Hasta La Ideas

An unlikely exhibition pits the New York School rebel against Renaissance Masters

It’s hard to imagine that Cy Twombly, with his canvases composed of angry scratch marks and messy swathes of paint, would have been influenced by 16th-century French painting. But the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin’s leading modern art museum, proposes just that in its exhibition “Cy Twombly & The School of Fontainebleau“. The School of Fontainebleau was a Mannerist decorative style led, oddly enough, by two Italian artists Rosso Fiorentino (1494-1540) and Francesco Primaticcio (1504-1570), who were commissioned to decorate the Palace of Fontainebleau, built on the edge of a forest 45 miles from Paris for the king’s hunting retreats.

Fiorentino and Primaticcio oversaw everything from the paintings and frescos to tapestries and sculptures, and even used “graphic media to disseminate their programmatic style,” making them not only some of the most renowned artists of the period, but the most media-savvy as well.

Flash forward two and half centuries to Twombly and the New York School of painters. After Twombly left New York and the studio he shared with Robert Rauschenberg (whose works are shown in the same gallery at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, along with other prominent figures from the New York School), Twombly moved to Italy where he engaged with European art history in a way he never had before. He was especially moved by Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), whose style was heavily influenced by Fiorentino and Primaticcio’s graphics. Even though his admiration for the Classical Baroque style seems unlikely, in 2008 Twombly admitted, “I would have liked to have been Poussin, if I’d had a choice, in another time.”

Like Poussin, Twombly often explored myths in his work. “Leda and the Swan” is, of course, about how Zeus transformed himself into a swan in order to come down to earth and rape the mortal Leda, and his “Apollo and The Artist” series is comprised of eight drawings of inscriptions of the word “Virgil”. More specifically, Twombly’s “Empire of Flora” is a direct reference to Poussin’s painting of the same name and explores similar themes of metamorphosis “set in a heroic landscape as an amorous allegory of desire.”

When viewed side by side, you can see elements of Twombly’s pencil work in Poussin’s sketches and studies for larger oil paintings like “The Conversion of St. Paul”. Though it’s not uncommon for modern art museums like the Hamburger Bahnhof to have amassed a collection of modern painters like Twombly, Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, it is uncommon to see their work curated in direct relation to centuries-old painting, and by making unique connections curators Eugen Blume and Matilda Felix manage to keep works in heavy rotation as fresh and exciting as they were when Twombly’s controversial scratch marks first shook up the art world.

“Cy Twombly & The School of Fontainebleau” runs through October 2012. Find image credits after the jump.

Hamburger Bahnhof

Invalidenstraße 50-51

10557 Berlin, Germany

Image credits:

Empire of Flora: “Empire of Flora” (1961), by Twombly

School of Fontainebleau: “School of Fontainebleau” (1960), by Twombly

Poussin: a study for “The Conversion of St. Paul” (1657) by Nicolas Poussin

Thyrsis: “Thyrsis” (1977), by Twombly

Slideshow: there are no horizontal crossbeams to interrupt the vertically striped wooden batons that clad this house outside Munich by German architects Titus Bernhard.

Matching wooden slats frame the building’s deep-set windows, which fold around the corners of walls as well as up over the concealed eaves.

The structure below the wooden cladding is constructed from prefabricated elements that were assembled onsite.

The name of the three-storey residence is House 11×11, which relates to its square shaped dimensions in plan.

The lowest level is an underground basement, while an open-plan living and dining room occupies the ground floor and a bedroom and two offices are located upstairs.

See more houses in Germany here.

Photography is by Jens Weber & Orla Conolly.

Here’s some more information from Titus Bernhard Architekten:

House 11×11

The idea behind House 11 x 11 was to design an apparently compact house of homogenous materials, with a low external surface but as large a usable area as possible, a house that serves a family as an inhabitable sculpture and shows its exterior as an image of the inner organization.

House 11 x 11 is an icon for its users, symbolic and built with a new method of construction: the exterior walls and the wooden roof made of prefabricated elements are covered by a vertical wood-lamella façade without counter-battens, converging on the ridge of the roof.

A pronounced graphic character is the result, reinforced by the variable density and very precise setting of the lamellae, including the integration of the wooden window frames.

The inner organization expresses itself in the open-plan floor space of the ground floor, containing a kernel for secondary uses as a space continuum, connecting optically with the upper story by means of airspaces and cleverly designed lighting.

Architect David Adjaye has revealed plans to group nine of Frankfurt’s existing cultural institutions onto a combined campus in the heart of the city.

The 16.5 hectare site is currently occupied by Frankfurt University but will be vacant by 2014.

Adjaye Associates are proposing to create a single shared foyer, which will connect each of the nine organisations.

Apartments, offices and shops will also be included, creating a mix of uses across the site.

We recently featured David Adjaye’s 2002 project Dirty House as part of our celebration of design in the London borough of Hackney. See the project here.

Here are some more details from Adjaye Associates:

Cultural Campus Frankfurt – Adjaye Associates
Architectural concept: “micro city”

The design concept rests on the extraction of the essential components of a city, which are then compressed to establish a mixture of different uses. The single ingredients become a city in microcosm, or a “micro city”. Within the composition, there are possibilities for people from the cultural industries, academics, residents and office workers to encounter one another within a rich, creative atmosphere. The design fosters interaction and animation thus resulting in new synergies between different creative disciplines.

The “micro city” comprises a central, public and multi-functional space, which combines the main performing spaces of the cultural institutions, retail, cafes and the market hall in an interesting juxtaposition within the main foyer. Forecourts on the perimeter accentuate access points to the main foyer also enabling circulation through the cultural campus, which is porous and open to the city. The different uses are also layered vertically, thus allowing the mix of uses to be carried into the topography.

Client: Forum Kulturcampus Frankfurt e.V.
Programme: urban concept study for a cultural campus which includes 9 cultural institutions and their main performing spaces and a mixture of other uses (retail, cafes, offices, residential)
Appointment: feasibility study
Site Area: masterplan site in total 16,5 hectares
Building Height: foyer 9m and main performing spaces 17m, higher buildings 25-54m
Number of storeys: foyer and main performing spaces I, higher buildings VI – XIII
No. of Offices: 13,0%
No. of Apartments: 33,7%
No. of Retail: 8,6%
No. of Cultural Use: 44,7%
Cladding – materials: glass/ stone

Slideshow: this all-grey apartment block in Berlin by German studio BCO Architekten has five skewed bay windows that twist away from its facade.

Below these windows, a narrow strip of glazing reveals a basement-level gallery located beneath the apartments.

Gallery visitors enter the building through a glazed door, where a smaller ground floor exhibition room leads them down to the larger space below.

The four apartments occupy four floors of the building, although three of them are split across two storeys.

Other recent projects we’ve featured from Germany include a huge cantilevered altar and an underground gallery – see them all here.

Photography is by Werner Huthmacher.

Here’s some more text from BCO Architekten:

Linienstr. 23, Berlin

Design of a contemporary, versatile mixed used development directly behind the Volksbühnen theater on the Linienstr. in Berlin’s historic Mitte district.

Context

The volume and massing of the building take their cues from the historic ensemble architecture surrounding the Volksbühne.

The facade is entirely excecuted in a single colour, with sublte differences in texture and shade contriving to match and sample the look and feel of the existing neighbourhood.

The plaster, doors, window frames, blinds, garden stairs and all fixtures and fittings are painted stone gray to match the facade.

This rigourous monotone composition also conceptually underlines the tight building envelope required by a zero-energy building.

The composition of the windows serve as a counterpoint to this theme, where the large openings stand proud of the facade, tilted slightly to the side to add rhythm and play to the facade.

Reflections of the streetcape are unexpected and askew, the windows become the picture frames of the street.

Gallery

The gallery opens up to the street with a large glazed frontage.

The visitor is guided down a stair to a large, almost 5m hight exhibition hall, glimpsed from the street and garden with a band of clerestory glazing.

Apartment & Maisonettes: the building contains one garden maisonette, one single storey appartment, and two penthouse maisonettes.

Fixtures and fittings are simple and clear, excecuted in the very highest quality, using the best materials.

The apartments have 3m standard ceiling heights, double height spaces of 6.5m – except for the one-storey apartment gallery, and large glazed openings serve to create generous, light filled living space.

The apartments are concieved as an open sequence of spaces arranged around a central service core containing kitchens, bathrooms and interior stairs.

The service cores also house the full height sliding walls that can be pulled out to divide up the spaces as required, allowing for full user customisation of the spaces.

Energy Concept: the “Passivhaus” is totally energy-optimised. The highly insulated building envelope consists of an eiFs system with 3-way glazing.

Room temperature is regulated by a ventilation system with 98% heat recovery.

The low remaining heating requirements are served by a geothermal installation and solar collectors on the roof.

Potable water is heated locally in fresh water stations (15% energy savings compared to central heat- ing), other water is provided by a grey water system.

A photovoltaic installation on the roof feeds into the grid to offset conventional electric consumption.

The large, south facing windows to the street are fitted with reflective blinds to reduce heat gain in the summer and allow solar heat input in winter, as well as offering discretion all year round.

BCO Architekten
Busch Wameling, Gotaut, Schleipen & Wameling
Project address: Linienstr. 23, 10178 Berlin-Mitte
Client: Way Linienstr. 23
Completion: May 2011

Ethereal neon and abstract forms in new work by Evan Gruzis

Opening tomorrow at Duve Berlin, an exhibition of new work by Evan Gruzis explores the interstices of waking and dreaming life. “Alpha Wave” derives its aesthetic from the afterimage effect—the “burning” of an image on ones vision after the original image has disappeared. Gruzis—a young artist whose resume already boasts work in the Whitney Museum Collection and a solo show at Deitch—presents a series of hauntingly minimal works on paper and through video.

While his past work bears the mark of nostalgia for Hollywood of the 1980s—a byproduct of his time spent in LA—this collection marks significant growth. Gruzis ditches pop elements in favor of a more streamlined look, going beyond gloss and neon to convey the “alpha wave” narrative throughout the work. While he made a name for himself based on his masterful employment of india ink, the artist has turned mainly to watercolor in this collection. Gruzis uses a liberal amount of water in the creation of his gradients, which are painted on “arches aquarelle” paper. Stretching the paint, he slowly builds layers to create his transitions. The photorealistic effect looks to be the product of a neon light show or early digital design. In addition to watercolor, Gruzis employs graphite and acrylic into most of the works that are included in Alpha Wave.

One of the standout works, “Movie”, is a purple canvas of watercolor, gouache, india ink and spray paint. Highlighted with pinpoints of star-like specks, the somber, glowing piece conveys a unique effect that serves as testament to Gruzis’ curious experimentation.

The exhibition also includes “TV”, an abstract video work of projected LED lights. Interpretive and hypnotic, the installation carries Gruzis’ dream-like sensibility. Gruzis first made his way onto our radar last year in his collaboration with Rafael de Cardenas called Exotic Beta, though this exhibition certainly sets him apart in his own right.

“Alpha Wave” will be on view at Duve Berlin through 20 April 2012.

Duve Berlin

9 March – 20 April 2012

Invalidenstr. 90

Berlin, DE 10115