Synopses & Reviews
Robert Mapplethorpes
Calla Lily. Andy Warhols familiar pop-art panels filled with poppies. David LaChapelles overblown baroque bouquets that upend the conventions of still-life composition. Were accustomed to flowers and mushrooms as seemingly trite decorative motifs, but they have also long been explored as complex subjects by some of the most radical and inventive contemporary artists.
Flowers and Mushrooms takes readers inside the rich and diverse symbolism of its eponymous subjects. Flowers have at times stood for freshness and fertility, transience and death. In addition to its ubiquitous and much-maligned image as a hallucinogen, the mushroom has throughout history signified health and life and served as an important symbol within religious ritual. In recent years though, flowers and mushrooms have become a focus in contemporary art, with artists manipulating the many clichés that surround them and adapting their representation to produce new and unexpected layers of meaning, from social criticism to feminism and the conceptual framework of the erotic. Among the leading plant portraitists” are the Swiss duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss, whose series of forty photographs epitomize the potential to shed new light on familiar objects by presenting them in unusual context. In addition to Fischli and Weiss, Flowers and Mushrooms includes photographs, paintings, and installations by Anna Atkins, Karl Blossfeldt, Imogen Cunningham, Nathalie Djurberg, Sylvie Fleury, David LaChapelle, Robert Mapplethorpe, Shirana Shahbazi, Luzia Simons, and Andy Warhol, among many others, as well as critical texts by leading art historians.
Synopsis
Few objects have been more symbolic in art through the ages than flowers: they have represented freshness and fertility, love in its many manifestations, transience and death. And yet in recent times they have often been reduced to a simple decorative motif. The mushroom has played a role as a remedy, a hallucinogenin the cultures of Mexico and the Vikings, and as a symbol within religious ritual. Today it can be a cheesy good luck charm or a trite hallucinogen. Contemporary art draws on these clichés and explores the long and rich tradition of such representations, contributing entirely new levels of meaning, from social criticism to feminism and from reflections on the media to the erotic.
Essays by M. Harder, M. Moschik, T. Teufel, P. Weiermair, V. Ziegelmaier et al.
Synopsis
Art/Histories sets out to broaden our understanding of history by looking at it through artefacts and their histories and works of art and the histories they tell. It takes a broad perspective, looking at art that reflects on history and contemporary events as well as its own involvement. The works examined span the period from the sixteenth century to the present.
How is history written? Whose mission is it to write it? How objective is current scholarly research, and the historic documents on which it is based? A painting by Jand#246;rg Immendorff and Felix Droese from 1974 is entitled "New War and#8211; New Art". Indeed, the recent troubles in crisis regions have inspired and generated a new wave of contemporary art with innovative ways of portraying history. Art/Histories presents art and artists engaged with history in a broad historical framework, including those looking back and those depicting the harsh realities of the present.
Synopsis
History is constructed through the continual reinterpretation of artifacts that preserve historical events. But can these artifacts be taken as objective facts? For centuries, artists have offered through their work contrary meanings for both historical and contemporary events. In times or places of crisis, the power of art to depict harsh realities and new ways of understanding history have been particularly pronounced.
Art/Histories looks at history through the lens of artworks from the sixteenth century to the present, including works from Otto Dix, Anselm Kiefer, Kandauml;the Kollwitz, Alice Creischer, Jandouml;rg Immendorff, Felix Droese, and many others. Drawing on the world-class collections of the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Sabine Breitwieser examines the stories these works tell about the events depicted, as well as the artistsandrsquo; involvement with them. With nearly three hundred full-color illustrations, the book challenges many of the tools currently used to examine and evaluate history.
About the Author
The Museum der Moderne Salzburg is renowned for its exhibitions of twentieth- and twenty-first-century art.Sabine Breitwieser is director of theMuseum der Moderne Salzburg, renowned for its exhibitions of twentieth- and twenty-first-century art.
Table of Contents
Flowers and Mushrooms
Toni Stooss
Field of Experimentation and Inspiration.
Two Centuries of Still Lifes and Studies of Nature
Mila Moschik
Leopold Trattinnick
William Henry Fox Talbot
Anna Atkins
Alois Auer von Welsbach
“Meurer-Broncen”
Reinhold Brendel
Martin Gerlach
Charles Harry Jones
Robert von Stockert
Karl Blossfeldt
Paul Dobe
Albert Renger-Patzsch
Lou Bonin-Tchimoukoff
Paul Wolff
Imogen Cunningham
August Sander
Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose
Matthias Harder
Andrew Zuckerman
Carsten Höller
Hans-Peter Feldmann
Seiichi Furuya
Manfred Willmann
Luzia Simons
Giovanni Castell
Christopher Beane
Balthasar Burkhard
Ernst Haas
Diana Thater
Nature versus Artificiality. Domesticated Nature
Veit Ziegelmaier
Andy Warhol
Pipilotti Rist
Gitte Schäfer
Thomas Stimm
Nam June Paik
Peter Fischli/David Weiss
Zeger Reyers and Lee Ranaldo
Katharina Malli
Georgia Creimer
Stefan Waibel
Sylvie Fleury
Dieter Huber
Botany, Eroticism and Sexuality. Notes on Symbols,
Analogies and Projections in Contemporary Art
Peter Weiermair
Robert Mapplethorpe
Nobuyoshi Araki
Rolf Koppel
Xiao Hui Wang
Chen Lingyang
Michael Wesely
Shirana Shahbazi
Linder
Les Fleurs du Mal. On Realities and Appearances
Tina Teufel
David LaChapelle
Marc Quinn
Judith Huemer
Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg
Eliška Bartek
Paloma Navares
Elfriede Mejchar
Vera Lutter
A Fool for Mushrooms. An Essay
A Story in Itself
Peter Handke
Appendix
List of Exhibited Works of Art
Acknowledgements
Picture Credits