Opening November 15 at The Met Breuer, the exhibition Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed will feature 43 of Painter Edvard Munch’s’ compositions created over a span of six decades, including 16 self-portraits and works that have never before been seen in the United States.

Edvard Munch (12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian painter and printmaker whose intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes built upon some of the main tenets of late 19th-century Symbolism and greatly influenced German Expressionism in the early 20th century. His best-known work is The Scream, painted in 1893. The Scream exists in four versions: two pastels (1893 and 1895) and two paintings (1893 and 1910). There are also several lithographs of The Scream (1895 and later).

The Scream by Edvard Munch

David Hockney ’s Portraits: It’s hard to know where I end, and they begin.

Yes, David Hockney has gone back to painting portraits. And, according to the master, there is as much of him in the painting as there is of the subject. His statement ‘It’s hard to know where I end, and they begin’ is the leitmotif of the exhibit.

In the Ca’ Pesaro Museum in Venice, Italy, the exhibition ‘82 portraits and 1 still life’ by David Hockney is showing. Over the course of the last four years or so, he has painted portraits mainly of people who mean something in his life. There are friends, assistants, dealers, housekeepers, and – some of – their children depicted.

With some of the portraits, David Hockney gives some more information as to the circumstances of the ‘sit’ and what his relationship is to the subject. These are the more interesting portraits, because they come alive more than the others.

For instance, in one of the portraits, there is a lady depicted who had just lost her father. Looking at the painting, you already think she is not looking happy. Giving the background information explains that. And he goes on to explain that they rescheduled their ‘sitting’ and that he in the meantime painted the 1 still life that is part of the exhibit. A bench with fruits.

It’s, therefore, a pity that with a number of them, he only states ‘longtime friend’. But from the faces, and to some extent the body posture, you do get a peek at the person behind it anyway. Or inside it. And that even though he doesn’t paint much detail. His style is somewhere in between impressionist, or expressionist considering the color palette, and realist.

Apart from the subject, he kept the rest of the painting ‘the same’. The wall, the floor, and the chair are constants in the pictures. Ok, he changes the colors of the wall and floor around sometimes, or they are a slightly different hue, minor detail, but that same background focusses your attention to the person in the middle. And that is of course what it’s all about.

And the postures that people came up with to be painted in, are somehow more varied than you would expect. These are also giving you clues about the person depicted, of course. As well as the clothes they choose to be painted in. Some of them really took this seriously and came in a gala outfit. They came to be ‘immortalized’. Others just sat in their everyday attire, kind of smiling away. Very telling about the person, of course.

At the back of the exhibition, there is a wall with visitor’s own versions of a Hockney’s portrait. The backdrop and chair are also there. It’s part of the program for visiting school classes. To involve them in the show. They can ‘put themselves in the picture’, so to speak. And that is a great way of raising interest in modern art with young people, I think.

David Hockney ’s Portraits exhibition runs until 22 October 2017, after which it will go on to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, where it will show from 10 November 2017 until 25 February 2018, and the LA County Museum of Art, USA, showing there from 1 April to 29 July 2018.

Zaha Hadid in Italy: There should never be an end to experimentation.

One year after her untimely death, there is an exhibition of the work of Iranian architect Zaha Hadid in the Maxxi Museum in Rome. And it couldn’t have been a more appropriate place: the reconstruction of the old building in which the museum is housed is done by the master herself! Her signature unusual points of view of the interior, articulating space inside and out, is omnipresent throughout the building.

Focussing mainly on the buildings and projects she executed in Italy, but leaving room for a selection of her work elsewhere in the world, that signifies her development as an artist as well as an architect, the exhibit shows the marriage she made synthesizing elements of the natural environment and cultural surroundings from her childhood with the modern use of material and futuristic look of sinuous, flowing lines, and curvilinear geometries.

In addition to the buildings she designed as an architect, she also tried her hand on furniture, interior decor items such as vases, and jewelry. And all with ravishing results: I wouldn’t mind owning the gray, simulated leather couch in those unusual bendy shapes and flowing lines of hers!

Many designs, buildings as well as other designs, made me think of science fiction movies and series I have seen at one time or another. Some buildings echo Stanley Kubric’s 2001 A Space Odyssee, the white rounded interior of the space vessel, and its hallucinatory board computer HALL, for instance. And the use of Skai leather in couches next to the flowing asymmetric lines of the design, made me think of the tv-series The Jetsons. In a design for a hexagonal building complex and its surrounding grounds, I could imagine the swimming pool with sliding cover of the Thunderbirds tv-series. And the atomic age of the 50s and the 60s, including the outfits of Diana Rigg in The Avengers tv-series, came to mind often also, while taking in the different designs of buildings and objects.

But looking at some designs you see the influence of the environment in which she grew up, the organic, natural phenomena as she knew them resonating in it: wind-eroded rocks which also vaguely imitate interconnected beehives, shell structures worn to the bone, plant forms with their bloom reaching for the skies after rain, and leaves’ vines in horizontal structures.

Three high rises pointing upward called ‘Blossoming’ actually remind me more of a couple of tuning-forks. Looking at other high rises, they seem to me pressed together by some giant thumbs halfway through, and yet other high rises resemble vertical mazes.

One other building looks like a pile of dishes that are not stacked too neatly, which is called ‘incremental twisting’ in architectural language, and look like they are on the point of toppling over.

This all just goes to show that her designs spark imagination, and are never easy, straight forward structures, that you just walk past without noticing. Instead these eye-catching, arresting, exciting and slightly bewildering structures are audacious and utopian in nature. They call into question everything you thought you knew and believed about architecture.

She combines in her structures geometric forms in such a way that they almost give an impression of speed and movement, which of course is in blatant contrast to and, moreover, the very negation of the classic nature of buildings as silent, immobile structures. Her dynamic approach in design takes you away from that classic nature and pushes the presence of the building in your face.

Throughout her life Hadid kept experimenting, changing the lines of her structures from sharp and angular, to the flowing ones of plant-like structures, to the circular ones of beehives. Application of new technologies and solutions never ceased to interest her.

‘There should never be an end to experimentation’

Pioneering with new approaches, and new materials, she was ever investigating the premises of architecture and design. Trained in design, with its notions of field, mathematical flux, and vectors, she worked with adaptable and evolving design processes, from parametric design to the algorithmic approach. Using as her USP her design intuition, spatial sensibility, and material experimentation, she came to her extraordinary designs which can fortunately be admired for ages to come.

The scale on which she envisioned buildings grew ever bigger. She wasn’t a woman of small mind. Along with her success, of course her vision grew bigger. And given the opportunity, she went for the stars. Of course.

Also in the location of the places and cities where her buildings arose, you can see her growing name and fame reflected: starting in marginal and out of the way places she worked her way towards more prominent locations like New York and other world cities of much renown.

In the exhibition, you will find scale models, pictures, and wall projections of her work. The breath-taking photography, done by Hélène Binet, lends her designs an extra dimension – as if they needed that!

The exhibition Zaha Hadid in Italy, can be visited in the Maxxi in Rome, and runs until 14 January 2018. Go & see it, and get inspired to do some experimenting of your own, in whatever you’re into!

Zaha Hadid Exhibition opening hours and guide

Tuesday to Wednesday 11.00 – 19.00

Thursday 11.00 – 22.00

Friday to Sunday 11.00 – 19.00

Closed Mondays, December 25, May 1

Download a brochure to prepare your visit:  Exhibition Guide

Opening November 15 at The Met Breuer, the exhibition Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed will feature 43 of Painter Edvard Munch’s’ compositions created over a span of six decades, including 16 self-portraits and works that have never before been seen in the United States.

Edvard Munch (12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian painter and printmaker whose intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes built upon some of the main tenets of late 19th-century Symbolism and greatly influenced German Expressionism in the early 20th century. His best-known work is The Scream, painted in 1893. The Scream exists in four versions: two pastels (1893 and 1895) and two paintings (1893 and 1910). There are also several lithographs of The Scream (1895 and later).

The Scream by Edvard Munch

David Hockney ’s Portraits: It’s hard to know where I end, and they begin.

Yes, David Hockney has gone back to painting portraits. And, according to the master, there is as much of him in the painting as there is of the subject. His statement ‘It’s hard to know where I end, and they begin’ is the leitmotif of the exhibit.

In the Ca’ Pesaro Museum in Venice, Italy, the exhibition ‘82 portraits and 1 still life’ by David Hockney is showing. Over the course of the last four years or so, he has painted portraits mainly of people who mean something in his life. There are friends, assistants, dealers, housekeepers, and – some of – their children depicted.

With some of the portraits, David Hockney gives some more information as to the circumstances of the ‘sit’ and what his relationship is to the subject. These are the more interesting portraits, because they come alive more than the others.

For instance, in one of the portraits, there is a lady depicted who had just lost her father. Looking at the painting, you already think she is not looking happy. Giving the background information explains that. And he goes on to explain that they rescheduled their ‘sitting’ and that he in the meantime painted the 1 still life that is part of the exhibit. A bench with fruits.

It’s, therefore, a pity that with a number of them, he only states ‘longtime friend’. But from the faces, and to some extent the body posture, you do get a peek at the person behind it anyway. Or inside it. And that even though he doesn’t paint much detail. His style is somewhere in between impressionist, or expressionist considering the color palette, and realist.

Apart from the subject, he kept the rest of the painting ‘the same’. The wall, the floor, and the chair are constants in the pictures. Ok, he changes the colors of the wall and floor around sometimes, or they are a slightly different hue, minor detail, but that same background focusses your attention to the person in the middle. And that is of course what it’s all about.

And the postures that people came up with to be painted in, are somehow more varied than you would expect. These are also giving you clues about the person depicted, of course. As well as the clothes they choose to be painted in. Some of them really took this seriously and came in a gala outfit. They came to be ‘immortalized’. Others just sat in their everyday attire, kind of smiling away. Very telling about the person, of course.

At the back of the exhibition, there is a wall with visitor’s own versions of a Hockney’s portrait. The backdrop and chair are also there. It’s part of the program for visiting school classes. To involve them in the show. They can ‘put themselves in the picture’, so to speak. And that is a great way of raising interest in modern art with young people, I think.

David Hockney ’s Portraits exhibition runs until 22 October 2017, after which it will go on to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, where it will show from 10 November 2017 until 25 February 2018, and the LA County Museum of Art, USA, showing there from 1 April to 29 July 2018.