Let's talk
From WikiEducators Guggenheim Bilbao
Are there any questions you cannot find the answers to? This section is set aside for clearing up doubts that come up every day. You can ask or answer other people questions.
Topic 1: What is Didaktika?
Didaktika covers a series of programmes and educational areas directly connected with all the exhibitions that take place in the Museum. They develop interpretive keys and tools aimed for helping visitors gain a better understanding and appreciation of the works and its context. At present you can enjoy four didactic spaces in relation with this exhibitions:
- Painterly Abstraction, 1949-1969: Selections from the Guggenheim Collections
- The Luminous Interval
- Richard Serra: The matter of time
Painterly Abstraction, 1949-1969: Selections from the Guggenheim Collections
This exhibition’s three didactic areas illuminate a number of political, social, literary, musical, and cinematic events occurring in America and Europe in the 1950s and 1960s. This overview is an open window to the period through music, texts, and still and moving images taken from news programs of the incipient public-television stations.
© GMB, 2011
The Luminous Interval
This education space features a selection of reference materials and video recordings that will allow you to learn more about the artists featured in The Luminous Interval, a group exhibition of works drawn from the D.Daskalopoulos Collection. The books provide an overview of each artist’s oeuvre, while the videos focus on a selection of the participating artists, offering insight into their creative processes and commentary on a number of their specific projects. These materials illuminate the wide range of artistic approaches presented in the exhibition, which encompasses the work of some of the most innovative and influential artists of the past three decades. You can visit this space on the second floor of the Museum.
Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy, Germany, and Spain, 1918–1936
Rising from the horror of the war, European artists sought a return to order and an embrace of rational organization and enduring values, in contrast with the prewar emphasis on innovation by all means. As a consequence, during the interwar period, the balance and force of classical forms engendered a fusion of modernity and antiquity, turning away from the two-dimensional abstract spaces and fragmentation of Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, and other avant-garde movements of the early 20th century. With more than 150 works by more than 90 artists, comprising painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, film, fashion, and the decorative arts, this exhibition examines the return to order in the interwar period in Europe. Chaos and Classicism presents works by established masters of the first half of the 20th century, including Georges Braque, Carlo Carrà, Giorgio de Chirico, Otto Dix, Pablo Gargallo, Fernand Léger, Aristide Maillol, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Pablo Picasso, Gio Ponti, Emile- Jacques Ruhlmann, and August Sander.
The Pedagogical Missions of the Second Republic (1931–1936)
Audiovisuals Zero Espazioa, March 29–31, 2011
Organized to accompany the Chaos and Classicism exhibition as part of a new annual audiovisual program entitled Innovative Pedagogies, this first cycle encompasses a selection of archive footage and documentaries on the Pedagogical Missions responsible for introducing an innovative slant to Spanish education during the Second Republic. Schoolteachers, artists and intellectuals travelled to villages across Spain bearing different kinds of educational material ranging from travelling libraries to films, music or plays — all to help the rural population learn to read and write.
Venue: Zero Espazioa (limited capacity). Tickets can be purchased after March 2 at the Museum admission desk: €2 Museum Members and €4 general public.
Program
Tuesday, March 29
6:30 pm Presentation by the filmmaker Gonzalo Tapia: Origin of the Pedagogical Missions.
6:45 pm Projection of his film A lomos de una mula: Las Misiones Pedagógicas de la Segunda República (TVE/Acacia Films, 2006) 55 min.
Talk
Wednesday, March 30
6:30 pm Presentation by Eugeni Bonet, author, filmmaker, artist and expert on the work of the movie-maker from Granada José Val de Omar, and on the Residencia de Estudiantes as the hotbed of the great creative minds of the time who participated in the Missions.
7 pm Screening of the promotional film for the Missions by José Val del Omar: Estampas 1932, Los pueblos. 11 min. b/w. Archivo Fílmico IVAC.
7:15 pm Screening of 100% Residencia. Una tradición recuperada. *Courtesy of Residencia de Estudiantes, Madrid. 8 min.
7:25 pm Screening of Easy Street (1917) 19 min. Directed by and starring Charles Chaplin in the part of The Tramp; one of the films to enjoy most screenings in villages by the Missions. Lobster Films.
Talk
Thursday, March 31
6:30 pm Presentation by Aitor Larrabide, philologist member of the Miguel Hernández Cultural Foundation (Orihuela) on the participation of this author from Alicante in the Pedagogical Missions.
7 pm Screening of Miguel Hernández Aniversario (2010). 35 min.
Talk
Educational Spaces
There are also two educational spaces throughout the exhibition, where, on the one hand, visitors will find a selection of key political, historical, literary, and artistic developments between the two world wars. On the other, they will also be able to browse original archived recordings of historical figures, including Nancy Astor, Jean Cocteau, Gandhi, Miguel Hernández, Adolf Hitler, and representatives of the Bauhaus, such as Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius.
Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance
Through more than one hundred works by 60 artists, this exhibit examines myriad ways in which photographic imagery has been incorporated into recent artistic practices. Much of contemporary photography and video seems haunted by the past, by the history of art, by apparitions that are reanimated in recording technologies, live performance and the virtual world. By using dated, passé or quasi-extinct stylistic devices, subject matters and technologies, such art embodies a melancholic longing for an otherwise unrecoverable past.
Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance, which occupies the second floor of the museum, is divided into five formal and conceptual categories which reflect the different ways in which the participating artists choose to understand and address the past: Appropriation and the Archive; Death, Publicity and Politics; Documentation and Reiteration; Landscape, Architecture and the Passage of Time; and Trauma and the Uncanny. Some works incorporate stylistic devices and subject matters that seem dated, passé or quasi-extinct; others capture traumatic moments of the historical past; some are recreations of previous works, creating the sensation that they are pursued by a lost or distant original; there are ghostly images and morbid symbols of the past as ruins and apocalyptic landscapes; and, finally, there are creations that analyze the role that archives play in collective memory and personal obsession.
Andy Warhol Orange Disaster #5 , 1963 Acrylic and silkscreen enamel on canvas 269.2 x 207 cm Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Gift, Harry N. Abrams Family Collection 74.2118 Copyright The Andy Warhol Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
The Golden Age of Dutch and Flemish Painting from the Städel Museum
The exhibition features 130 paintings, most from the 17th century, by Dutch and Flemish masters. On the entire third floor of the museum, still lifes and vanitas, landscapes, portraits, and religious and historical scenes are distributed by theme. The exhibition also demonstrates how the specific tastes and ideals of the Dutch elite were reflected in narrative historical painting and portraiture, genre painting, still life, and landscape painting.
The camera obscura
The camera obscura was one of the ancestral optical devices that led to photography. It originally consisted of a box or a small closed room with a little hole made in one side, which let in light rays. Acting as a convergent lens, the hole projects the upside down and inverted image of the scene outside onto the opposite wall inside. Stand on the X marked on the floor, in the illuminated area, and your image will be seen inside the camera. Although the camera obscura was known in the 13th century, it probably wasn’t until the 15th century that Leonardo da Vinci gave it a practical application as a drawing aid. Artists of the 16th and 17th centuries, such as Jan Vermeer, used it to help prepare sketches and paintings.
Jan Vermeer van Delft The Geographer , 1669 Oil on canvas 51.6 x 45.4 cm Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main
Anish Kapoor
Over the past thirty years Anish Kapoor (b.1954, Bombay) has gained international acclaim as one of the most significant artists of his generation. His exploration of form and space and his use of color and material have profoundly expanded the possibilities for contemporary sculpture. Contrasting void and mass, generation and destruction, process and impermanence, Kapoor’s sculpture, installations and public art projects present encounters with the instability of the visible world.
‘I have often said that I have nothing to say as an artist. Having something to say implies that one is delivering a meaning. The role of the artist is in fact that we don’t know what to say, and it is that not knowing that leads to the work.’ Anish Kapoor
Color
Color is a key element of Kapoor’s sculptures and he uses it in its primary variants. Kapoor describes red and yellow, for example, as conditions of being or matter, and he often focuses his attention on red, in particular. “Over the last so many years almost everything I have made is red. Red is a colour of the earth, it’s not a colour of deep space; it’s obviously the color [sic] of blood and body. I have a feeling that the darkness that it reveals is a much deeper and darker darkness than that of blue or black.” Sculptures and installations such as the artworks with the name 1000 Names (1979–84), My Red Homeland (2003), and many others, which all incorporate red in its various forms and states.
Material
Kapoor is drawn toward intensely tactile or reflective materials, including pigments, wax, fiberglass, stone, polished stainless steel, PVC, and Cor-Ten steel, that resist narrative readings. For the artist, these materials can point toward a nonmaterial realm. Through his use of different materials, Kapoor invites visitors to reanalyze seemingly antagonistic categories or criteria such as light and dark, full and empty, static and kinetic, surface and depth, heavy and weightless, and two- and three-dimensionality. A material’s “skin,” its surface and color, play a role in conveying a transition to the symbolic, abstract, and immaterial. Kapoor states: “I believe very deeply that works of art, or let’s say things in the world, not just works of art, can be truly made. If they are truly made, in the sense of possessing themselves, then they are beautiful. . . . it has to do with the meeting of material and nonmaterial.”
Scale
“Sculpture’s primary concern is the body,” says Kapoor, “but less in its relationship to space than to residual memory—innate, nonverbal responses to color, form, scale, etc.” Kapoor’s understanding of scale—physical scale, mental scale, and architectural scale—has played a decisive role in his career. Every physical model at his studio is analyzed with a human figure placed in relation to the architecture of the galleries or intended space for the work. For Kapoor, scale is an intrinsic element in sculpture that can create a necessary illusion, causing disorientation, awe, or vertigo. Citing Cloud Gate, Kapoor states that this work “draws in the sky and the surrounding buildings. In a vertical city, this is a horizontal object. Seamless form confuses scale.” In Cloud Gate, the sculpture’s enormous scale defies the classical figure-ground relationship and prevents an experience of the whole.
Void
Kapoor’s investigation into the concept of the void can be traced to the late 1980s. Since then, it has reappeared in sculptures, installations, and architecture, including Mother as a Void (1988), Adam (1988–89), Void Field(1989), Building for a Void, Descent into Limbo, My Body Your Body (1993), Iris(1998), and The Origin of the World (2004). The installations of voids, buried into floors and gallery walls, pull visitors into their vortices. Their depth is never known and can only be surmised. For the artist, the void has several implications, ranging from the psychoanalytic and metaphysical to the scientific and mathematical. First and foremost, however, the void signals Kapoor’s keen interest in abstraction and the possibility of space becoming more full as it is emptied out.
He represented Great Britain at the 44th Venice Biennale in 1990 and was awarded the Premio Duemila for Best Young Artist. The following year he won the Turner Prize. This exhibition originated at the Royal Academy of Arts, London and was installed in Bilbao in close collaboration with the artist.
"The studio is a place where meaning is excavated; it is brought out of a seemingly senseless process. A process of play. Abstract art seeks to operate under the skin… and deliver its meanings surreptitiously." Anish Kapoor
Urban Projects
Sculptor Anish Kapoor’s international practice extends from intimate, visceral, and thought-provoking sculptures to large-scale architectural and urban projects that are aesthetically and conceptually challenging, requiring sophisticated technology to achieve their intended artistry. In 1992, Kapoor began collaborating with several engineering and architectural firms to realize projects that blur the boundaries between painting, sculpture, architecture, landscape, and urban design. In each instance, the artist is keenly aware of the specificity of the site and its historical, social, and architectural facets. For Kapoor, the visitor or spectator forms the main point of reference in a chain of communication between artwork and site. He or she connects subject and object together in a phenomenological continuum.
Dante, 2001
Kapoor’s concept note for this imagined project states: “Two holes in the top of a hill lead down into the interior of a form that lies off the edge of the hill. The object and the landscape are connected by a journey. At scale the three incidences of this work appear to be disconnected from each other.” This site-specific outdoor installation relates to Kapoor’s earlier explorations of the concept of the void in works such as Building for a Void (1992) and Descent into Limbo (1992). With Dante, however, Kapoor moves beyond architecture into nature, to posit questions about the relationship between landscape and the body, through tunnels and orifices. The artist also probes notions of interiority and exteriority and knowledge and perception, as the journey from the surface to the cave is never revealed.
Cloud Gate, 2004
Kapoor’s permanent installation in Chicago’s Millennium Park, Cloud Gate, has become a beloved urban icon, affectionately nicknamed “The Bean.” The 110-ton polished stainless steel sculpture is constructed of 169 steel tiles that form a thin, continuous “skin” that is only 6 mm thick. Despite its hefty tonnage, the sculpture sits gently on the plaza, displaying a weightlessness that confounds expectations. Its meticulously polished and seamless surface skews and morphs the surrounding urban environment and disorients visitors from perceiving any singular sense of scale. Kapoor collaborated with the Bristol-based firm Aerotrope Limited on the structural engineering of this sculpture.
56 Leonard Street, New York, 2008–
In a unique collaboration with the renowned Swiss architecture firm of Herzog & de Meuron, Kapoor’s new permanent urban project will be a luxury condominium building consisting of an enormous polished stainless steel sphere that appears to have been squished into place by the high-rise building above it. Its balloonlike curvature lies in visceral contrast to the rectilinear forms of the building, mesmerizing passersby with its sheer materiality. The polished surface with its reflections of the surrounding streets and objects is reminiscent of Kapoor’s other public projects, Cloud Gate and Sky Mirror, the latter of which was temporarily installed in Rockefeller Center, New York.
Two Subway stations for Naples (Monte Sant’ Angelo: Università and Traiano), 2003–
Conceived in collaboration with the London-based architecture firm Future Systems, this urban project marries form and function. Scheduled for completion in 2010, the two entrances (one in Cor-Ten steel that looks like an upturned sock pulled from the earth, the second in polished aluminum that appears to sink into the ground) continue Kapoor’s investigation into turning space inside out. The artist states, “In the proximity of Mount Vesuvius and Dante’s mythical entrance to the Inferno, I found it important to try and deal with what it really means to go underground.”
Robert Rauschenberg: Gluts
Within Rauschenberg’s prolific career, a high point is the work he created with other artisans in the fields of dance, music, and performance. He used these interdisciplinary partnerships to investigate the possibilities of how new technologies and methods of working could apply to lighting, acoustics, and movement. He would later use these discoveries to breathe new life into found materials. “Local tours with the dance company were a difficult yet lovely addition to my work. The dances, the dancers, the partnership, the responsibilities, and trust are essential in cooperative art; the most important and satisfying part of my life was compatible with the privacy and solitude of painting.” Robert Rauschenberg.
Artistic collaborations
Robert Rauschenberg / Merce Cunningham
The essence of Rauschenberg’s art lies in the spontaneous way he reused everyday objects in new ways. This spontaneity or improvisation is the essence of one of the disciplines that was in constant evolution at the end of the 1950s: dance.
At this time, Rauschenberg embarked on a partnership with choreographer Merce Cunningham to design the sets and costumes for the Cunningham’s dance company. Cunningham was known for a choreography in which randomness played a key role.
Drawing on his experiences with Cunningham, Rauschenberg sometimes produced his own choreography, and performed it in front of an audience in several productions and performances.
Robert Rauschenberg / Jean Tinguely / Klüver
In New York, in 1960, artist Jean Tinguely unveiled his self-destructing sculpture Homage to New York in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art. Rauschenberg contributed Money Thrower for Tinguely’s H.T.N.Y. as the mascot for the event, and conceived of it as a sculpture that would scatter a dozen silver dollars into the audience. This artistic encounter between Rauschenberg and Tinguely served as the cornerstone for a productive, intense partnership between both artists that gave rise to several performances enacted by the two and by others during the early 1960s. These included Homage to David Tudor (1961), The Construction of Boston (1962), and Rauschenberg and Tinguely’s participation in the traveling exhibition Bewogen Beweging (Art in Motion) and the Dylaby (Dynamisch Labyrint) project, both held at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
Many of these types of works required electronic and mechanical components, which were provided by electrical engineer Billy Klüver, who had also made Homage to New York possible. Klüver worked with Rauschenberg on several works, one of the most striking of which is an interactive sound sculpture called Oracle (1962–65), which included radio devices that could be turned on by viewers.
Based on these partnerships, in 1966, Rauschenberg, Klüver, engineer Fred Waldhauer, and artist Robert Whitman cofounded the nonprofit, interdisciplinary group E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology). The group’s main goals were dialogue, investigation of new materials, and the production of experimental works developed through partnerships between artists and engineers seeking to relate art, science, and technology.
Robert Rauschenberg / Fujiko Nakaya
In 1964 the Sogetsu Art Center in Tokyo, the site of many avant-garde exhibitions, hosted Cunningham during his company’s tour of Japan. Artist Fujiko Nakaya served as Cunningham’s interpreter on that tour, while Rauschenberg acted as stage director. The encounter between Rauschenberg and Nakaya fostered a fruitful relationship between them and led Nakaya to later develop ties with E.A.T.
The peak of E.A.T.’s activities occurred at the Pepsi Pavilion at the Expo ’70 in Osaka. Nakaya was the artist responsible for the fog installation covering the pavilion, and Klüver was the engineer who made it all possible. Based on this experience, Nakaya, fascinated by the ephemeral qualities of fog, turned mist into an artistic medium by envisioning a fog set for a Trisha Brown performance in 1980. Additionally, Rauschenberg commissioned Nakaya, in homage to her friendship with the artist, to create Fog Sculpture #08025 (F.O.G.) for the opening of the Rauschenberg’s retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (November 1998–March 1999).
Rauschenberg graciously donated the work to the museum, where it is on permanent display outside.
Robert Rauschenberg / Trisha Brown
In the 1960s, Rauschenberg also began a professional relationship with the company of another dancer and choreographer, Trisha Brown, designing its sets and costumes. This partnership ended up becoming a long and fruitful collaboration. Brown investigated the fundamental characteristics of movement and questioned the existing relationship between the audience and the dancer. A selection of the Neapolitan Gluts, designed by Rauschenberg in 1987 for Brown’s Lateral Pass production in Naples, are shown in the exhibition.
“Local tours with the dance company were a difficult yet lovely addition to my work. The dances, the dancers, the partnership, the responsibilities, and trust are essential in cooperative art; the most important and satisfying part of my life was compatible with the privacy and solitude of painting.” Robert Rauschenberg
Rauschenberg Overseas Cultural Interchange: ROCI
Rauschenberg travelled extensively throughout his career, and was committed to collaboration as a means of merging art and life. As early as 1959, he stated: “Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in the gap between the two.)” His commitment to social interaction reached its peak with the innovative artistic project ROCI (Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange), whose overarching philosophy was to expand communication and understanding among diverse cultures.
The project specifically included countries that were either developing, controlled by totalitarian governments, or that had little contact with the United States.
The initial plan included working with people in twenty-two countries, although in the end, the project was realized in only eleven; in chronological order they were: Mexico, Chile, Venezuela, China, Tibet, Japan, Cuba, the Soviet Union, East Germany, Malaysia, and the United States. In each of the iterations of this private project (financed entirely by the artist), Rauschenberg and local people of each nation created artworks, some of which were collaborative. In 1991, Rauschenberg’s disparate paintings, videos, collages, and other works inspired by the ROCI project were displayed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
“A selection of works in a variety of media made or inspired by participating countries will travel to the next country, systematically eclipsing the initial work, which will in turn act as a catalyst making the existence and development of the exhibition possible”. Robert Rauschenberg
Frank Lloyd Wright and Education
Here you could find the educational elements that influenced both the professional and personal live of North American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. It looks at both the fundamentals of the education that Wright received in his youth and his early working years, as well as the ways he educated and inspired the young people around him over the course of his seventy-two year career.
Educating Wright
Born to a family of progressive Unitarians in rural Wisconsin, Wright had grown up with Froebel’s ‘gifts’—small geometrical wooden blocks and other creative paper materials—first seen by his mother at the Philadelphia Centennial of 1876. The German pedagogue Friedrich Froebel (1782–1852) taught that children should not be allowed to experiment freely until they had learned to identify the basic forms hidden behind appearances. These blocks allowed children to recreate outward forms through their structural geometry. In his writings Wright repeatedly refers to the formative aspects of these ‘gifts’, that had opened up his mind to the rhythmic structures of nature and invited ‘seeing into and seeing from within’. You can find some examples in the adjacent showcase.
Wright had spent his teenage years working on his uncle’s farm near Spring Green. Here he grew accustomed to tough physical labor, and developed an appreciation for the agrarian life and the spirituality of nature. While practicing in Chicago, where Wright worked in the office of architects Adler and Sullivan between 1887 and 1893, he also followed the progressive teaching programs that his aunts Ellen and Jane developed in their Hillside Home School. This school had opened in the Lloyd Jones Valley in 1887, and here his aunts pioneered new forms of education focused on the individual students reaching their highest potential. It was the first co-educational home school in the United States and was described by former teacher Mary Ellen Chase as ‘a school, a home, and a farm all in one.’ It was this same combination of progressive education and appreciation for nature that Wright would employ in his own school, the Taliesin Fellowship, founded in 1932.
Wright Educating
Wright, a passionate advocate for the potential society presented through scientific and technological innovation, was disappointed by conventional education programs in the United States. He was not interested in what he called the ‘classroom and textbook education’ that was based on credits and degrees. He believed this system of the over-educating and under-culturing might benefit the scientist, businessman or politician, but that it was completely inadequate for architects. In his eyes, many young architects lacked both inspiration and integrity, and were unaware how architecture could be an organic resolution of the specifics of a problem.
In 1932 this disappointment as well as the lack of work as a result of the Great Depression prompted him to establish a school to more formally promote his educational program. With his wife’s involvement Wright re-opened the school building that he had designed for his aunts just a few decades prior, and renamed the school the Taliesin Fellowship. With the belief that modern education was focused too little on the inner-experience of the soul, Wright taught his apprentices (male and female) to become more creative individuals with a mind open to the interpretation of the everyday world, as well as to effective communication. The Fellowship became a way of life for all, and while architecture—with work from Wright’s studio—formed the core of the school’s curriculum, the other arts such as painting, drawing, sculpture, theater, dance and motion played enormously important roles in the program as well.
The Taliesin Fellowship apprentices lived a communal life that included daily activities such as cooking, farming, cleaning, and the actual building of structures at Taliesin in Spring Green and after 1937 also at Taliesin West outside of Scottsdale, Arizona. Wright, inspired by his aunts, thought social differences based on gender were unreasonable, and did not shy away from having the boys cook and the girls harvest. The general idea was that the apprentices would learn most by doing: through the experience of the ‘architecture of life or life as architecture’. Interested in discussion, Wright and the Fellowship would frequently host his contemporaries, among which architects Mies van der Rohe, Erich Mendelsohn, August Perret, and artist Georgia O’Keeffe visited.
At Taliesin, whether in Wisconsin or Arizona, The Sunday Morning Lectures were a very important part of the educational programme. On Sunday mornings, Wright gathered with the apprentices to discuss such a myriad of topics that embraced not only architecture, but art and philosophy, Japanese prints and the writings of the Transcendentalists.
After Wright’s death in 1959 the work in the program was continued by the senior members of the Fellowship under the direction of Wright’s widow, Olgivanna. In 1960 the program was renamed the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, the name under which it continues to operate to this day. The school remains a strong advocate for an architectural education that focuses on learning by doing while integrating architecture with life, work, and the community.
Takashi Murakami
This space was designed to accompany the exhibition ©MURAKAMI. It is divided into the following sections:
Key questions: Short answers to questions like Who...?, What...?, Why...? and Did you know..? are used to provide basic information on key concepts of the work of Takashi Murakami. Reading room: Selected publications on Murakami's work are made available to visitors. Computer room: This section features a historical and cultural chronology of Japan and a selected chronology of Takashi Murakami. Audiovisual room: Documentaries and other films related with the artist. Workshops: This section offers information about enjoyable workshops on topics related to the exhibition and Japanese culture designed for kids and Museum Members.
Who is...
...Takashi Murakami? Takashi Murakami (Tokyo, 1962) is one of the most influential Japanese artists of the last few decades. His work covers a broad range of art forms, including painting, sculpture, industrial design, anime, fashion and other media and merchandise in popular culture. Murakami belongs to a generation of artists that came to prominence on the crest of the late 1980s’ economic upswing in Japan and whose pictorial language brings together motifs linked to popular culture. His work takes a critical look at contemporary Japanese society, the legacy of the country’s cultural tradition, how it developed after the World War II, and its relationship with the western world, particularly the US.
...Oval? Oval Buddha is another character created by Murakami. Its head has two faces. It is meditative, with a large closed frog-like mouth and a goatee like the Japanese emperor, or in fact, much like the artist himself. The mouth on the other face is slightly open in a kind of smile, showing a ghastly set of shark-like teeth. The squat body is sitting on a lotus flower, an idea the artist borrowed from 12th century Kamakura Buddhist statuary. The figure and base are on top of a crushed elephant, the Buddhist symbol of strength and steadfastness. Oval appears in a number of Murakami's works. The idea was first conceived in 1999 when Murakami was commissioned by Naoki Takizawa, chief designer for Issey Miyake, to create an iconic character for a new line of t-shirts. The t-shirts were to be compressed and sold in a oval-shaped container. The theme was the egg-shaped American children's storybook character, Humpty Dumpty. The eventual design was an amalgamation of Humpty Dumpty and the Japanese monster Hyakume or Hundred Eyes. Like many of Murakami's characters, Oval Buddha has had numerous incarnations in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, blow-up dolls and collector's items. Oval Buddha Silver combines Buddhist art with elements of Western sculpture and some of the artist's own characteristic motifs; it shows that Murakami continues to explore his cultural, national, religious and artistic identity.
...Kaikai & Kiki? Kaikai and Kiki are two characters that represent Murakami’s spiritual guardians. One is white, has long ears and a smile (Kaikai), and the other (Kiki) is pink with short ears, three eyes and shark-like teeth. The word kaikaikiki is a term that was used in the book “History of Japanese Painting” (Honcho gashi, compiled by Kano Sansetsu and Kano Eino) to describe the work of Kano Eitoku, a 16th century Japanese painter who is known as a genius of the Kano style. Murakami uses Japanese lettering to write the term on the ears of his characters, whose origins derive from descriptions of Kano’s work: kaikaikiki “bizarre, yet refined,” “delicate yet bold”. The artist’s hope is for each of the figures to emanate these complex dichotomies. Kaikai and Kiki appear in sculptures, paintings, and drawings, together or separately and accompanied by other characters.
...MR. DOB? Murakami envisions characters which become icons, even logos, of his visual imagination and universe. In 1993 he created Mr. DOB as an alter ego, a sort of self-portrait. Mr. DOB has a circular head with two ears; the letter D is inscribed on his left ear and the letter B on the right ear. The face is O-shaped, thus making his name legible. DOB is a contraction of the dada-like phrase, “Dobojite dobojite” (Why? Why?), derived from the comic book Inakappe Taisho, and “oshamanbe,” a catchphrase of Japanese comedian Toru Yuri. With Mr. DOB, Murakami sought to create an icon, which, while authentically Japanese, would have universal appeal. Murakami drew on elements of a character called Doraemon – a cat-like robot from manga – Japanese comic books – and anime, or animation. Sonic the Hedgehog – a character from video games and anime – was another influence.
...MR. POINTY? Mr. Pointy and the Four Guardians are based on a traditional Buddhist sculptural configuration, with Mr. Pointy sitting at the centre, surrounded by the four guards who are placed on pedestals that float high above, as if descending the world upon clouds. The figure represents an amalgam of symbolic attributes formally inspired by pre-Columbian Mayan art and Tibetan Buddhist imagery.
...JIKOKU-KUN? Jikokkun is “he who sustains the state” or “the watchman and guardian of the eastern lands.” He holds a sword as a symbol of his mission to sustain the world. This figure can be considered a modern-day version of Jikokuten.
...ZOUCHO-KUN? Zoucho-kun, “he who makes grow” or the “patron of growth,” guards the south and frees people from suffering. This figure can be considered a modern-day version of Zochoten.
...TAMON-KUN? The original iconography of Tamon-Kun, “he who hears all,” is to protect the north and answer the prayers for the safety of the sacred places. This figure can be considered a modern-day version of Tamonten.
...KOUMOKKUN? Koumokkun, “he who sees all,” guards the western lands thanks to his ability to see through evil. This figure can be considered a modern-day version of Komokuten.
Why...
...does Murakami use references from TRADITIONAL JAPANESE ART? Murakami studied nihonga, a Japanese style of painting from the late 19th-century. Combining artistic practices from East and West, nihonga features traditional themes painted with natural pigments. Other influences from Japanese tradition include Buddhist iconography, 12th-century scroll paintings, Zen painting and composition techniques used in the Edo period in the 18th century.
...is he influenced by AMERICAN CULTURE, POP ART and, above all, ANDY WARHOL? He came into contact with American culture through his father, who worked at a US naval base. Subsequently, he became fascinated with Hollywood (George Lucas and Steven Spielberg in particular), Walt Disney cartoons and Pop Art and, above all, Andy Warhol. Like Andy Warhol, Murakami merges high art and mass culture, using images and themes from popular culture in his works. In his own original theories, this concept is referred to as Superflat. From pop artists like Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Richard Hamilton, Murakami learned to question the meaning of the word “pop”. After researching their works, he came to the conclusion that pop is the culture of the countries that were victorious in World War II and that, amongst the defeated countries, the concept of “pop” will never really take hold. According to Murakami, the nations that lost are incapable of economic exploitation and everything they produce has to be made at a low cost. He does not aim to make “pop,” but rather work that comes from a flat environment. Superflat art is intended as a confrontation of pop. Murakami learnt that the secret of success depends on a combination of a host of extra-artistic activities and the production of icons for museums. Although this is similar to Murakami’s basic strategy, the latter’s activities outside the realm of art are a crucial part of the equation. Far from mocking conventional commercial practice or the organization of exhibitions, he makes serious use of them.
What is...
...ANIME? Anime is a French word the Japanese use to describe animated film in general; in the West it is used to describe Japanese animated film. Murakami says “To see how drawings move is an experience that has nothing to do with computer graphics; I love drawings.”
...SUPERFLAT? Trained in the traditional Japanese pictorial style, Murakami grew up in a society with a flattened social hierarchy. He coined the term Superflat in his writings, and also uses it to describe his oeuvre. Apart from its two-dimensional style, Superflat also refers to the disappearance of the barriers separating high art and mass culture, and provides a critical take on the structure of art itself. His paintings are literally flat and may be read in the same way from a range of viewpoints.
...OTAKU? Otaku is the Japanese term used to describe manga, anime and video game fans.
... ...MANGA? Manga is the Japanese word for vignette-based comic strips. Outside Japan it refers exclusively to the contemporary Japanese comic. The term became popular through the work of Japanese painter and engraver Hokusai (1760-1849). Covering all genres, manga reaches a remarkably broad range of people, and is used in cartoon series, films, TV series, video games and novels.
...POKU?
Murakami describes his work as POKU, an amalgamation of pop and otaku.
Did you know... In 2001 Murakami created Kaikai Kiki Co. Ltd., an international corporation that brings together his artistic production, animation films, and a wide range of merchandise. He also collaborates commercially with other creators and companies, and organises events such as the Geisai art fair aimed at promoting young artists working in different disciplines. Murakami feels that art is part of the economy, and has therfore forged a new business model based on a service-oriented economy and the transformation of market strategies.
Laboratories: Miquel Navarro’s city
The Guggenheim Bilbao presented a new edition of the educational exhibition series known as Laboratories. These spaces provide viewers with an opportunity to learn about the interests, aesthetic sensibilities and formal preoccupations of some of the artists represented in the Museum's collection.
On this occasion Miquel Navarro presented an exhibition called “Tu mundo, tu ciudad” (Your World, Your City). The public was encouraged to let their imagination run wild, by using the 2,000 aluminium pieces to invent a model city. The installation will be on display until 11 January.
What can we find in this installation? What’s behind it all?
Visitors were invited to construct their own buildings, bridges, or even a replica of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. But the most interesting aspect by far was the actual effort of going beyond the mere physicality of erecting a building or architectural structure. In this installation Navarro wanted each of us to construct our own world, a metaphor which, as he put it, would allow us to speak in poetic terms about desire, power or solitude, among other things. Navarro is not trying to create a real or utopian city. He feels that chaos and disorder should be accepted since they are form part of human nature and therefore part of a city. Another interesting aspect is the presence of nature. In Navarro’s cities, the artist shows the parallels with the human body. A city is a body with arteries, heart, brain ... cities are physical and mental. '"The city is like a body, with its horizontal elements – arteries – and vertical elements, things like walls and towers. When you define your city you are defining a body.”
The activities put forward by the Museum revolve around the artist’s interest in cities, sculpture, the public’s interaction with his work, photography, the human body and its relationship with public spaces, and others.
This is not the first time Miquel Navarro has created works with an education purpose. Back in 1993 he created the imaginary city “Bajo la luna II” (Under the Moon II), made up of factory smokestacks, watering canals and skyscrapers alongside simple homes, now part of the collection of the Musée National Centre dArt Georges Pompidou in Paris.
Topic 2: Art education or entertainment in the Museum?
A visit to the Museum is meant to stimulate original, positive, personal and divergent responses to art and architecture. The idea is for students to pick up basic skills for analyzing art in general. This analysis is based on dialogue while actually standing before a work of art, and on active participation. To encourage dialogue and participation we use open-ended questions. There is no an only right answer to these questions, but instead a number of valid ones. And with a little luck the questions will also generate even more questions!
The objective is to get students build their own knowledge through their efforts. The content supplied by the instructor, rather than being an end in itself, serves as the foundation on which to base more open-ended questions.
Although the educator might facilitate the debate, the centre of attention shifts to the students.
There’s no such thing as a good or a bad question. Discussion between the members of the group can turn out to be quite interesting.
How to ask a question
Open ended questions
How a question is asked can be crucial. Questions with yes or no answers or questions with unanimously accepted answers do not engage students in debate:
- What colour is the hat?
- What is the sculpture made of?
- What time of day does the painting depict?
These are single-response questions and therefore do not encourage dialogue or debate. They might be good for introducing other questions that really do make students think, such as:
- Why did the artist choose those colours for the painting? What do those colours suggest to you? If we used other colours, how would they affect the end result?
- Why do you think the artist chose this particular material to create this sculpture? What would the same sculpture be like if he or she had created it with a different material? How would that other sculpture make you feel?
- Imagine you could step inside the painting. How does it feel like? What do you see around you?
What would be a good title for this piece of artwork? Open-ended questions of this type go beyond simply collecting information. They search for opinions, hypotheses or even other questions. They deal more with emphasizing ‘why’ than ‘what’ or ‘how’. The ultimate goal is to encourage different, personal and divergent answers. It is a matter of exploring ideas, not solving mathematical equations.
Questions that should be avoided
Yes/no questions:
- Does this piece create a feeling of chaos?
- Were geometric shapes important to Kandinsky?
- When you look at that painting by Hoffmann, can you see the colours floating on the green background?
Questions that have the answer in them:
- The figures seem distorted, don’t they?
- Can you see how the artist chops off the image for emphasis?
- Do you think this kind of painting is called “action painting” because of those quick, energetic brush strokes?
Questions that have only one answer that student might or might not know:
- What is the definition of ...?
- I’m thinking about another building that Frank Gehry designed in Los Angeles. Does anyone know which one I’m talking about?
Types of questions to ask
When the group is at a standstill, we can spur students on with questions like:
- And what else?
- OK, any more ideas about that?
- Does anyone have an opinion or a different idea?
- Do you agree? Do you disagree?
- The other day a group came and said this work reminded them of ... Do you agree?
- Some art critics say that this piece symbolizes ... while others say ... What do you think? (Try to use as many interpretations as you can.)
- What do you know about this museum? What did you expect to find here?
It’s important to wait for a number of responses and to try to make students give different opinions. Don’t be satisfied with just one answer.
Questions that address the senses:
- Imagine you could get inside a painting by ... What do you think it would feel like?
- If we could hear the figures talk, what would they be saying?
- Let’s stand/sit just like the position of the figure to see how we feel.
Questions that elicit personal ideas or interpretations:
- When you look at this painting, what is the first thing that comes to mind?
- What are your reactions to this video/photograph ...?
- What mood does it create or put you in? (It is always acceptable that a work might not convey anything to them.)
Include relevant information about the work of art in order to present the questions your are going to ask (as long as it’s not a final answer but rather an introduction or clue). For example:
- Rosenquist worked as a billboard painter. How do you think that influenced his artwork?
- A good starting point for your questions might be to explain the creative process, i.e. how a particular piece was made.
Ask questions in order
Question order is crucial. It’s important to start asking about the object itself and its characteristics, then moving on to the general concept you want to explain. Start with easy questions and move to more complex areas. We start by asking about feelings conveyed by a work of art. Then we present information on the artist and the piece, and later move on to more complex questions about the meaning of the artwork.
Topic 3: Social Programmes
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao takes its educational activities to the Cruces and Basurto hospitals.
As part of its tenth anniversary celebration, in 2008 the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao suggested implementing its family activities throughout the year at the Cruces and Basurto hospitals. The idea was to fulfil the Museum's mission of extending the scope of art education to other areas in the Basque Country. A collaboration agreement between the Museum and health authorities was signed on February 9th. Among the people present at the event were the Museum Director Juan Ignacio Vidarte, the Director of Cruces Hospital Mikel Álvarez, the Director of Basurto Hospital Jon Darpon, and Gorka Martínez, Director of Fundación BBK, sponsor of the Museum's Educational activities. Children aged 3 to 12 in Cruces and Basurto hospitals can now take part in a wide range of interesting activities and workshops aimed at opening new doors to contemporary art. The activities use images from the Museum's Permanent Collection and temporary exhibitions to develop activities that are both fun and educational. Based on pictures of the works from the Museum's Permanent Collection and of the exhibitions on display, the children talk about art and create their own artwork. The Museum activities are led by instructors working with the hospital in collaboration with artists. Some of the past programmes include:
Sculptures with history. Children learn about language hidden inside sculptures and use them to create their own stories. Artistic recipes. Creative "recipes" for mixing materials in the art of cooking. Puppy Workshops. Children invent stories inspired by Jeff Koon's famous puppy sculpture. I was there: memory and art. Children create artwork inspired in memories are kept for posterity.
A new activity is offered every month. The programme varies depending on the children's needs and possibilities. Classroom teachers also adapt the activities throughout the school year.
