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Edouard Manet: Olympia

Edouard Manet: Olympia

With Olympia, Manet reworked the traditional theme of the female nude, using a strong, uncompromising technique. Both the subject matter and its depiction explain the scandal caused by this painting at the 1865 Salon. Venus has become a prostitute, challenging the viewer with her calculating look. This profanation of the idealized nude, the very foundation of academic tradition, provoked a violent reaction. This artwork is located in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, France.

Duration : 1m
Maturity Level : all

Claude Monet: Chrysanthemums

Claude Monet: Chrysanthemums

Monet had been a passionate gardener between 1878 and 1883. He had employed a number of gardeners who tendered and developed gardens according to colour and contrast. It was these gardens that Monet was to later use to paint the chrysanthemums.The chrysanthemums consist part of Monet’s popular works of impressionism. It brings out clearly his passion for painting inclined towards colour, light, and contrast. The name of the painting Chrysanthemums refers to a study of colour and contrast with regard to nature as an abstract pattern.

Duration : 4m
Maturity Level : all

Claude Monet: Impression, Sunrise

Claude Monet: Impression, Sunrise

This famous painting, Impression, Sunrise, was created from a scene in the port of Le Havre. Monet depicts a mist, which provides a hazy background to the piece set in the French harbor. The orange and yellow hues contrast brilliantly with the dark vessels, where little, if any detail is immediately visible to the audience. It is a striking and candid work that shows the smaller boats in the foreground almost being propelled along by the movement of the water. This has, once again, been achieved by separate brushstrokes that also show various colors sparkling on the sea. This masterpiece is located in the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, France.

Duration : 2m
Maturity Level : all

Claude Monet: Water Lilies (Le Bassin aux Nymphéas)

Claude Monet: Water Lilies (Le Bassin aux Nymphéas)

Water Lilies is not a name of a single painting, but a name of a series of works. During his lifetime, Claude Monet comes back to this subject matter several times, and painted more than 250 water lilies paintings. Along with Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh, Water Lilies are the most iconic images of Impressionism. The artwork shown in this movie is located in the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland.

Duration : 2m
Maturity Level : all

Paul Serusier: The Talisman

Paul Serusier: The Talisman

Paul Sérusier sojourned in Pont-Aven during the summer of 1888. On his returning to Paris, he showed his young fellow painters, the future Nabis (prophets in Hebrew), what was to become their Talisman. A close observation of the painting allows one to recognize certain elements of the landscape represented: the wood, the transversal path, the row of beech trees on the river bank, and the mill, at the back, on the right. Each of these elements is a stain of color. This masterpiece is now located in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, France.

Duration : 2m
Maturity Level : all

Claude Monet: Woman with Parasol

Claude Monet: Woman with Parasol

Woman with a Parasol was painted outdoors, probably in a single session of several hours’ duration. The artist intended the work to convey the feeling of a casual family outing rather than a formal portrait, and used pose and placement to suggest that his wife and son interrupted their stroll while he captured their likenesses. The brevity of the moment portrayed here is conveyed by a repertory of animated brushstrokes of vibrant color, hallmarks of the style Monet was instrumental in forming. Bright sunlight shines from behind Camille to whiten the top of her parasol and the flowing cloth at her back. This masterpiece is now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, USA.

Duration : 4m
Maturity Level : all

John Singer Sargent: The Spanish Dancer

John Singer Sargent: The Spanish Dancer

In 1879 John Singer Sargent, an American artist living in France, spent five months touring Spain and North Africa. Sargent returned to Paris with sketches of Spanish flamenco dancers and the germ of an idea for his first full-scale salon painting, El Jaleo. Sargent’s composition for the monumental painting developed over three years through a series of drawings and watercolors. His principal effort went into the figure of The Spanish Dancer. This is a full-size oil painting of this dancer, Sargent’s first attempt to paint this subject. This masterpiece is owned by a private collector.

Duration : 2m
Maturity Level : all

Dancing during the Belle Époque: Cheret, Degas, Van Gogh, de Toulouse-Lautrec

Dancing during the Belle Époque: Cheret, Degas, Van Gogh, de Toulouse-Lautrec

Dancing during the Belle Époque is a set of several artworks from various artists with the subject of dancing. Folie Bergére by Jules Cheret, located now in the Ferrers Gallery in London, UK; Cafe Concert at Les Ambassadeurs by Edgar Degas that is located in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, France; Dancing at the Moulin Rouge by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec that is now in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, France. From Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, this movie also shows Yvette Guilbert singing Linger, Longer, Loo now in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, Russia and La Goulue at the Moulin Rouge from the Musée des Arts Decoratifs in Paris; from the Musée d’Orsay by Vincent Van Gogh, the masterpiece The Dance Hall at Arles.

Duration : 4m
Maturity Level : all

Levi Van Veluw: Origin of the Beginning 1.4

Levi Van Veluw: Origin of the Beginning 1.4

Origin of the Beginning is a series of installations, photographs and videos. Through them, the artist talks about his childhood. The repetitive structures seemingly express a ‘horror vacui’ and recall Van Veluw’s youth and his obsessive attempts to gain control over his life by controlling his surroundings. Dimly lit and dark in color, the overriding tone of these pieces is claustrophobic and sombre, exuding a sense of loneliness.

Duration : 2m
Maturity Level : all

Levi Van Veluw: Origin of the Beginning 2.4

Levi Van Veluw: Origin of the Beginning 2.4

Origin of the Beginning is a series of installations, photographs and videos. The works suggest a narrative world behind the portraits. On the one hand these works are a continuation of Van Veluw’s formal approach to self-portraiture, with their preoccupation for materiality, pattern and texture. Yet, at the same time, they are highly personal pieces as well.

Duration : 2m
Maturity Level : all

Levi Van Veluw: Origin of the Beginning 3.3

Levi Van Veluw: Origin of the Beginning 3.3

Origin of the Beginning is a series of installations, photographs and videos in which Levi van Veluw draws from his own childhood memories to thematically and narratively develop his oeuvre of self-portraits. Three rooms are covered with tens of thousands of wooden blocks, balls and wooden slats. Each room is constructed as a life-size installation and is reworked in photographs and videos without the use of digital manipulation.

Duration : 2m
Maturity Level : all

Levi Van Veluw: The Collapse of Cohesion, Spheres

Levi Van Veluw: The Collapse of Cohesion, Spheres

The Collapse of Cohesion is a series of short films, based on drawings. In contrast to the drawing in which the moment of chaos remains an interpretation by the artist - and is therefore inexorably linked to him - the film makes it possible to relinquish all and every form of control. Unpredictability becomes a new factor in this work. The time of the event is stretched; the moment measured in seconds becomes a minute-long occurrence and forms a new reality.

Duration : 10m
Maturity Level : all

Levi Van Veluw: The Collapse of Cohesion, Room

Levi Van Veluw: The Collapse of Cohesion, Room

The Collapse of Cohesion is a series of short films, based on drawings. One of the drawings presents an image of an archive room, filled with large structures of cabinets containing more than 1500 neatly arranged icosahedrons. The whole arrangement is held in place by the very structure of the cabinets and the force of gravity, in a fundamental and continuous on-going struggle between the desire for order and the forces of nature. An unknown cause upsets this equilibrium and the cabinets are made to topple over. The symmetrical forms are no longer held in place, gravity takes over, order is turned into chaos."

Duration : 9m
Maturity Level : all

Levi Van Veluw: The Collapse of Cohesion, Archive

Levi Van Veluw: The Collapse of Cohesion, Archive

The Collapse of Cohesion is a series of short films, based on drawings. In the film, the drawing has been replicated life-size in wood. All the visible surfaces are covered in carbon powder, and the setting acquires shape only through the reflection of the light. Reality becomes tangible only through the experience of lighter or darker hues, as in a drawing. The falling apart of the structure is filmed at over 1000 frames per second. After months of meticulous preparation, this is the only, and crucial, moment over which the artist has no control.

Duration : 8m
Maturity Level : all

Levi Van Veluw: The Relativity of Matter

Levi Van Veluw: The Relativity of Matter

For a whole year, Levi van Veluw has worked on The Relativity of Matter, an all-encompassing freestanding installation. Once the doors close, the visitor enters into a maze of corridors, doors, atmospheres, perspectives and colors that challenge him in a sensory manner. With The Relativity of Matter, van Veluw presents an all-encompassing scenographic experience that immerses the visitor in a world of disparate forms of expression. For this special exhibition, a very talented French film company, Birdfilm, made a short film that captures the atmosphere of the installation.

Duration : 4m
Maturity Level : all

Tomas Saraceno: Cloud Cities

Tomas Saraceno: Cloud Cities

The exhibition Tomás Saraceno: Cloud Cities at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin presents a large installation by the artist that occupies the entire space of the historical gallery. The artist’s works, which incorporate tendencies in science and architecture and, as works of art, explicitly implement natural principles in order to address immediate problems in our globalized world such as overpopulation, environmental pollution, and diminishing resources, are highly contemporary visions that embody current and potential discourses on the relationship between nature and society.

Duration : 5m
Maturity Level : all

Tomas Saraceno: Cloud City (Ville Nuage)

Tomas Saraceno: Cloud City (Ville Nuage)

Spider webs, the consistency of soap bubbles, astrophysics, and legendary visionaries like Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) are some of the most important sources of inspiration to the artist Tomás Saraceno, who was born in 1973 in San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina. He calls his balloon-like objects Biospheres, that is, spaces containing life; held by black rope nets and suspended in the air, some of them are accessible to viewers and some of them are inhabited by plants.

Duration : 2m
Maturity Level : all

Tomas Saraceno: Breaking the Wall Between Earth and Sky

Tomas Saraceno: Breaking the Wall Between Earth and Sky

Throughout history, humanity has rehearsed with lighter-than-air vehicles aiming for a different way to move through and with the air, only with the power of the sun. Presented here are various attempts of human aerosolar flights, undertaken by people whose types of relationship to the atmosphere and the planet have become marginalised, and increasingly rendered invisible under the hegemony of the fossil fuels regime.

Duration : 14m
Maturity Level : all

Tomas Saraceno: Cosmic Jives - The Spider Session

Tomas Saraceno: Cosmic Jives - The Spider Session

The exhibition Cosmic Jive: the Spider Sessions weaved together the different spaces of Villa Croce, in Genova. The first floor featured an interactive sound installation activated by the visitors’ movement, creating a series of acoustic responses picked up by passive motion sensors installed in the rooms. Depending on their location in the museum, visitors heard different sound compositions. The speakers to the left side of the rooms emitted the sounds of the semi-social spiders playing on pre-existing solitary webs.

Duration : 2m
Maturity Level : all

Liao Wenfeng: You

Liao Wenfeng: You

Liao Wenfeng, born 1984 in Jiangxi Province, China, graduated from the Total Art Studio of the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou in 2006. Since 2012 he lives in Berlin, where he completed a Masters degree at the Institute for Art in Context, University of the Arts, Berlin. In his artistic practice he works with video, GIF animation, photography and drawings to investigate the construction of visual play spaces between objects, the body and ideas in an everyday life context.

Duration : 1m
Maturity Level : all

Liao Wenfeng: Drinking the Sun

Liao Wenfeng: Drinking the Sun

Liao Wenfeng, born 1984 in Jiangxi Province, China, graduated from the Total Art Studio of the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou in 2006. Since 2012 he lives in Berlin, where he completed a Masters degree at the Institute for Art in Context, University of the Arts, Berlin. In his artistic practice he works with video, GIF animation, photography and drawings to investigate the construction of visual play spaces between objects, the body and ideas in an everyday life context.

Duration : 49s
Maturity Level : all

Liao Wenfeng: Dancing with the Wind

Liao Wenfeng: Dancing with the Wind

Liao Wenfeng, born 1984 in Jiangxi Province, China, graduated from the Total Art Studio of the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou in 2006. Since 2012 he lives in Berlin, where he completed a Masters degree at the Institute for Art in Context, University of the Arts, Berlin. In his artistic practice he works with video, GIF animation, photography and drawings to investigate the construction of visual play spaces between objects, the body and ideas in an everyday life context.

Duration : 8m
Maturity Level : all

Liao Wenfeng: My Stone is my Heart

Liao Wenfeng: My Stone is my Heart

Liao Wenfeng, born 1984 in Jiangxi Province, China, graduated from the Total Art Studio of the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou in 2006. Since 2012 he lives in Berlin, where he completed a Masters degree at the Institute for Art in Context, University of the Arts, Berlin. In his artistic practice he works with video, GIF animation, photography and drawings to investigate the construction of visual play spaces between objects, the body and ideas in an everyday life context.

Duration : 2m
Maturity Level : all

Liao Wenfeng: The Relatively Motionless Second

Liao Wenfeng: The Relatively Motionless Second

Liao Wenfeng, born 1984 in Jiangxi Province, China, graduated from the Total Art Studio of the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou in 2006. Since 2012 he lives in Berlin, where he completed a Masters degree at the Institute for Art in Context, University of the Arts, Berlin. In his artistic practice he works with video, GIF animation, photography and drawings to investigate the construction of visual play spaces between objects, the body and ideas in an everyday life context.

Duration : 1m
Maturity Level : all