdgeschoss zeigt anhand von Modellen, Plänen und Visualisierungen dieses dritte, dynamische Haus der Öffentlichen Kunstsammlung. Der Eintritt in die Ausstellung ist frei. Veranstaltungen im Rahmen der Ausstellung: Tagespresse und www.kunstmuseumbasel.ch]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Wed, 12 May 2010 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=7188 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=6973 Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel
21.05. – 29.08.2010

The Fondation Beyeler hosts part of a major traveling retrospective of Felix Gonzalez-Torres (American, b. Cuba, 1957-1996), one of the most influential artists of his generation. Including some rarely seen but also more known paintings, sculptures, photographic works, and public projects, it includes pieces from throughout Gonzalez-Torres’ short but prolific career. Drawn from public and private collections throughout the United States and Europe, this groundbreaking exhibition proposes an experimental form that is indebted to the artist’s own radical conception of the artwork. Defying the idea of the exhibition as fixed and the retrospective as totalizing, the exhibition Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Specific Objects without Specific Form offers instead several exhibition versions, and none the authoritative one, all the better to present the oeuvre of an artist who put fragility, the passage of time, and the questioning of authority at the center of his artwork. At each venue in which the show will be hosted, the exhibition will open to the public and then halfway through its duration, it will be re-installed by a different invited artist whose practice has been informed by Gonzalez-Torres’ work. At the Fondation Beyeler, the artist Carol Bove will undo the show and re-install it from late-July onward — adding and removing artworks, changing such things as lighting, labels, and the order of presentation, in other words — effectively making an entirely new version of the exhibition. The retrospective is curated by Elena Filipovic. It premiered at Wiels (January 16–May 2, 2010) including a curated version by Danh Vo and travels to the Fondation Beyeler, Basel (May 22-August 29, 2010), including a curated version by Carol Bove; and the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main (January 28–April 25, 2011), including a curated version by Tino Sehgal. The tour of the exhibition will be followed by a fully illustrated catalogue documenting each version of the exhibition and including essays by Elena Filipovic, Danh Vo, Carol Bove, and Tino Sehgal as well as interviews with artists of various generations. Essentially a publication determined by the voice of artists, Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Specific Objects without Specific Form will underscore the decisive impact and importance of Gonzalez-Torres’ work on art practices today. Due to appear in 2011.]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Fri, 21 May 2010 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=6973 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5550 Kunstmuseum Basel
30.05. – 05.09.2010

The drawings of Rosemarie Trockel (* 1952) are closely affiliated with her sculptures, “wool pictures” and videos, but can nevertheless be understood as independent artistic investigations. All significant groups of drawings by the German artist will be presented in a comprehensive survey, beginning with the early drawings of the 1980s, and following the artist’s development to new works created specifically for this exhibition.]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Fri, 28 May 2010 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5550 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5768 Museum Tinguely
09.06. – 12.09.2010

“Man is the most successful machine on earth … from the neck up he is amazing, from the neck down he is no match for other machines,” said Edwin Johnson in 1968. He suggested that a combination of the best characteristics of man and machinery ought to produce “the ideal machine”. Pioneering artists such as the Australian Stelarc tried to turn the idea into literal reality. The idea of artificial intelligence has been developed further over the years: a machine should copy human thinking. The display of exhibits spanning about fifty years is dedicated to the relationships between man and machine. Artists of international repute have created new works for the exhibition. Inspired by research, these explore the great question of whether humans can be replaced by machines.]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Tue, 08 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5768 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=7015 [plug.in] – Kunst und neue Medien
11.06. – 19.09.2010

Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.org are among the most important media artists in Europe. The exhibition will show reenactements of performances of the 60s and 70s and performances, which the italian artist duo arranged lately in online-games.]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Wed, 14 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=7015 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=6620 Schaulager, Münchenstein/Basel
12.06. – 03.10.2010

Matthew Barney (born 1967) is one of the most versatile artists of his generation in the US. Barney's reputation is founded largely on his elaborate film and performance cycles "Cremaster" and "Drawing Restraint". The Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation, which began buying his works in 1996, now features a significant selection of his films, sculptures and drawings in its collection. The Laurenz Foundation, who runs Schaulager, is acquiring a substantial part of Matthew Barney's archive of the performance series "Drawing Restraint". This new acquisition is to be publicly premiered at Schaulager as part of a much broader-based exhibition including works from the collection of the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation as well as outside loans. Started by Matthew Barney while a student at Yale, the ongoing Drawing Restraint series currently consists of 16 parts. The archive includes sculptures, vitrines, videos, drawings and a full feature movie. Schaulager has appointed Neville Wakefield as guest curator for the exhibition. The New York based author and curator has a profound knowledge of Matthew Barney's work and will be organising the exhibition project in close collaboration with the Schaulager team.]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=6620 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=7221 Kunsthalle Basel
12.06. – 11.2010

The invitation card to the new project by Fabio Marco Pirovino (born 1980, Basel) for the back wall of Kunsthalle Basel shows a photograph titled "PPG" (2006). The image is immediately recognizable as a reproduction of the back of a shrink-wrapped picture. If you look closer, you can discern a stamp featuring the name “Pablo Picasso”, as well as a price tag, which further reveals a barcode that reads: “Guernica” and “6.30 €”. Thus it is a cheap reproduction of "Guernica" (1937), the iconic painting that the Spanish artist made in response to the destruction of the Basque city the same year. On April 26, 1937, in the midst of the Spanish Civil War, Guernica was bombed by the Condor Legion of the German air force, which was an ally of General Francisco Franco. Picasso had already received an assignment from the Spanish government for a painting on the occasion of the 1937 World Exposition in Paris, but once the air attack became known, he decided to abandon his original concept (titled "The Artist and his Model") in favour of a depiction of violence and suffering. After its first presentation, the painting travelled to various cities in Europe, including London, where it was shown at the Whitechapel Gallery. To this very day, "Guernica" is one of the most frequently reproduced images in connection with antiwar movements across the world. In 1939, the work went on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where it remained until Franco’s death, in keeping with Picasso’s wishes. In 1981, the centenary of the artist’s birth, "Guernica" was returned to Spain, taking its place in the galleries of the Museo de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. Recently, in 2003, the painting again drew attention when the US government, under George W. Bush, had a copy of the painting at the UN headquarters in New York—a tapestry donated by Nelson Rockefeller in 1985—covered by a blue flag while then American Secretary of State Colin Powell stood in front of it as he presented evidence of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq—evidence that would be used to justify the imminent invasion of that country. As it later turned out, much of that evidence was falsified. "RAZZLE DAZZLE (PPG)" (2010), the mural by Fabio Marco Pirovino on the back wall of Kunsthalle Basel, is a contemporary engagement with the history and the cultural and political significance of "Guernica" (1). With a mouse click, Pirovino took the first image that appeared on Google under the search word “Guernica”, and processed it using a simple Photoshop procedure. He determined the various grey values in the image and, opting for a particular brush size, painted over the reproduction so that the figures once painted in the "grisaille" technique became abstract planes. Finally, the artist turned the image upside down in order to “further emphasise the composition and render the painting even more abstract,” as he himself put it. The digitally processed version of the original painting was translated into an analog process, when the artist hand-drew his computer image and copied it several times, copy-and-paste style, so as to employ the full length of the wall. Using an old fresco technique, the image was then painted on the back wall in a correspondingly enlarged size and using a real brush. Pirovino turns Picasso’s expressive depiction of suffering into an abstract composition repeated more than three times, giving it a very digital appearance, even when painted oversize on the outside wall. The style of the Photoshop brush is as plainly recognisable as the seam where one image borders on the next. In the repetition, the white, grey and black shades become a kind of camouflage that eschews figurative depiction. “Razzle Dazzle” is the designation for camouflage patterns used mainly during the First World War on warships (the term itself is attributed to the British artist Sir Normal Wilkinson, and the technique was initially intended more to confuse than to actually camouflage). "RAZZLE DAZZLE (PPG)" not only points to the symbolic significance of "Guernica" as a politicised and much-reproduced painting, but it also considers the power of images themselves—in both photography and painting—and their utilisation and instrumentalisation today. The availability of visual material on the internet, and the technical development of image-processing programmes, enable enormous freedom in visual art, the limits of which stand in opposition to those in politics: the digital processing and reproduction of media images facilitates the falsification of facts and can be used as means of propaganda by opposing sides in a conflict to different political ends. The supposed transparency resulting from the omnipresence of photo and film cameras, and from access to the internet, is often blurred by the manufactured messages of manipulated pictures. In the case of Pirovino’s work, the model here turns out to be a none-too-precise reproduction of the original: at the time of his internet search, the first image that appeared on Google under the search word “Guernica” was slightly cropped. Pirovino, who completed his photography studies at the Zurich University of the Arts in 2007, has taken as his model one of the world’s most cited paintings. His mural is a contemporary comment on art’s striving to engage with historical events, above and beyond pure illustration. Whether producing his murals, photographs, drawings or watercolours, Pirovino consistently proceeds like a painter, exploring the different formal possibilities that each material might take, and creating new compositions using variation and reduction. The digital process is never concealed, and the interfaces of the photographic “collages” remain visible—as with his work on the back wall of Kunsthalle Basel. It has been said that Andy Warhol once asked one of his assistants what he could paint that was abstract but not really abstract either. Working with camouflage was one answer, as it is an abstract pattern that still holds various and rich associations. One could say, then, that Pirovino employs a terrorist’s approach toward Picasso and Warhol, in that he depoliticizes "Guernica" but arms it at the same time for a post-political era, turning it militant once again. (1) The city of Basel has unique links to Pablo Picasso. Early works by the artist were exhibited at Kunsthalle Basel in 1914, and, in 1967, Peter G. Staechelin, the main shareholder in the Basel charter airline Globe Air, offered to sell the city two Picasso paintings from the family collection for 8.4 million Swiss Francs, his aim being to save his ailing company from (unavoidable) bankruptcy. Basel’s Grosse Rat (Grand Council) granted a loan of 6 million, and within a few weeks the remaining sum of 2.4 million was raised with the help of a collection effort known as the “Bettlerfest” (Beggars’ Festival), so that the two works could be bought for Kunstmuseum Basel. Pablo Picasso was so delighted about the purchase that he later presented the city with a gift of four more paintings. The project is generously supported by: Heivisch Sponsorship-in-kind has been provided by: Dold AG, Münchenstein Fleig Plot AG, Basel Fabio Marco Pirovino (born 1980, Basel) lives and works in Basel and Zürich. He graduated from the Photography Department of the Zurich University of the Arts in 2007. Pirovino participated several times in the "Regionale" and received the travel price of the Basler Kunstverein on the occasion of the "Regionale 10" at Kunsthalle Basel. He took part in different group shows such as "Plat(t)form", Fotomuseum Winterthur and with Amberg&Marti in Riga ("Amberg&Marti zeigen FMP") (both 2007). In August 2010 Pirovino will be part of a group show titled The Artist and the Photograph at Ausstellungsraum Klingental. In January 2010 he had a solo show at the Coalmine Fotogalerie, Winterthur ("20th Century Fox, in Memory of Thomas Knoll") and at Abbt Projects, Zurich ("Fabio Marco Pirovino: Propaganda + Instinct"), Paloma Presents, Zurich ("FMP at his own flat") as well as with Marks Blond Projects in Berne ("Icarus") in 2009.]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Sat, 03 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=7221 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=6669 Kunsthalle Basel
13.06. – 22.08.2010

Kunsthalle Basel presents the group exhibition "Strange Comfort (Afforded by the Profession)", with Maria Thereza Alves, Michel Auder, Ross Birrell and David Harding, Cezary Bodzianowski, Latifa Echakhch, Paul Hendrikse, Dunja Herzog, Cécile Hummel, Nick Mauss, Charlotte Moth, Lorraine O’Grady, Giulia Piscitelli, Vanessa Safavi, Franco Vaccari, Danh Vo and Martin Wong. The exhibition is curated by Adam Szymczyk, in collaboration with Annette Amberg and Roos Gortzak, and co-curated by Salvatore Lacagnina, Head of the Artistic Program at the Istituto Svizzero in Rome. The exhibition was inspired by a short story titled “Strange Comfort Afforded by the Profession”, by British writer Malcolm Lowry (1909–1957). The story, first published in the magazine "New World Writing" in 1953, was translated and published in Italian in 1954 and then included in 1961 in the posthumous collection "Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place". This volume of Lowry’s late, loosely connected travelogue-style prose pieces features a number of the “Italian” stories that he wrote following his journey to the country in 1948, including “Elephant and Colosseum” and “Present Estate of Pompeii” (the latter contains a description of a guided tour that a Canadian couple takes in the ruins of Pompeii); the collection’s title itself comes from an Isle of Man fisherman’s hymn. In “Strange Comfort Afforded by the Profession”, Lowry portrays a writer visiting the house at Piazza di Spagna, in Rome, in which the English poet John Keats died of tuberculosis in 1821, and which was, in 1909, turned into a memorial that houses an outstanding collection of books and documents on English Romanticism, as well as related curia and memorabilia—the death mask of Keats included. The story’s protagonist, Sigbjørn Wilderness—“an American writer in Rome on a Guggenheim Fellowship”—is clearly Lowry’s alter ego, as he explores the comforting darkness of the Keats-Shelley House, taking notes and pondering the manuscripts, relics and artifacts on view there. In Lowry’s story, the “Strange Comfort” of his title is provided by the contemplation of inanimate objects and the reading of letters, notes and documents—both activities constituting the fundamentals of the writer’s technique and the essence of his or her métier. Indeed, this ongoing private study, involving permanent collecting and the questioning of existing cultural material, itself a parallel of devouring and producing, seems to reverberate in the practice of many contemporary artists. The exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel makes use of the “Strange Comfort” afforded equally by the professions of artist, curator and writer—each being clearly autonomous—and not merely as a means to making an exhibition but as a comprehensive praxis of integrating, commenting and transforming the knowledge from several different fields, among them history, literature and art. Accordingly, the artists featured in the show share an idiosyncratic approach to received notions of cultural history that opens avenues to new interpretations, and enables critical retellings of conventional and scholarly narratives. An exhibition with the same title was first conceived in Rome, where it opened on May 8, 2010, at several venues within walking distance from the Istituto Svizzero at Via Ludovisi and the Keats-Shelley House in Piazza di Spagna. In addition to these two sites, the venues also include the antiquary bookshop C.E. Rappaport, at Via Sistina, and the garden in front of Saint Isidore church, at Via degli Artisti, as well as one more remotely located place of historical interest: the Non-Catholic Cemetery at Via Caio Cestio, where Keats is buried and where the performance of the composition for viola, “Lift Me Up For I Am Dying”, by Ross Birrell, took place the day following the opening of the show. The exhibition in Rome, which continues until September 25 and was likewise curated by Adam Szymczyk and Salvatore Lacagnina, includes works by Maria Thereza Alves, Ross Birrell and David Harding, Nancy Davenport, Moyra Davey, Jimmie Durham, Dunja Herzog, Cécile Hummel, Goshka Macuga, Franco Vaccari and Danh Vo. Although the exhibitions in Basel and Rome coincide in time and share several artists, and despite the fact that some of the works in Basel are variations of those featured in Rome (and, in one case, the same two films by Maria Thereza Alves are shown in both cities), the Kunsthalle exhibition is not the second station of the show in Rome, nor is it a sequel to it. Rather, both projects complement each other while also displaying important differences. In Rome, the historic specificity of venues overdetermined the reading of exhibited works in terms of existing narratives linked to the cultural histories of the individual locations, and was further conditioned by the general constitution of Rome, both historically and currently, as a totality of tourist sites. In Basel, by contrast, the show expands over a suite of white-walled galleries located on the ground floor of the Kunsthalle, and the historic and narrative dimension that is present in many of the featured works is countered by the uniform appearance of the gallery space. The show is detached from the context it had in Rome and the short story from which it takes its cues is no longer its defining reference. This temporal and geographical shift results in new aspects that are explored in the Basel exhibition: the vague déjà vu that might arise from the fact that some of the artists have just shown their work in the Rome show is likely to be intensified by the detail that the show at the Kunsthalle also incorporates two works (by Charlotte Moth and Latifa Echakhch) that were originally realized as part of the previous group exhibition in Basel—“After Architects”—which took place in the very same Kunsthalle galleries. Furthermore, “Strange Comfort (Afforded by the Profession)” attempts to question the fixed parameters of the group exhibition, and the rules that regulate its staging. While allowing the artists to show works without forcing them into a preconceived theme, the exhibition can be seen as a set of guidelines: an institutional, organizational, structural and visual regime that offers the participants—makers and viewers alike—the strange comfort of a guided walk with many forking paths and sudden junctions, a fragment of the “voyage that never ends” (Lowry) and knows no resolution. The exhibition was organized in collaboration with: Istituto Svizzero di Roma The exhibition was generously supported by: Regent Lighting Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Zurigo]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=6669 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5551 Kunstmuseum Basel, Museum für Gegenwartskunst
13.06. – 26.09.2010

The exhibition will encompass nearly 100 works made by the Canadian artist Rodney Graham (*1949) between 1978 and 2008. Graham makes use of various media such as books, videos, sculptures, devices, painting, installation, printed matter and music. His works are distinguished by their interdisciplinary character and incorporate referents from the time of the Enlightenment to the present. The technique of appropriation allows him to pay tribute to renowned figures in art, literature, philosophy, and pop music, but not without respectfully and ironically demystifying their uncontested influence and offering a new perspective. Sigmund Freud, Donald Judd, Edgar Allan Poe, Georg Büchner, Jeff Wall and Pablo Picasso all make themselves available as material or as conceptual referents in Rodney Graham’s work. The exhibition is the product of collaboration with the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and Kunsthalle Hamburg.]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Fri, 11 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5551 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=6670 Kunsthalle Basel
17.06. – 12.09.2010

Kunsthalle Basel is delighted to announce "Speaker Receiver", the first institutional show in Europe of works by Moyra Davey. Born in Canada in 1958, the artist lives and works in New York. Davey’s practice encompasses photography, film and video, as well as reading and writing. She conceives of the latter two activities as inseparable and equally significant techniques of working: her alert, incisive readings of philosophy and literature prompt new writing, which in turn reflects back on already existing texts, building, as it does, on fragments, memories and quotations. By suggesting an affinity, or even a reciprocal mode of influence, between the acts of reading and writing, Davey locates the point at which the desire for non-differentiated production-consumption makes the two usually opposed sides of the process of communication meet and cross; that is to say, in Davey’s work, writing is reading. The artist dealt with these matters extensively in her book-length essay "The Problem of Reading" (Documents Books, 2003). Her writing is not to be understood as a means to merely annotate her visual production, or to present the source material for “proper” works, but as an element of her practice devised to project the very ideas that her photography and filmmaking are attempting to explore. In fact, Davey formulates no less than a call for photography that would have its origin and ending in writing—a reasonable claim, if we consider photography as a way, per the Greek etymology of the word, to “write with light”. The Kunsthalle Basel exhibition includes two of Davey’s recent videos: "Fifty Minutes" (2007), which is a soliloquy composed of passages on subjects of pertinence, such as money, time, eavesdropping, Hollis Frampton, nostalgia, fear, pregnancy, a couch, and a fridge (the latter object also features prominently—topped with a skyline of food and medical supplements—in one of Davey’s photographs), and "My Necropolis" (2009), which records the artist’s visits to the graves of writers in several Parisian cemeteries. In the exhibition, these two videos are to be viewed on one monitor from a comfortable sofa placed in the gallery space, as if to make clear that Davey’s domesticity is at war with the museum. Davey’s photographs on view, meanwhile—modestly sized, traditionally printed and limited to a small range of motifs—represent in a non-spectacular way the conditions of living and working as a metaphor for the human condition and its contradictions. The images aim at establishing yet another, more fundamental pair of correlating states than those of transmission and reception—those of working and living. Or perhaps they propose the idea of working as living, a non-alienating work and thus an existence aware of its newly recognized abilities, possibilities yet to be achieved and inherent limitations. To that end, Davey makes us, the onlookers, accomplices in the process of living that she portrays in photographs of inanimate things, which speak of their use and of those who use them. And, in doing so, she succeeds in bringing this “well-examined life” (as Helen Molesworth has put it) to light. Her photographs are elements and records of what the Italian writer Cesare Pavese called in the title of his diaries, "il mestiere de vivere"—the métier, or profession, of living. "Speaker Receiver", the title of Davey’s show at the Kunsthalle, echoes film theorist, art historian and critic Kaja Silverman’s reading of the notions of transmission and reception of images and words in terms of the politics of image production and gender. As Silverman describes in her essay “The Author as Receiver” (October, no. 96, 2001), and in her recent interview with George Baker (Artforum, February 2010), such transmission is an instance of patriarchal, totalizing order, while reception is a productive possibility in the hands of artists. Likewise, Davey’s proposition is that artists are receivers, no less than they are speakers, an idea that also resonates, perhaps, with the “negative capability” (“when man is capable of being in uncertainties”) mentioned by John Keats in a letter to his brother written on December 21, 1817. The exhibition in Basel is accompanied by a new monograph also titled "Speaker Receiver". The publication is edited by Adam Szymczyk and published by Sternberg Press, and includes essays by George Baker, Chris Kraus, Bill Horrigan and Eric Rosenberg, as well as an interview with the artist. "Speaker Receiver" also features “Index Cards”, a new piece of writing by Davey, in which she reflects on subjects such as a recent illness, her personal mapping of Paris and her habit of reading newspapers. Rather than formulating a systematic argument, the essay unfolds in a series of short “takes” or fragments, and it commences with a quote from a Walter Benjamin letter to Gershom Scholem, in which Benjamin enigmatically refers to the clock he sees from the window of his studio as a “luxury [he] cannot do without”. Additionally, “Index Cards” includes short studies on figures as remarkable and extreme in their individual qualities as the architect Aldo Rossi, the writer Jane Bowles and the chess prodigy Paul Morphy. In the book, which was designed by Julia Born, an Amsterdam-based Swiss graphic designer, Davey brings the diverse aspects of her work together. Photographs distributed in order of their appearance within the texts interrupt the various writers’ contributions. Furthermore, for Davey’s own essay, and for the interview (which was improvised and undertaken concurrent with the preparations for the exhibition), the artist chose to reproduce her photographic “Mailers”, a unique series and format of work that Davey likes to refer to simply as “mail art”. Printed in a street lab, the thirty by forty-five centimeter photographs are folded by the artist and sent by mail to the curators and gallerists who propose to show them. When the photographs arrive, they are opened and flattened out. Arranged in a grid and pinned to the wall—with names and addresses legible, postmarks, creases and accidental signs of wear and tear kept intact—the “Mailers” embody the very notion of “accident”, which is crucial to Davey’s writing and in particular to her essay “Notes on Photography & Accident”. Several grids of “Mailers” are shown in the Kunsthalle Basel exhibition, along with the individual photographs that represent selected details of the artist’s studio and apartment, where she lives with her husband and son. These details include a dog’s paw on a dusty floor, the needle resting on a vinyl record, covers and stacks of records, a fluorescent light tube inscribed with the words “long life cool white”, books and papers piled on shelves, newspaper cuttings, cheap buttons, used copper pennies imprinted with Abraham Lincoln’s profile (“Copperheads”, 1990), a collection of amplifiers and speakers, empty whiskey bottles and much more. The work of Moyra Davey was presented in the survey exhibition “Long Life Cool White,” at the Fogg Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, in 2008; Helen Molesworth curated the exhibition and also edited the accompanying catalogue of the same title (Yale University Press, 2009). In New York, Davey exhibited with Colin de Land’s famed gallery American Fine Arts, and she was a partner in Orchard, the cooperative, artist-run gallery. Moyra Davey was also editor of "Mother Reader: Essential Writings on Motherhood" (Seven Stories Press, 2001), an “anthology of texts on the intersection of motherhood and creative life”. Her recent group exhibitions include “Photography on Photography: Reflections on the Medium Since 1960”, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 2008, and “Calendar of flowers, gin bottles, steak bones” (with James Welling and Claire Pentecost), at Orchard, New York, in 2007. Upcoming group shows include “Atlas” (curated by Georges Didi-Huberman) and “Mixed Use, Manhattan: Photography and Related Practices, 1970s to the Present” (curated by Lynne Cooke and Douglas Crimp), both at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. Davey’s work is currently on view in “Strange Comfort (Afforded by the Profession)” (curated by Adam Szymczyk and Salvatore Lacagnina), at the Keats-Shelley House, Rome (until September 25).]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Sat, 03 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=6670 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5740 Museum für Musikautomaten, Seewen
22.06.2010 – 27.02.2011

Whether they are chiming turret clocks, escritoires with a clock and organ movement, musical wall, mantel or long-case clocks, or a gold-ornate vase with clock, music and singing birds – since the 14th century, clocks of all kinds have been equipped with music movements to increase their appeal and exquisite appearance. Yet carillons and music movements also influenced the daily routine of human beings in this age. The new special exhibition by the Museum of Music Automatons Seewen is dedicated to these musical time machines from past ages. Guided tours through this special exhibition on Wednesday and Sunday, 2.30 pm]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5740 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5833 Cartoonmuseum Basel
26.06. – 24.10.2010

The Cartoonmuseum Basel is celebrating its 30th anniversary with Rudi Hurzlmeier and the Comic Painting: «Hurzlmeier» is the first show in Switzerland of this internationally-famous German artist’s large paintings. Rudi Hurzlmeier, born in Kloster Mallendorf in Lower Bavaria in 1952, lives and works in Munich as an artist, draughtsman, cartoonist and author. Hurzlmeier is a founder of Comic Painting and one of its main representatives.In his paintings he plays a virtuoso game with the discrepancy between his Old Master’s style of painting and his comic, often absurd, mostly grotesque, sometimes also macabre motifs. From the nude to the landscape, the history painting and the portrait to the still-life, no genre of classical painting is beyond his iconoclastic grasp. By consistently circumventing all clichés and expectations, Hurzlmeier provokes astonishment, irritation and ultimately amusement in his viewers.]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=5833 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=7147 Cartoonmuseum Basel
26.06. – 24.10.2010

No one is safe from the sharp pen of the humorist draughtsman. And the same goes for artworks. The higher the plinth on which they stand, the greater the delight in causing them to wobble. Some cartoonists do not even shy away from painting over masterpieces, while the really brazen splash about in the supreme discipline of the art satire – the art parody. Dieter Burckhardt, founder and benefactor of the museum, had a great fondness for art satire and collected as many works as he could. Which is why this genre is represented in the Cartoonmuseum collection by a large number of unusual examples. This jubilee exhibition highligths a selection of these works in the Cartoonforum; a publication of the same time contains 30 postcards.]]> info@museenbasel.ch (Basel Museum Services) Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.museenbasel.ch/fr/musees/manifestationdetails.php?id=7147