voracious reader + full-time optimist
It has been a challenging fall, a challenging year. Some ups, some downs and a handful of detours. Nevertheless, 2018 was full of new opportunities and learnings as well, the most important of which I’d like to share with you here:
Hayward Gallery at Southbank Centre reopened in Jan 2018 with the first major UK retrospective exhibition of Andreas Gursky. The exhibition maps out the evolution of the acclaimed photographer over a period of more than four decades, encompassing works from his early years to new pictures made in 2017.
Giraffe-like necks, almond eyes and blank stares. The works of Amedeo Modigliani are easy to recognize. Born in Livorno, Italy, he arrived in Paris in 1906 with a burning desire to become an artist. Even though he was best known as a painter, as Tate Modern’s retrospective exhibition reveals, he created impressive sculptures and drawings as well.
Okay, let’s get this out of the way. Guillem Clua’s Smiley is stupendously good. It’s warm, heart-felt and human, walking on the very thin line between romance and reality.
Monday night found me listening to electronic music with Icelandic lyrics whilst standing blindfolded between an Australian girl and a choir bass.
Hallucinating? Unlikely.
Fahrelnissa Zeid is renowned for her vibrant abstract paintings – a colourful and energetic fusion of Islamic, Byzantine, Arab and Persian influences with a pronounced European touch: the result of her being trained at École de Paris (School of Paris) in the 1950s and leading a cosmopolitan life as Prince and Iraqi ambassador Zeid Al-Hussein’s wife. Fahrelnissa Zeid was also an important figure in the avant-garde d Group that opened the doors for contemporary art trends in Turkey during the early 1940s.
