Roundup: Pop Culture & the Arts ...
Movies, Documentaries and Museum Exhibits
This page features links to reviews of movies, documentaries and exhibits with a historical theme. Listings are in reverse chronological order. Descriptions are taken directly from the linked publication. If you have articles you think should be listed on the Pop Culture page, please send them to the editor editor@historynewsnetwork.org.
SOURCE: Jerry Large in the Seattle Times (4-6-09)
Titus Kaphar gives history a chance to live in the present.
He's a young painter who had turned his passion for history into a body of work that asks contemporary questions of historically significant paintings, mostly from the 18th and 19th centuries.
The question he asked George Washington drew me to a showing of Kaphar's work, which opened at the Seattle Art Museum Friday and runs through Sept. 6.
Kaspar copied part of that famous painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware, just showing Washington and two dark hands on an oar. He made it big, then he cut Washington out and turned him upside down, making the painting look like a giant playing card.
Washington gambled with the lives of an entire people by not trying to end slavery.
He called the painting "George, George, George." Kaphar told me it's meant to be said in exasperation. He knows the complex situation Washington faced and the turmoil that shows...
He's a young painter who had turned his passion for history into a body of work that asks contemporary questions of historically significant paintings, mostly from the 18th and 19th centuries.
The question he asked George Washington drew me to a showing of Kaphar's work, which opened at the Seattle Art Museum Friday and runs through Sept. 6.
Kaspar copied part of that famous painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware, just showing Washington and two dark hands on an oar. He made it big, then he cut Washington out and turned him upside down, making the painting look like a giant playing card.
Washington gambled with the lives of an entire people by not trying to end slavery.
He called the painting "George, George, George." Kaphar told me it's meant to be said in exasperation. He knows the complex situation Washington faced and the turmoil that shows...
Monday, April 6, 2009 - 20:19
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SOURCE: AP (4-6-09)
A group that advocates the separation of church and state is warning a Nevada city that it will sue if the city gives anymore money to a church that Mark Twain helped build in his 20s.
The Americans United for Separation of Church and State decided not to sue over Carson City's two past payments to the First Presbyterian Church, because courts are generally reluctant to force religious institutions to return funds already awarded, attorney Alex Luchenitser said.
In February, supervisors awarded $78,800 to the church for sidewalks, landscaping and roof repairs. In 2006, the city gave $67,700 to help with design costs for a new church, which is adjacent to the original one built in the 1860s.
The Americans United for Separation of Church and State decided not to sue over Carson City's two past payments to the First Presbyterian Church, because courts are generally reluctant to force religious institutions to return funds already awarded, attorney Alex Luchenitser said.
In February, supervisors awarded $78,800 to the church for sidewalks, landscaping and roof repairs. In 2006, the city gave $67,700 to help with design costs for a new church, which is adjacent to the original one built in the 1860s.
Monday, April 6, 2009 - 19:07
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (4-1-09)
The bucket is actually a glass finger bowl, intricately gilded and decorated with colourful enamels, that dates from 14th century Egypt or Syria. It was made during the Mamluk dynasty that ruled the region from 1250 to 1517.
Passed around during meals attended by the dynasty's elite, an inscription on it reads: "I am a toy for the fingers shaped as a vessel. I contain cool water."
Passed around during meals attended by the dynasty's elite, an inscription on it reads: "I am a toy for the fingers shaped as a vessel. I contain cool water."
Monday, April 6, 2009 - 19:03
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (4-2-09)
A "binge-eating disorder" and subsequent lead poisoning contributed to the death of the Baroque composer George Frederic Handel, according to a music academic.
But more than two decades of ill health ironically helped Handel produce some of the best music of his life, Dr David Hunter of the University of Texas at Austin has claimed.
He has published his theory in a catalogue for a new exhibition called Handel Reveal'd at the Handel House Museum in London, which opens next week to mark the 250th anniversary of the composer's death.
But more than two decades of ill health ironically helped Handel produce some of the best music of his life, Dr David Hunter of the University of Texas at Austin has claimed.
He has published his theory in a catalogue for a new exhibition called Handel Reveal'd at the Handel House Museum in London, which opens next week to mark the 250th anniversary of the composer's death.
Monday, April 6, 2009 - 19:00
SOURCE: Observer (UK) (4-5-09)
A drawing of Henry VIII's famous victory over the French at the "Siege of Boulogne" in 1544 is to go on public display for the first time in more than 400 years after lying undiscovered and mislabelled in the British Library archives.
The image, drawn by a "war artist" commissioned to record the Tudor king's military achievements, dates to 1545 and is one of four "views" documenting Henry's second invasion of France.
For centuries art historians have pondered why there was never a final picture showing the surrender of the city. Just three drawings survived, one showing Henry landing in Calais, another of him on the way to Boulogne, and a third of the siege in progress.
"Everybody just assumed that the end of the siege had not been done," Peter Barber, head of map collections at the British Library, told the Observer. But due to a cataloguing error the existence of a fourth drawing had gone unnoticed. It only...
The image, drawn by a "war artist" commissioned to record the Tudor king's military achievements, dates to 1545 and is one of four "views" documenting Henry's second invasion of France.
For centuries art historians have pondered why there was never a final picture showing the surrender of the city. Just three drawings survived, one showing Henry landing in Calais, another of him on the way to Boulogne, and a third of the siege in progress.
"Everybody just assumed that the end of the siege had not been done," Peter Barber, head of map collections at the British Library, told the Observer. But due to a cataloguing error the existence of a fourth drawing had gone unnoticed. It only...
Monday, April 6, 2009 - 10:07
SOURCE: Times (UK) (4-6-09)
The Tate Gallery provoked a national debate in 1971 with a show where visitors seesawed, slid, balanced, climbed and crawled around the exhibits. It closed after only four days because of the totally unexpected public response. Visitors ran riot, screaming, injuring themselves and generally forgetting that they were British and in a supposedly serious art gallery.
Even so, the art critic Guy Brett, writing in The Times a few days later, suggested that, despite the “pandemonium . . . it would be logical and valuable to continue (the project) as a discussion between the artist, the Tate staff and the public”.
Now, after 38 years, Brett is to get his wish, as Tate Modern prepares to restage the show for a new generation of visitors. Robert Morris, the American conceptual artist who mounted the original show, is reconfiguring his designs for the Turbine Hall.
Morris, who is 78, will be operating in an exhibition space, and for a popular audience,...
Even so, the art critic Guy Brett, writing in The Times a few days later, suggested that, despite the “pandemonium . . . it would be logical and valuable to continue (the project) as a discussion between the artist, the Tate staff and the public”.
Now, after 38 years, Brett is to get his wish, as Tate Modern prepares to restage the show for a new generation of visitors. Robert Morris, the American conceptual artist who mounted the original show, is reconfiguring his designs for the Turbine Hall.
Morris, who is 78, will be operating in an exhibition space, and for a popular audience,...
Monday, April 6, 2009 - 09:47
SOURCE: Spiegel Online (4-3-09)
He looks anxiously at the sky, watching the low-flying fighter planes drop their bombs into the fleeing crowd. It is December 1937, and German businessman John Rabe, the representative of the Siemens Group in the eastern Chinese city of Nanking, is witnessing Japanese fighter pilots as they attack the company's facility there, killing helpless civilians.
In that moment of despair, he suddenly has an idea. Rabe, a long-standing member of the Nazi Party, quickly orders his workers to unfurl an enormous swastika flag that the party had sent to him in China. Then Rabe and large numbers of Chinese crouch under the flag. The ruse works, and the Japanese, allied with the Germans, call off the attack.
The film "John Rabe," a biography of the "good German of Nanking," tells the story of a man who was born in Hamburg in 1882 and is still revered as a national hero in China today. Director Florian Gallenberger, 38, paints a jarring image which is no...
In that moment of despair, he suddenly has an idea. Rabe, a long-standing member of the Nazi Party, quickly orders his workers to unfurl an enormous swastika flag that the party had sent to him in China. Then Rabe and large numbers of Chinese crouch under the flag. The ruse works, and the Japanese, allied with the Germans, call off the attack.
The film "John Rabe," a biography of the "good German of Nanking," tells the story of a man who was born in Hamburg in 1882 and is still revered as a national hero in China today. Director Florian Gallenberger, 38, paints a jarring image which is no...
Monday, April 6, 2009 - 09:04
SOURCE: Slate (4-2-09)
Was Shakespeare a hottie? Was Homer a hunk? John Milton: six-pack abs? Dante: hot or not?
You would think, from recent coverage of the portrait newly claimed to be of Shakespeare (a claim front-paged by the New York Times early last month) that these are valid literary questions rather than evidence that the culture of celebrity has irretrievably corrupted literature.
Fortunately, the Times story was written by the redoubtable John Burns, who included a good dose of skepticism.
Nonetheless, the piece did quote the promotional brochure that is to accompany an exhibition of the "newly discovered" Shakespeare portrait that opens at the Stratford-on-Avon Shakespeare Center on April 23, the bard's birthday. The quotation tells us everything that is wrong with Shakespearean biography—indeed, with most literary biography—and reminded me of the recent profoundly clueless sexsational controversy over the singularity of Hitler's testicle.
You would think, from recent coverage of the portrait newly claimed to be of Shakespeare (a claim front-paged by the New York Times early last month) that these are valid literary questions rather than evidence that the culture of celebrity has irretrievably corrupted literature.
Fortunately, the Times story was written by the redoubtable John Burns, who included a good dose of skepticism.
Nonetheless, the piece did quote the promotional brochure that is to accompany an exhibition of the "newly discovered" Shakespeare portrait that opens at the Stratford-on-Avon Shakespeare Center on April 23, the bard's birthday. The quotation tells us everything that is wrong with Shakespearean biography—indeed, with most literary biography—and reminded me of the recent profoundly clueless sexsational controversy over the singularity of Hitler's testicle.
Monday, April 6, 2009 - 01:25
SOURCE: NYT (4-3-09)
Coney Island was looking pretty good for being dead. A new gear had been put on the Wonder Wheel. The sun licked at the windows of the Freak Bar. There was the smell of fresh-laid paint.
But the condolence calls kept coming: disbelief from Boston, despondency from London. Friends came by on maudlin visits. Ferris wheel lovers sent their deep regrets.
“My own mother calls from Tucson — true story,” said Kenneth Hochman, a marketing executive who does a lot of work in Coney Island. “And she’s from Brooklyn, mind you.” Just the sort of woman who keeps track.
“So she calls a couple of months ago and says: ‘What? You didn’t tell me Coney Island closed?’ ” Indignant rimshot. “My own mother,” he said.
Last September, when the Astroland amusement park, a three-acre sliver of the area, was shut down in a battle with its landlord, erroneous reports went out around the world that all of Coney Island was a corpse. Overnight, it seemed, obituaries...
But the condolence calls kept coming: disbelief from Boston, despondency from London. Friends came by on maudlin visits. Ferris wheel lovers sent their deep regrets.
“My own mother calls from Tucson — true story,” said Kenneth Hochman, a marketing executive who does a lot of work in Coney Island. “And she’s from Brooklyn, mind you.” Just the sort of woman who keeps track.
“So she calls a couple of months ago and says: ‘What? You didn’t tell me Coney Island closed?’ ” Indignant rimshot. “My own mother,” he said.
Last September, when the Astroland amusement park, a three-acre sliver of the area, was shut down in a battle with its landlord, erroneous reports went out around the world that all of Coney Island was a corpse. Overnight, it seemed, obituaries...
Monday, April 6, 2009 - 01:07
SOURCE: NYT (4-3-09)
The fight — striking in its brutality, merciless in its exposing of the truth that both fighters were seriously diminished — went 14 rounds before Frazier’s trainer, Eddie Futch, told his man that he had nothing to be ashamed of, but that he had no business going out for the 15th.
Over the years the fight has prompted the usual sportswriting mix of exhausted hyperbole and intermittent eloquence. It was an unmatched test of wills. It was an exercise in prosecutable malfeasance that left Ali and Frazier permanently damaged. It was the last act in a blood feud involving two black men and matters of race and respect.
For the 16-year-old standing ankle deep in the Garden’s river rapids of Harry M. Stevens beer, the fight was an extended blur during which he juggled the dual fears of Ali losing and being tossed out by a cop. It was hard to see the screen, and the fighters — thicker, slower, stylistically shot — fought in mauling, episodic bursts. It all ended in...
Over the years the fight has prompted the usual sportswriting mix of exhausted hyperbole and intermittent eloquence. It was an unmatched test of wills. It was an exercise in prosecutable malfeasance that left Ali and Frazier permanently damaged. It was the last act in a blood feud involving two black men and matters of race and respect.
For the 16-year-old standing ankle deep in the Garden’s river rapids of Harry M. Stevens beer, the fight was an extended blur during which he juggled the dual fears of Ali losing and being tossed out by a cop. It was hard to see the screen, and the fighters — thicker, slower, stylistically shot — fought in mauling, episodic bursts. It all ended in...
Monday, April 6, 2009 - 01:01
SOURCE: NYT (4-2-09)
Haydn almost certainly encountered him as a child in a Hungarian castle, where the boy’s father was a servant and Haydn was the director of music, and Thomas Jefferson saw him performing in Paris in 1789: a 9-year-old biracial violin prodigy with a cascade of dark curls. While the boy would go on to inspire Beethoven and help shape the development of classical music, he ended up relegated to a footnote in Beethoven’s life.
Rita Dove, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former United States poet laureate, has now breathed life into the story of that virtuoso, George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower, in her new book, “Sonata Mulattica” (W. W. Norton). The narrative, a collection of poems subtitled “A Life in Five Movements and a Short Play,” intertwines fact and fiction to flesh out Bridgetower, the son of a Polish-German mother and an Afro-Caribbean father.
When he died in South London in 1860, his death certificate simply noted that he was a “gentleman.” Ms. Dove imagines...
Rita Dove, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former United States poet laureate, has now breathed life into the story of that virtuoso, George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower, in her new book, “Sonata Mulattica” (W. W. Norton). The narrative, a collection of poems subtitled “A Life in Five Movements and a Short Play,” intertwines fact and fiction to flesh out Bridgetower, the son of a Polish-German mother and an Afro-Caribbean father.
When he died in South London in 1860, his death certificate simply noted that he was a “gentleman.” Ms. Dove imagines...
Monday, April 6, 2009 - 00:55
SOURCE: NYT (4-3-09)
For more than a century, Pullman porters were a part of American train travel, until competition from planes and automobiles led to the decline of sleeper cars. Now the last generation of porters — who played a critical role in African-American history — is rapidly dying off. And Amtrak is attempting to locate the last few for National Train Day.
In 2001, the A. Philip Randolph Museum compiled a national registry of black railroad employees who worked from the late 1800s to 1969, a record that could be useful for historians and genealogists.
“There are a thousand people on this list — as we mark it up, it’s not looking like the same list anymore,” said Hank Ernest, who is coordinating the publicity for Amtrak. Asked how many they had found, he said, “Double digits.”
For his book “Rising From the Rails,” Larry Tye interviewed about two dozen former Pullman porters, so called because they worked for the Pullman Company, which made sleeper cars. “The...
In 2001, the A. Philip Randolph Museum compiled a national registry of black railroad employees who worked from the late 1800s to 1969, a record that could be useful for historians and genealogists.
“There are a thousand people on this list — as we mark it up, it’s not looking like the same list anymore,” said Hank Ernest, who is coordinating the publicity for Amtrak. Asked how many they had found, he said, “Double digits.”
For his book “Rising From the Rails,” Larry Tye interviewed about two dozen former Pullman porters, so called because they worked for the Pullman Company, which made sleeper cars. “The...
Monday, April 6, 2009 - 00:02
SOURCE: Deutsche Welle (3-29-09)
Bauhaus, the modern design movement that originated in the eastern German city of Weimar, marks its 90th birthday on April 1. Celebrations will include a special exhibition at the city's Bauhaus Museum.
Bauhaus might be turning 90, but for enthusiasts of the German design movement, the art, furniture and architecture it inspired still looks fresh and young. The school was founded in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius, who wanted to create something bold and forward-thinking in the wake of World War I, which he described as a "catastrophe of world history."
Gropius was 35 when he applied to the city of Weimar to establish an academy there. By the time he received his permit, he'd penned a manifesto which would prove to be the beginning of an aesthetic upheaval that would reach far beyond Germany's borders.
In a pamphlet he wrote for an April 1919 exhibition entitled "Exhibition of Unknown Architects," Gropius described his goal as...
Bauhaus might be turning 90, but for enthusiasts of the German design movement, the art, furniture and architecture it inspired still looks fresh and young. The school was founded in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius, who wanted to create something bold and forward-thinking in the wake of World War I, which he described as a "catastrophe of world history."
Gropius was 35 when he applied to the city of Weimar to establish an academy there. By the time he received his permit, he'd penned a manifesto which would prove to be the beginning of an aesthetic upheaval that would reach far beyond Germany's borders.
In a pamphlet he wrote for an April 1919 exhibition entitled "Exhibition of Unknown Architects," Gropius described his goal as...
Sunday, April 5, 2009 - 22:10
SOURCE: Bill Moyers Journal on PBS (4-2-09)
BILL MOYERS JOURNAL brings television viewers a deeply moving and intimate performance by award-winning actor Sam Waterston and eminent historian Harold Holzer. Lincoln's Legend and Legacy features the spoken poetry and prose of American writers as different as Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Allen Ginsburg, Langston Hughes, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and many others who have struggled to find words that adequately describe this tall, plain and gangling man and the transcendent significance of his presidency. Responding to the arc of ideas, language and history included in excerpts of their writings, Bill Moyers says, "Lincoln changes as we hear these words, and so does the country."
This special performance edition of BILL MOYERS JOURNAL will be broadcast on PBS at 9 p.m. on April 10th, which is also Good Friday, the tragic day on which Lincoln was shot just as the Civil War was coming to a close. Lincoln's martyrdom catapulted him from president to icon, from...
This special performance edition of BILL MOYERS JOURNAL will be broadcast on PBS at 9 p.m. on April 10th, which is also Good Friday, the tragic day on which Lincoln was shot just as the Civil War was coming to a close. Lincoln's martyrdom catapulted him from president to icon, from...
Thursday, April 2, 2009 - 19:15
SOURCE: NYT (4-1-09)
CBS announced Wednesday the cancellation of the longest-running scripted program in broadcasting history, the soap opera “Guiding Light.”
The show has been on radio and television for 72 years, beginning on NBC radio in 1937 and moving to CBS television in 1952.
The show’s run will end with an episode Sept. 18.
The move came after many years of steeply declining ratings for the hourlong soap, which is owned by Procter & Gamble and thus was a link to the earliest days of daytime serial dramas on radio. The shows were eventually called soap operas because soap companies sponsored them.
The show has been on radio and television for 72 years, beginning on NBC radio in 1937 and moving to CBS television in 1952.
The show’s run will end with an episode Sept. 18.
The move came after many years of steeply declining ratings for the hourlong soap, which is owned by Procter & Gamble and thus was a link to the earliest days of daytime serial dramas on radio. The shows were eventually called soap operas because soap companies sponsored them.
Thursday, April 2, 2009 - 15:12
SOURCE: Times (UK) (4-2-09)
George Frideric Handel was a binge eater and problem drinker whose gargantuan appetites resulted in lead poisoning that eventually killed him, according to a study.
By the time of his death 250 years ago this month, aged 74, the composer of Messiah had for 20 years been fighting severe health problems, including blindness, gout, bouts of paralysis and confused speech.
According to David Hunter, music librarian at the University of Texas and author of more than 60 articles on Handel, these ailments were all linked to lead poisoning brought on by his notoriously heavy consumption of rich foods and alcohol.
Surprisingly little is known about Handel’s private life but evidence from portraits and contemporary descriptions supports the theory that he began to suffer from lead poisoning in 1737, when he temporarily lost the use of his right hand, an incident previously attributed to a stroke...
By the time of his death 250 years ago this month, aged 74, the composer of Messiah had for 20 years been fighting severe health problems, including blindness, gout, bouts of paralysis and confused speech.
According to David Hunter, music librarian at the University of Texas and author of more than 60 articles on Handel, these ailments were all linked to lead poisoning brought on by his notoriously heavy consumption of rich foods and alcohol.
Surprisingly little is known about Handel’s private life but evidence from portraits and contemporary descriptions supports the theory that he began to suffer from lead poisoning in 1737, when he temporarily lost the use of his right hand, an incident previously attributed to a stroke...
Thursday, April 2, 2009 - 08:01
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (4-1-09)
The 22 drawings and paintings taken from one of Germany's pre-war satirical magazines are by a little-known Jewish artist Dodo Burgner, who fled the Nazis in 1936 and settled in Britain with her husband and two children.
The art deco style work dates from 1927 to 1933 and evokes the decadence of bohemian society in pre-war Berlin.
One design shows a couple dancing in front of a jazz band, while another depicts New Year celebrations with a woman holding a pig, a good luck symbol in Germany.
Most of the work was published in the magazine Ulk, edited by Theodor Wolff, a Jewish art critic who founded the German Liberal Democratic Party. He died in 1943, while a prisoner in a concentration camp.
Clare Durham, of the Wiltshire auctioneers, Woolley and Wallis, said: "Ulk was a satirical magazine and the title meant joke or prank...
The art deco style work dates from 1927 to 1933 and evokes the decadence of bohemian society in pre-war Berlin.
One design shows a couple dancing in front of a jazz band, while another depicts New Year celebrations with a woman holding a pig, a good luck symbol in Germany.
Most of the work was published in the magazine Ulk, edited by Theodor Wolff, a Jewish art critic who founded the German Liberal Democratic Party. He died in 1943, while a prisoner in a concentration camp.
Clare Durham, of the Wiltshire auctioneers, Woolley and Wallis, said: "Ulk was a satirical magazine and the title meant joke or prank...
Thursday, April 2, 2009 - 07:45
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (4-1-09)
On the eve of world leaders meeting to avert the worst economic crisis in more than half a century, the V&A showcased its new display – which contains more gold leaf than a whole team of Premier League footballers' mansions.
Nigel Llewellyn, who is curating the exhibition with Michael Snodin, insisted it did not matter that extravagance was currently passé.
He said: "In the midst of all this austerity, what better than to enjoy the Baroque?"
The style originated in 1620s Papal Rome, he said, and spread throughout Europe and the colonies to become what the V&A is calling "the first global style"...
Nigel Llewellyn, who is curating the exhibition with Michael Snodin, insisted it did not matter that extravagance was currently passé.
He said: "In the midst of all this austerity, what better than to enjoy the Baroque?"
The style originated in 1620s Papal Rome, he said, and spread throughout Europe and the colonies to become what the V&A is calling "the first global style"...
Thursday, April 2, 2009 - 07:43
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (4-1-09)
The bucket is actually a glass finger bowl, intricately gilded and decorated with colourful enamels, that dates from 14th century Egypt or Syria. It was made during the Mamluk dynasty that ruled the region from 1250 to 1517.
Passed around during meals attended by the dynasty's elite, an inscription on it reads: "I am a toy for the fingers shaped as a vessel. I contain cool water."
Bought by Baron Alphonse de Rothschild at a Paris auction in 1893, it had remained in the family for over 100 years and became known as the Rothschild Bucket...
Passed around during meals attended by the dynasty's elite, an inscription on it reads: "I am a toy for the fingers shaped as a vessel. I contain cool water."
Bought by Baron Alphonse de Rothschild at a Paris auction in 1893, it had remained in the family for over 100 years and became known as the Rothschild Bucket...
Thursday, April 2, 2009 - 07:41
SOURCE: History Today (4-2-09)
A fantastic new exhibition at London's Wellcome Collection charts the sometimes blurred line between artistic genius and insanity. Madness & Modernity focuses on how the issue of mental illness was broached in fin de siécle Vienna. This was a period of artistic flux in Austria's imperial capital, with radical departures from tradition felt across the arts.
Prominent artists of the day crossed paths with mental illness. The first room opens, for example, with a trio of spookily deranged busts by the sculptor Messerschmidt. Next the viewer can observe the grandiose Steinhof sanatorium, 'the city on a hill', built by one of the most celebrated modernist architects of his day, Otto Wagner.
Portraitists such as Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka broke from the norm by depicting their subjects in contorted, often spasmodic positions. Not least of these subjects was Schiele himself who, in a series of famous self-portraits, portrayed his own body in a range of...
Prominent artists of the day crossed paths with mental illness. The first room opens, for example, with a trio of spookily deranged busts by the sculptor Messerschmidt. Next the viewer can observe the grandiose Steinhof sanatorium, 'the city on a hill', built by one of the most celebrated modernist architects of his day, Otto Wagner.
Portraitists such as Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka broke from the norm by depicting their subjects in contorted, often spasmodic positions. Not least of these subjects was Schiele himself who, in a series of famous self-portraits, portrayed his own body in a range of...
Thursday, April 2, 2009 - 07:07
