Mies van der Rohe envisaged a glass and steel temple for the New National Gallery of Art, Berlin - a sort of shrine to German art. The commission was one which touched the architect deeply, coming as it did after a 60-year career; it was the last building completed in Mies's lifetime and the culmination of his life's work and aesthetic ideas.
This book offers a wide ranging collection of work by Picasso; including paintings, drawings and sculptures, all produced in high quality, large-format illustrations.
There are artists whose métier is the observation or documentation of the world, and artists who set the world aside altogether to build their own visionary cosmology, designing its constituent parts from scratch as a personal mythology relayed in motifs. Paul Klee (1879-1940) was such an artist, as his aphorism "Art does not reproduce the visible, rather it makes visible" testifies, and The Klee Universe addresses his work from this perspective. In 1906, Klee noted in his diary, "All will be Klee," and in 1911, as the encyclopedist of his cosmos, he began to meticulously chronicle his works in a catalogue that, by the time he died, was to contain more than 9,000 items. Here, in the fashion of an Orbis Pictus or a Renaissance emblem book, Klee's oeuvre is made legible as a cogent entirety, in thematic units address: the human life cycle, from birth and childhood to sexual desire, parenthood and death; music, architecture, theater and religion; plants, animals and landscapes; and, finally, darker, destructive forces in the shape of war, fear and death. The Klee Universe reimagines the artist as a Renaissance man, an artist of great learning whose cosmos proves to be a coherent system of ideas and images. Paul Klee (1879-1940) was born and died in Switzerland, though he never obtained Swiss citizenship. Technically of German nationality, he taught at the Bauhaus from 1921 to 1926, alongside Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc and others. Seventeen of his works were included in the Nazi's infamous 1937 Munich exhibition of "degenerate art."
The Mies van Der Rohe building is part of the late production of the German architect but is the one that encloses all the essence of his research. A building where the architectural type of "museum" perfectly fits the type of the "temple." The result is a quiet sacred place able to express itself beyond time. The most interesting thing, in fact, is that this is the Mies' building around which most things have happened. From the IBA building by James Stirling to the monumental Potsdammer Platz site all things have changed around it. But, if you visit now Berlin, you will find that the Neue Nationalgalerie site keeps his holyness alive. This book show a clean architectural and proportional graphic analysis of the museum through a huge number of sketches, 3d prospective and axonometric views and a complete reconstruction of the process that lead Mies to build this wonderful building.
The Neue Nationalgalerie on the Berlin Kulturforum is an architectural icon as well as the crowning conclusion of architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's life work. An outstandingly successful and sensitive refurbishment and modernization project was carried out for the building's most significant overhaul since its opening in 1968. It complies with the requirements of a contemporary museum exhibition facility, as well as monument-preservation guidelines. David Chipperfield Architects developed the renovation concept under the motto of "As much Mies as possible." This publication provides deep insight into the planning, execution, monument preservation and restoration from the perspective of those involved. The exemplary handling of the historical fabric is presented in design documents and numerous large-format photographs that impressively illustrate the design stage, the construction site and the results of the refurbishment. With articles by David Chipperfield, Bernhard Furrer, Gunny Harboe, Joachim Jaeger, Dirk Lohan, Fritz Neumeyer, Alexander Schwarz, Gerrit Wegener, and some 30 project managers
The Mies van der Rohe-designed museum reopens with a presentation of the highlights of classic modernism between 1900 and 1945 from the Nationalgalerie?s holdings. The paintings and sculptures make for a vivid illustration of various tendencies in the art of the period, with emphases on Expressionism, the Bauhaus, the New Objectivity, and Surrealism. They also document the close ties between art and society in the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, and under National Socialism?from Paula Modersohn-Becker and Edvard Munch to George Grosz and Lotte Laserstein and on to Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí. 0The catalogue provides complete documentation of the works on view in the exhibition. Introductory essays at the beginning of each section are complemented by explanatory notes on selected major works and brief discussions of special aspects.00Exhibition: Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, Germany (starting August 2021).
Edited by Leah Dickerman. Essays by Brigid Doherty, Sabine T. Kriebel, Dorothea Dietrich, Michael R. Taylor, Janine Mileaf and Matthew S. Witkovsky. Foreword by Earl A. Powell III.
This new volume tells the story of some of the paintings rescued by the the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives (MFAA) organization, the so-called "Monuments Men." In December 1945, 202 paintings, found in German salt mines 2,100 feet underground, where they had been hidden to escape the allied bombing of Berlin, were brought to the United States "for safe keeping" by the Department of the Army. They were exhibited in 1948 at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, before some of them were sent on a whistle-stop tour of 13 US cities, despite furious opposition from museum directors, Gallery staff, the public, government officials, and a resolution from 98 leading art authorities demanding the immediate return of the works to Germany. All the paintings, examples of Flemish, Dutch, German, French, English, and Italian Schools, were from museums in Berlin, and had been found in April 1945, along with 100 tons of Reichsbank gold, by the special team of art historians and experts, seconded in the US army, and charged with locating and restituting works of art looted by the Nazis. This book is the first to consider the paintings themselves; it features 22 artworks that were in the original NGA exhibition, including four paintings on loan from Berlin, augmented by others from Cincinnati Art Museum, National Gallery of Art, Washington, The Getty Museum, Miami University (Oxford, OH), and the Taft Museum.
"Enigmatic magic, erotic sensuality and dark dreamworlds all characterise Symbolism, which evolved as an art current from the 1880s on - with Brussels advancing to become a centre of activity in the development of European art. The tendency towards the morbid and the decadent was most pronounced in Belgian Symbolism. Many of the impulses for this avant-garde came from Belgian artists, such as the disreputable Félicien Rops, the subtle Fernand Khnopff, the occult Jean Delville and the eccentric Léon Spilliaert and James Ensor."--back cover.
