Between the 50s and 60s, Europe was the central stage of an intense sound and aesthetic revolution. Alongside the musical experiments and the birth of many rock stars, an incredible visual production was developed alongside. This production was based on the search for something new, forbidden and provocative, overcoming ancient canons considered obsolete. It was also supporting a kind of visual art, in which the “aesthetic” and “beauty” began to take very different paths. Thus, while the Beatles composed their future milestones of rock, Francis Bacon associated the human dimension with the monstrosity, the atrocity and suffering his paintings.

The exhibition “From Bacon to the Beatles: new images in Europe in the years of rock”, to be held at the Museo della Permanente, offers a journey between sound and visual creation, featuring a fine selection of works to watch and listen with headphones; the best hits from the same period. The format of the exhibition is very interesting, and continues a curatorial a line that is increasingly having successful among visual arts: the association with music or sound and the infiltration of visual contemplation, have intention of providing a more sensory experience (as affirmed by the curator Chiara Gatti). In this manner, closely watching the event simultaneous sound and aesthetic revolution, it is possible to recognize the mutual influences the have and understand how the new way of looking at the composition influenced sound, and how the way of listening to music had an impact on how to see and process visual.

The exhibition also included Peter Blake and Richard Hamilton, as well as exponents of the Italian artistic movement “Arte Povera” as Alberto Giacometti, Mimmo Rotella Giuseppe Guerreschi and Mario Schifano, the American William Utermolhen, the German Horst Antes and the French Jean Dubuffet y Cesàr. The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Elvis, Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez, Jim Morrison and Mick Jagger compose the “soundtrack”. Interestingly, the paintings (mostly large sizes) and the sculptures are lit as if it were musicians on a stage to reconstruct and evoke the atmosphere of that period that brought along profound social, political and economic changes, since the War of Vietnam to Woodstock.

The exhibition will take place at Museo della Permanente, located on Via Turati 34 until the 12^th of February. The entrance fee is 6 Euros, and the opening hours are from Tuesday to Friday, from 10 to 13hs and from 14hs30 until 18hs30, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays from 10 am to 18hs30 (closing day: Monday). More information at: http://www.lapermanente.it/eventi/bacon.aspx.

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We recommend you to rent apartments in Milan during those dates, come to enjoy one of the most interesting exhibitions of the year.

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Translated by: Hans
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The avant-garde movements are essential to step further into the realm of art. When we talk about art, we refer to a mood or conglomeration of individuals with a common perspective, sometimes coming together by coincidence or systematically organized to address a problem in art, while questioning, and going deeper in artistic representations. What is shown, however, is that the avant-garde does not have a specific location in time, nor fixed starting points. They always appear isolated cases of the same aesthetic in various parts of the world.

The problem of categories in contemporary art, sometimes tends to neglect important symbolic participants of a certain style or proposal. The work of curators, museums and galleries is, sometimes, re-write the history of these characters, who are not noticed very well or fail to have the same recognition as others.

Thus, the marginalization of the art is another condition that is exemplified by the avant garde. Being against the “status quo” of art is undoubtedly a serious risk that every artist must have in mind. Sometimes this slogan forget the vanguard. Today, being an avant-garde artist proved to be an extremely automatically and the wide spread of the conceptual arts at all levels of communication and political discussion, current contemporary art located in a state of despondency, not to use the word crisis that is so fashionable today. Hard to believe then that the vanguards are gone, that the problems of contemporary art comes as easily to academic spaces to meet in these not necessarily the best thing is being done in contemporary art.

Thus, the marginalization of the art is another condition that is exemplified by the avant-garde. Being against the “status quo” of art is undoubtedly a serious risk that every artist must have in mind. Sometimes this slogan forgets the vanguard. Today, being an avant-garde artist proved to be an extremely automatically and the wide spread of the conceptual arts at all levels of communication and political discussion, current contemporary art located in a state of despondency, not to use the word crisis that is so fashionable today. It is hard to believe then that the vanguards are gone, that the problems of contemporary art comes as easily to academic spaces to meet in these not necessarily the best being done in contemporary art.

The Italian trans vanguard was a movement of the mid 80′s and was a response to the rise of Arte Povera, also of Italian origin. Its proposal was completely anti-conceptual, rather entrenched in the management of color in the painting partly influenced by expressionism. Among its representatives are Nicola de Maria, Mimmo Paladino and Francesco Clemente just to name a few. The avant-garde was a return to subjectivity and sensuality in painting, from a classic mode of expression. So, they resort to visual storytelling of various ancient myths and subjects bordering on the heroic, in a unique way that puts their job in a state of suspension of time, without exactly setting the conceptual, the resources of various ages are used in shades of intense. To learn more about the work of these rebels, against the rebels known at that time, visit the Palazzo Reale in Milan and enjoy this fabulous show until March 2012. For more information, visit this website: http://www.mostratransavanguardia.it/

Alexa Ray

Get apartments in Milan and discover the best of the contemporary art today, was well as the one from last century. This city is waiting with its long tradition of galleries and museums.

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Translated by: Hans
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Generally, museums replicate what circumstances don’t say. In each event, the invent a new concept to sell tickets and art. Galleries work in the same way. The art business has become a range of discourses that have little to do with the current processes of the art of today but, with the voracity of time passing and, in the same way and with the same voracity, following cultural studies up to date. Politics has a lot to do with all of this and, in the end, nobody creates without thinking that they believe in something which is above the object that they produced, of the work itself. There isn’t a work which is exempt of its discourse: the interesting thing is that the work justifies that discourse, without the need of texts or pompous introductions. The decadence of current art just scares purists away and, on the other hand, asserting those that without a lot of talent can have great careers, via Facebook.

Design on the other hand, from its functionality and need regarding better ways of expression and dialogue with consumers, companies and all types of machinery of sense in today’s culture, is usually a field in the middle of the great emptiness of meaning that, at the moment, visual art leaves in all of its shapes. In fact, design is conditioned to comply efficient work, from whatever it is proposed, where t’s more effective and punctual in many ways. Furniture, interior and clothes design are examples. Milan is the capital of design and fashion in Italy. Maybe, today design is more honest because if has a fix market that doesn’t run out, that you’re always talking to and of which we all depend of.

The Triennale di Milano is a space where all the aforementioned combines. From design, graphic art, photography, paintings and art seminars , the Triennale is one of the richest spaces when it comes to contemporary culture and it’s now in Milan. Among the best in this exhibition which runs until the 28th of August, you’ll be able to see a photographic exhibition dedicated to the legendary and unique Pier Paolo Passolini. The exhibition explores the everyday life of this genius, who created masterpieces such as ‘Salò, 120 days of Sodom’ probably one of the riskiest films of all time, which was made in Italy. Salò is the crude story of a group of young people captured by a fascist sect in a mansion to be subjected to the most horrible and, at the same time, erotic rituals in which they all participate, sometimes, until they die. The exhibition presents on the other hand the everyday life of one of the most extravagant minds of Italian film. For more information on the Triennale di Milano visit its webpage: http://www.triennale.org/

Alexa Ray

That’s why, nothing better than getting apartments in Milan and be part of its hectic cultural agenda. As well as fashion, art is costly, and it will cost you a lot to ignore the fact that while they consume, others consume you.

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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In the increasingly populated contemporary art world, photography continues to be one of the languages which young artists prefer to use. In the show “The Water of Chemistry,” which opens on the 7th July at the Click Gallery in Milan, will be a collection of works highly focused on the idea of attention to detail – something which fast paced modern life tends to neglect – and which photography hopes to bring back.

Mario Washington is a young Italian artist born, living and working in Milan. Like many today, he studied rights, and started to devote himself to photography in 2006. Two years later, he decided to move to New York, the global center of contemporary art to do an internship at the Bruce Silverstein Gallery, where he learned the techniques to hone his own artistic style.

Upon returning to Italy, he participated in the fourth edition of “Premio Arte Laguna” (Venice 2009), and exhibited the same year with the show “Nocturno Metafísico” at the Click Gallery. His first one man show, “The Water of Chemistry” took place between the 7th-27th of March 2011 at the civic aquarium in Milan, and on the 7th of July, the show opens at the Click Gallery – with which he now has an established relationship.For more information visit: www.clickgallerymilano.com

Washington decided to dedicated himself to photographing landscapes, nature, and a kind of “dead nature,” made from urban detail and artificial illumination. He is always in search of new ways to manipulate light, whereby colour (which are sometimes almost psychedelic) contrast, forming a spectral image upon whichever panorama he chooses. His aim could be described in the words of William Gibson; to “photograph what is not there.” Gibson was the godfather of “cyber-punk” literature, who in the story “The Continuum of Gernsback” places one of his characters in front of a building for whole hours, waiting for the light to develop, or disappear.

In Washington’s photographs there is a powerful sense of silence. He encourages the spectator to learn to look at the details, and see something which can only achieved through photography.

In “The Water of Chemsitry,” water is studied through its numerous manifestations, and physical states, captured in 30 photographs, which show its extreme versatility, as well as its corrosive, destructive powers, and how it can slowly penetrate any material, and change any shape with time.

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If you’d like to see this show, and find out if the artist has achieved his goal, we suggest you rent apartments in Milan and enjoy a weekend dedicated to art, in a city full of contemporary spaces.

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Translated by: Poppy
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Until the 19th of June, the Palazzo Reale is holding exhibition Impresionista: Capolavori della Clark Collecction, a collection of 73 art works belonging to the Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute of Massachussets, which includes the French artists of the 19th century; Pierre Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Édouard  Manet, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Pierre Bonnard, Carot, Gauguin, Millet, Sisley; Toulouse Lautrec, Bouguereau, and Gérôme, amongst others.

Milan is the first stop in a two year tour of various different European countries for the Institute’s impressionism collection. The show focuses on the innovation of the artistic style, particularly in the manipulation of light in neo-classical painting, as seen in each and every 19th century painting selected for the exhibition.

Impressionism developed in the second half of the 19th century, when Louis Leroy wrote a review of the work Impresión: soleil levant (1872) by Claude Monet, remarking that “upon viewing the piece, I thought my spectacles were dirty. What was this canvas representing? The painting didn’t have a top nor bottom…Impression! There was impression…A mere sketch is more complete than this seascape.” The term for the art movement was thereby coined – an art movement which sought to break from classicism and pursue a kind of freedom over traditional beauty.

Natural light, lanscapes, and nature would come to be the source of inspiration for impressionist paintings. A precursor of this artistic current was Édouard Manet, whose works Breakfast on the grass and The bar of Folies-Bergère demonstrates a play with light, as well as more loose, free brushstrokes which didn’t seek to hide the canvas or the materials – features which would come to define impressionism.

The appearance of new art materials and pigments, a product of advances in industry, would be highly instrumental in the new styles and tones of oil paintings, bringing a deeper purity of colour, more shades and colour saturation, which up until then, had been impossible to achieve. This experimentation with saturation would also be adopted by the Fovists, who would place emphasis on the free, extreme use of colour – as seen in the work of Henri Matisse.

There may not be a specific aesthetic concept which unifies impressionism, there are certain patterns which go beyond the working of light, colour and technique. Degas is the most complex painter – a perfectionist of the movement. Monet, as a founder of the impressionist movement expressed certain codes of colour and light in his paintings. Manet continued to be a studio painter, so his paintings don’t have the freshness of other impressionists.

For more information http://www.impressionistimilano.it/

Nancy Guzman

It’s very rare to get the chance to see great art works like these together. If you are renting one of the apartments in Milan don’t forget to go down to the Palazzo Reale and find out all about the Impressionist movement.

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Translated by: Poppy
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From where do we get the idea that fashion is frivolous? When was this idea imposed to us? The truth is, that along with the contemporary art evolution of the last thirty or more years, graphic designers, architects, decorators and, of course, fashion designers have been willing to take risks and venture into “the conceptual”: the idea over the object. And the results are clearly the most interesting, especially in the visual media like: Internet, television and magazines. The Fondazione Prada in Milan, founded of course by the Italian fashion label Prada, was created in the nineties in order to encourage interaction between art, fashion, architecture and design. In addition to various publications and activities, the Fondazione presents innovative exhibitions of contemporary art as: “Ex Limbo”.

This, exhibition presents materials that are commonly used in fashion shows but in a different way; from their useless or obsolete condition. The starting point of this project is the curiosity about the materials used; the reasons for which they have been preserved and how they have been used in practice. The Rotor’s work is to draw attention concerning the waste of our world, which after a significant splendor has been pushed aside and left in limbo, inviting people to have a second look at this forgotten fact. Fogazzaro exhibition space of Fondazione Prada presents a maze of elements that shows all the job included in the production of fashion shows.

The forms, presented in this exhibition, reveal structures and effects, as well as movement of materials that reject the definition of “things” like: “waste” or “rubbish”, shown as forms of knowledge through the sensory. Bordering the archeology of recent fashion world. This archeology from season to season shows industrial and architectural ruins that retain the essence of the style of what happened on the staging, giving us the opportunity to evaluate the chaotic, ruined, degraded and how lapses and re-emerges as a conceptual “Duchamp” gesture, in the world of design and architecture. Imagine a new Milan fashion geography locked in a gallery: wood, metal frames, mirrors and walls, polyethylene seats; waste conceptual of the fashion production.

About Rotor, I can tell you that this group was founded in 2005 in Brussels. Its members are Tristan Boniver, Lionel Devlieger, Maarten Gielen, Michael Ghyoot, Benjamin Lasserre and Melanie Tamm. Their main interest of conceptual work is focused on industrial materials and construction. On a practical level, Rotor is dedicated to the conceptualization and design of architectural projects. For more information, visit the website of Rotor http://rotordb.org/ and, of course, the website of the Fondazione Prada, Milan http://www.fondazioneprada.org/

SISTER RAY

What you should do is to get apartments in Milan and see this show by yourself. It will surely change your perspective about fashion and architecture, and show you how any building material always has a story that touches us all.

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Translated by: Hans
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From the 12th until the 15th of May, Milan will be host to the first edition of MIA; the “Milan Image Art Fair,” – an event solely dedicated to photography and video art, curated by Fabio Castelli. Is this just another art fair like so many others, which seem to favour quantity over quality? In the face of so many cultural offerings (or so-called) organised in Milan each year, MIA promises to be something different – and the hope is that it will keep its promise.

As the event organisers assert, the spectator won’t be made to wander aimlessly amongst the crowds, because at this fair, each stand will be an independent exhibition in its own right – by one particular chosen artist. Nothing like a “bazaar” then, or the random piling of artworks into a small space, putting off potential buyers. Each stand is its own show, helping a clear understanding of each artist and their work as individual – something which is increasingly hard for those not used to it. In Italy moreover, there continues to a certain resistance from audiences towards this sort of approach to viewing art – with a still prevalent attitude of “a five year old could have done that.” Such a response makes sense if we consider the cultural heritage of the country, and the fact that in schools, art is still referred to as “Fine Art.”

Fabio Castelli, the mastermind behind MIA, claims that Italy – and by extension, the whole world – needs a new, specific education for understanding and appreciating the new forms and aesthetics of art. Contemporary works, incomprehensible using the old codes, require new methods, more skills of observation, and the ability above all to overcome any prejudices towards how they were made: that is, not to judge a piece of art solely on its technical mastery. Indeed, in the contemporary art world, there is a noticeable regression (not necessarily in the negative sense of the world) towards the minimal – and the appreciation of the small.

The art fairs of today have the hard task of being educative, and bringing about an understanding – and this this seems to be the main objective of MIA, which will take place at “Superstudio Piú” on Tortuna street, 27.

For more details visit www.miafair.it

menschauser

If you’re curious to see how this new event goes, you can rent apartments in Milan and get involved with the new “scene.”

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Translated by: Poppy
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Caravaggio painted mainly paintings with religion related issues to but their work opportunities were rejected first by the realism and then by the choice of the models he did. Instead of choosing beautiful and aristocratic people he most often chose prostitutes, children living on the street or homeless.

Even Caravaggio often rejected the request of his customers to correct the imperfections of their models. He began to pay a lot more attention to realism of his paintings and he said no to the request of the church to paint the most perfect angels. A clear example is the work of St. Matthew and the Angel. At first this painting had been rejected by the sensuality that the angel showed and also the dirt that was on his feet.

The play “The Eyes of Caravaggio. His formative years between Venice and Milan” will be held in Milan until July 3 and you will enjoy more than 60 works.

The piece that has caused the Italian artist many problems and controversy was The Death of the Virgin, in which the Virgin Mary is depicted dead with a swollen stomach. This painting was so realistic that there were rumors the model for the piece was the cadaver of a prostitute that had drowned.

For more information: http://www.museodiocesano.it/iniziativa.asp?id=777&Categoria=1&TipoEvento=1&sez=3&link=11

Museo Diocesano: Corso di Porta Ticinese, 95, 20123 Milan, Italy

MiLK

Art lovers can now admire one of the most important artists of all time and rent apartments in Milan to do so, because the exhibition titled “The eyes of Caravaggio. His years of training between Venice and Milan” takes place here at the Diocesano Museum until July 3rd. More than 60 works that mark Caravaggio’s training and career are exhibited.

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Translated by: Maria
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It’s just been 48 years of the disappearance of the still controversial Italian artist Piero Manzoni (1933-1963), in all likelihood one of the most fascinating creative and influential minds of the artistic movement of the last half century.

Manzoni’s artistic activity, like the one of his contemporary, Yves Klein, who also died prematurely just a year before the Italian, is part of the favorable environment of a self-critical art created from the late 40’s and early 50’s by groups such as COBRA, Gutai, Letterist International, the Situationist International, the neo-dada or New Realists and individuals such as John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg and Ad Reinhardt. The work of all of them, like Klein and Manzoni’s themselves began to question, in many cases from the work of Marcel Duchamp and the Dadaists, the status of the object, not infrequently seeking a redefinition of the role of art which did not have as an essential element creating objects but rather transferring and donating experiences, thus affirming the everyday as the subject of art in progressive attempts of dematerialization of the art object and developing an ongoing investigation of the art exhibition as a phenomenon itself.

Influenced Klein’s monochromatic exposure in Milan in 1957, Manzoni began making his famous Acroma, white monochrome paintings produced by the immersion of the canvas in kaolin. In a similar way to Klein, Manzoni thought that pure material could become pure energy: “expression, illusion and abstraction are hollow fictions. There is nothing to say, you just have to be, just have to live”.

As an example of the invisible intangible force, in 1959 Manzoni began drawing lines on sheets of landscape paper, which he then rolled and sealed in cylindrical boxes. On these lines he wrote the length of the line, the date it was drawn and signature. The work, as in the case of Erased De Kooning by Rauschenberg was all a set, no lines drawn. The viewer must be confident that there really were the lines inside. A similar work, in this case both alchemical as critical resonances and considerably more controversial, was the packaging of his own shit in cans labeled as Artist’s shit were put up for sale. Similarly, Manzoni sold his own breath as an artist, conveniently very high priced, in a box containing a balloon and a tripod where to put it.

But the always cared and elegant works by the joker Manzoni were not at odds with a touching lyric quality. An empty pedestal in a public park of 82x100x100cm containing a reversed inscription. As we approach we see: “Base of the World”, and underneath, in smaller letters “Base magic number 3 / Piero Manzoni -1961 – / Homage to Galileo”, turning the Earth into a gigantic and beautiful piece of art.

Piazza del Duomo
Milan (Milano)
Italy IT (Italy)
Tel: +39 02 8646 1394

Paul Oilzum

If you found this article interesting, don’t miss his work in the permanent exhibition at the Civic Museum of Contemporary Art in Milan – CIMAC (Palazzo Reale, Piazza del Duomo) when you rent one of the apartments in Milan

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Translated by: Maria
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Piero Manzoni (1933 -1963) was born in Soncino but lived and died in Milan He died very young from a heart attack. He was a painter, sculptor and author of numerous works of conceptual art with many ironic touches. He also worked as a journalist for various Italian newspapers.

His began to be internationally recognized as an artist when he participated in the exhibition “Art Movement nucleare” in the Gallery San Fedele in Milan in 1957.

His series “Silutetas anthropomorphic,” of big-headed figures and small bodies attracted attention. “Achromadora” is one of his most important artistic productions, and features large areas of plaster embedded with white kaolin, clay that is widely used in ceramic production. In some of them we see little balls that form a profusion of lines which take on a wrinkled effect later, and in others fabric is cut into smaller squares and sewn together.

He was known for his use of colour and other elements such as cotton, rabbit fur and so on. “Line” is another of his great works, and features a cylindrical cardboard tube with lid, all in different sizes, sealed with paper. The line is supposedly within the cylinder, which should never be opened. He ended up replicating the piece on a large scale in wood. A performance highlight was the play called “dynamic art consumption: devour public art.” In which the artist printed his thumb impression on some hard boiled eggs that subsequently, the public could eat.

Without a doubt, the most controversial of his works was “Artist’s Shit” which consisted of cans filled with his own excrement. The price of these depended on the valuation of gold at that time.  Now they have been auctioned for much higher prices. Rent apartments in Milan, the city where he lived and developed his provocative and thought-provoking conceptual art.