g - the 2nd volume of B. & E. Goulandris Foundation

JULY - AUGUST 2013

The bimonthly electronic journal of the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation

Τ +30 210 - 7252896 www.moca-andros.gr | www.goulandris.gr

Designed and edited by

CONTENTS

IN PLACE OF A PROLOGUE

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By Kyriakos Koutsomallis, Director of the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation.

DEPICTING TRANSCENDENCE

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An introduction to the exhibition currently running at MoCA, Andros.

INTERVIEW

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Meeting new MoCA exhibition and lighting designer, architect Farah Barnes.

I N S I D E T H E F O U N D AT I O N ’ S P E R M A N E N T C O L L E C T I O N

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Jean-Louis Forain, Dancer

FORMER BEGF SCHOLARS

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Yorgos Zois

I N T E R N AT I O N A L L I S T I N G S / C U LT U R E A list of major art shows around the world.

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I N P L A C E O F A P R O LO G U E

We are very pleased to present in the pages of this second edition of our electronic journal an interview with Ms. Farah Pourbabai Barnes, who brings her valuable expertise and experience in international museological projects to the exhibition and lighting design of the Foundation’s new Museum in Athens, whose construction is already under way.

As regards the Foundation’s exhibition program we would like to inform our readers that through the summer months (30 June-29 September 2013) our Museum of Contemporary Art at Hora, Andros, will be presenting an exhibition titled ‘Depicting Transcendence: From Byzantine Tradition to Contemporary Art’. The show aims to explore the influence of Byzantine art on the work of renowned Greek painters (Parthenis, Kontoglou, Tsarouchis, Engonopoulos, Papaloukas, Vassiliou, Astediadis, Kopsidis, and more), and the way this came to inform their visual concerns.

You can always find us on all social media platforms where you can share your impressions and comments with us.

Kyriakos Koutsomallis Director

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STEFANOS ALMALIOTIS Christoforos Anastassakis CONSTANTINOS ARTEMIS AGENOR ASTERIADIS SPYROS VASSILIOU NIKOS ENGONOPOULOS Pantoleon and Nikolaos Zografos FOTIS KONTOGLOU RALLIS KOPSIDIS Polychronis Lembessis ANASTASSIOS LOUKIDIS Dimitrios Biskinis Nikos Νikolaou SPYROS PAPALOUKAS CONSTANTINOS PARTHENIS DIMITRIOS PELEKASSIS POLYKLITOS RENGOS ΥANNIS TSAROUCHIS Constantinos Fanellis Anastassios Alevizos (Tassos) Georgios Velissaridis Dimitrios Galanis Vasso Katraki Lykourgos Koyevinas Efthymios Papadimitriou Georgios Sikeliotis

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, ANDROS

DEPICTING TRANSCENDENCE FROM BYZANTINE TRADITION TO modern ART 30 JUNE - 29 SEPTEMBER 2013, ANDROS

‘Depicting Transcendence: From Byzantine Tradition to Contemporary Art’, organized by the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Andros, opened on Saturday, 29 June. The exhibition is an ambitious project that hopes to showcase the influence of Byzantine tradition on modern Greek painters and printmakers. Curated by Dr. Nikos Zias, Professor Emeritus at the University of Athens, it features work by painters Constantinos Parthenis, Fotis Kontoglou, Nikos Engonopoulos, Nikos Nikolaou, Yannis Tsarouchis, Spyros Papaloukas, Spyros Vassiliou, Polyklitos Rengos, Constantinos Artemis, Dimitrios Pelekassis, Agenor Asteriadis, Polychronis Lembessis, Dimitrios Biskinis, Stefanos Almaliotis, Anastassios Loukidis, Rallis Kopsidis, Constantinos Fanellis, Christoforos Anastassakis, and Pantoleon and Nikolaos Zografos, and printmakers Dimitrios Galanis, Lykourgos Koyevinas, Efthymios Papadimitriou, Anastassios Alevizos (Tassos), Georgios Sikeliotis, and Vasso Katraki. These artists created work imbued with a religious sensibility that helped reignite interest in Byzantine art.

The show brings together more than 130 works from State and Ecclesiactical museums, foundations, churches and private collections. It is accompanied by an authoritative catalogue edited by Christos Ph. Margaritis, which features an introductory essay by MoCA, Andros Director Kyriakos Koutsomallis alongside text by the following scholars: Nikolaos Zias, Nikolaos Graikos, Spyros Moschonas, Yorgos Mylonas, Ioannis Frilingos, Ioanna Stoufi-Poulimenou, Georgios Tsigaras, Andromachi Katselaki, Maria Nanou, Yannis Kolokotronis, Melita Emmanouil, Nektarios Mamais, Irene Orati. The publication also includes a glossary and bibliography, as well as color reproductions of all the exhibits and reference works. It has been designed and published by Mikri Arktos.

Media sponsors include: SKAI, SKAI 100.3, SKAI.GR, I KATHIMERINI, ATHINA 984, MINDRADIO.GR, MONOPOLI.GR, CULTURENOW.GR.

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DEPICTING TRANSCENDENCE FROM BYZANTINE TRADITION TO modern ART

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INTRODUCTION b y K y riakos K outsomallis

In the perpetual flow of approaching the archetypal motif through remodelling and reforming, which man has been endeavouring ever since he dwelt in caves, so as to give shape and form to his personal experiences, existential anxieties and fears of the envelopping void that these create, to crystallize the evanescent “secret beauty” of the simple things around him and to create figural types to narrate the sanctity of his divine credo, the Byzantine “artist” –the painter of holy images in most cases– acted in a space of transcendental mystical silence and in a modality of visionary visual mysticism, so as to elevate his work to a kind of mystagogical officiation, in order to pictorialize the “unspoken” and to make, according to patristic terminology, “the visible implied”, “the built unbuilt”, “the perishable imperishable”.

Consequently, the painting of holy images should not be approached only on secular criteria. The beholding of these images presupposes the projection of the imagination that is defined and determined by doctrinal commitments and confessional constraints. The reading of them implicates the use of codes for deciphering meanings, messages and symbolisms which will induct the recipient of the visible into the inner reaches of the mystery enclosed within the iconographic narration.

Thus, the iconographic narration of “the painter of the divine” is defined by strict specifications, among which aesthetic sensuousness is not the chief concern. By transcendentalist reductions, the aesthetically beautiful is a prerequisite to be sought in the spiritual dimension of matter. There where this is immaterialized, dematerialized or at least idealized. The spirit must claim its own autonomy and parity vis-à-vis the mind. For the figures to be vested in evangelical virtue and suffused with the delectable felicitous light of serene fullness, they must project as ascetic, in order to express a spirit of negation of worldly life.

Historical research documents that although Byzantium produced masterpieces in all spiritual-intellectual spheres and art, for a long time it remained a world closed and perhaps unknown to the many.

Nonetheless, it would be wrong to blame the lack of knowledge and there-

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DEPICTING TRANSCENDENCE FROM BYZANTINE TRADITION TO modern ART

fore the reduced interest not only of foreigners, who until a few decades ago wanted to believe that Greek civilization failed to surpass the bounds of ancient Hellas, but also of we Greeks, who either consciously or out of ignorance, by severing our ties with tradition, passed by the importance and the magnitude of Byzantium’s historical contribution to forging our cultural identity, merely because of its identification with the dark centuries of the Middle Ages. The undervalued interest is perhaps due also to the fact that Byzantium, although it borrowed many elements from Classical antiquity, refused to impart to these the dimension that views on the Classical took on in the West during the Renaissance.

In contrast to Western religious Renaissance art, which embraced sensuousness and secularism, Byzantium did not accept art as an autonomous value but as an aesthetic result with metaphysical ramifications and meanings.

In a spare, austere, two-dimensional space, bereft of any excess, the ascetic figures are painted in frontal pose, with an expression of spiritual repletion and in a manner that emphasizes the gaze, the dignity and the mildness of the saintly persons. There is no doubt that Byzantine art, in all its manifestations, influenced modern and contemporary iconographic narrative painting

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MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, ANDROS 30 JUNE - 29 SEPTEMBER 2013, ANDROS

with a host of pictorial and stylistic elements, in much the same way as ecclesiastical poetry and hymnology succoured later literary expression, and Byzantine chant later musical sounds, particularly of the East. The pure and the single in meaning are, in any case, concepts that are not compromised by development in art. Aesthetic or any other artistic emotion is not evoked by one-dimensional versions but by the mixing of elements which through convergences or divergences created launching pads for new aesthetic demands, new schools of thought and new artistic currents.

The vibrant colour scales, the linear executions and the geometric motifs, the frontality in the arrangement of the figures, the absence of a third dimension, the schematic angular drapery, the solid volumes and their distribution in space are features which, as precursory painting traits, refer directly to fundamental principles of modern and contemporary artistic currents, such as Cubism, Fauvism, Surrealism or even Expressionism. They are traits which from that time were devised not to offer the possibility of escape towards Abstractionism, but to achieve the purely aesthetic fullness of the image and to narrate what is sought, namely the holy-spiritual assessment of the images of the cosmos.

It goes without saying that the aim of this hommage is not to reiterate stere-

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DEPICTING TRANSCENDENCE FROM BYZANTINE TRADITION TO modern ART

otype positions on Byzantine art, but to enhance the effects and influences that modern Greek painters received from Byzantine and Post-Byzantine models, and the way in which they linked these with the subversive changes that art underwent during the 20th Century.

The aim is to show how artists of the modern generation, who experienced these radical changes at close hand, by living in or just travelling to the major artistic centres, such as Paris, Munich, Vienna, New York, as well as to the arks of Byzantine civilization in Greece, such as Mount Athos, Meteora, Mystras, perceived, assimilated, utilized and included elements of tradition and of modernity in their visual discourse, thus contributing also to the rekindling of interest in Byzantine art.

During the turbulent interwar years, in the debates on “Greekness” (Hellenikoteta) of the vociferous “1930s Generation” (Genia tou ’30), many were the scholars, poets and authors who fed the visual deliberations of notable artists of the same generation, and encouraged their aesthetic turn towards Byzantium.

Constantinos Parthenis was the first of the recent painters who studied and incorporated in his work elements of ancient, Byzantine and modern art, thus inaugurating a fertile dialogue between his own tradition and the multifarious in-

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MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, ANDROS 30 JUNE - 29 SEPTEMBER 2013, ANDROS

fluences he received from European avant-garde movements, during his sojourn in Paris. Reconciling the spirituality of tradition with the freedom offered him by the avant-garde, he created an oeuvre with his own personal hallmark, in which religious subjects hold an important place. His work in the church of St Alexandros in Paleo Faliro attests his profound knowledge of European Modernism and sets its seal on the need for renewal of modern Greek ecclesiastical art, imposed by the new era.

Fotis Kontoglou, leading representative of his generation, as undoubted spiritual force with anchoritic tendencies and firm faith in tradition, yet without ignoring Western art, influenced the work of many distinguished painters, such as Nikos Engonopoulos, Yannis Tsarouchis, Yannis Moralis, Georgios Chochlidakis, Yannis Karoussos, revealing in a particularly personal way the sanctity of the images of the cosmos.

Spyros Papaloukas, deeply familiar with modernist movements, in conjugation with the teachings he gained from his fertile stay on Mount Athos, created a notable innovative oeuvre by fusing elements of Byzantine and Neo-Impressionist art.

Spyros Vassiliou, with symbolic narrative tendencies and special treatment

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DEPICTING TRANSCENDENCE FROM BYZANTINE TRADITION TO modern ART

of form, which refer to Post-Byzantine as well as folk art, in partnership with modernist elements of Western art, created original religious compositions, sometimes with a surrealist disposition. The execution of the wall-paintings in the church of St Dionysios in Kolonaki is a bold example of Neo-Byzantine ecclesiastical art.

Yannis Tsarouchis, one of the emblematic figures of the 1930s Generation, loyal to the traditions of the Orthodox Greek Nation, with an enigmatic and innately wise discourse, succeeded in transmuting past into present, defending his Hellenikoteta with a cosmopolitan spirit. With Neo-Byzantine stylistic idioms, he honoured in his own way the great Byzantine tradition, particularly during the period of his “apprenticeship� to Kontoglou.

Nikos Engonopoulos, betwixt Byzantium, the influences of his mentors Parthenis and Kontoglou, the metaphysical painting of Giorgio de Chirico and the symbolic script of Surrealism, succeeded in articulating his own imaginative artistic discourse, believing that motive force of his ventures into combining Surrealism with the Greek past and Byzantine art, which he in any case considered particularly surrealistic, was idiosyncratically innate.

Polyklitos Rengos, adulator of western art and the experiences he acquired during his long stay in Paris and in New York, made an enormous contribution to the renewal of ecclesiastical art, particularly in churches in northern Greece.

Constantinos Artemis, with strong influences from Nazarene painting, decorated with wall-paintings in Western style numerous churches throughout Greece.

Rallis Kopsidis, a painter with a singular expressive style, contributed to the renewing current with proposals combining a realistic experiential recording and an antirealistic rendering of elements Byzantine and in folk vein.

Stefanos Almaliotis, initially distinguished as a painter of giant cinema post-

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, ANDROS 30 JUNE - 29 SEPTEMBER 2013, ANDROS

ers, from 1956 onwards applied himself to decorating many churches with wallpaintings of monumental dimensions.

Nikos Nikolaou, an accomplished craftsman in executing wall-paintings, contributed in his own way to the renewing spirit, harmonizing his own proposals with the Byzantine style.

Dimitrios Pelekassis made his own personal impact on recent ecclesiastical art, painting sometimes in accordance with Neo-Byzantine models and sometimes in the Western style. A native of Zakynthos, son of a local literatus, painter and icon-painter, he grew up in the cosmopolitan ambience of his birthplace, where he was able to study and receive the influences both of the Septinsular School and Italian art, which he got to know more thoroughly during his threeyear stay in Rome and Florence.

This hommage is addressed to all, regardless of ideological creeds, doctrinal commitments and confessional classifications. The narrator of the Divine places dogmatic constraints on himself, but he does not limit the freedom of perception by the beholder, who is free to evaluate on his own criteria what is proposed.

In times of refutations, negations, doubts and reversals, it is certain that retrospections and references of this kind, however much they may be considered out of sync with the Zeitgeist of discrediting values, reinforce our cohesive tissue, the tissue that unites us with the myths and our belief in the Divine. They sustain the sentiment so as to seek its high equivalence with the mind, and they are springboards towards clearer concepts of art and inquiries that contribute to the spherical view of the images of the world around us.

[Kyriakos Koutsomallis, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Andros]

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INTERVIEW Architect Farah Barnes is in charge of the Foundation’s new MoCA, Athens, exhibition and lighting design.

Natural light is a divine source of spiritual values and a symbol of the human soul.

Let us begin by asking you to describe your practice for us. You are an architectural lighting designer specializing in museum and public building lighting – what does this involve?

I was educated as an architect and have practiced architecture in a wide range of projects including commercial buildings, bridges and interiors. However, over time I realized the critical importance of lighting and came to specialize in that area. At first, I focused on museums. But later I realized that I could apply my skills and vision to working on a broad range of public buildings, such as hotels, offices, and schools, bringing to these projects the sensibility I had developed through my work in museums. From time to time I also design the lighting in art collectors’ residences. My practice is international: as well as my work in the United States I have had several projects in the Middle East and I hope to soon open a branch office in Abu Dhabi.

I have always loved both architecture and the arts. Early in my professional career and immediately following my architectural training I was privileged to work as an exhibition designer at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, involved with all aspects of an exhibition from the initial concept to the opening of the shows. For the young architect/ designer that I was back then it was the most fulfilling experience to work within such beautiful buildings as the East Building, designed by IM Pei, and the original building designed by John Russell Pope. Working at the National Gallery of Art became an amazing journey of learning about the display of art, about natural lighting, artificial lighting, and space. It was like a dream to be able to walk through the buildings every day early in the morning when no-one else was around and to study the paintings, artifacts, and architecture. I became sensitive toward the display of objects and the art of illumination. I was very proud to be told that when the Presidential Design Award was given to our design department in 1989, I had played an important role in achieving it.

However, I wanted my own practice and APV Architectural and Exhibition Design was established in 1990 in Washington DC. I took my practice on a professional journey from architecture to interiors, exhibitions, and architectural lighting. On my extensive travels in Europe, the Mid-

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[1,2] National Gallery of Art, East wing, Washington.

dle East and North Africa, I visited many amazing historic and cultural heritage sites, palaces, museums and houses of worship, where both natural and artificial lighting were basic elements.

I became very interested in the presence of natural light within buildings and its impact on interior spaces. I have come to understand the interplay of structural form and interior space, all the while working with architects, engineers, artists and owners to help materialize an original concept by providing in-depth technical solutions. Light discovers geometry and can create a poetry of its own that involves complex layers of perception. In our completed projects, lighting brings art together with cutting-edge technology and science.

When were you first introduced to the Goulandris Foundation and its plans to construct a Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens? Were you in charge of the lighting design for the Museum right from the start?

While studying architecture, I visited Greece a number of times and fell in love with the country, people, culture – and the Acropolis! I first learnt about the Goulandris Foundation in the early 1990s, as a result of my work at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, with which the Foundation had links. In 1993, I visited the museum on Andros to see the Paul Klee exhibition.

It was also through mutual contacts at the National Gallery that I was introduced to the plan to build the new museum in Athens. Initially we were in contact by telephone, but I then traveled to Athens and was received by Mrs Goulandris to further discuss in detail the plans to build the new MOCA that was to be designed by I.M. Pei. Shortly after this, our firm was commissioned by the Goulandris Foundation to join the MOCA design team, with a focus on the exhibit and lighting design and I was made lead designer on the project.

My first meeting with Mrs. Goulandris was enchanting and developed into a friendship – we stayed in contact even after the plans for the original museum stalled. She was very involved in deciding the design of the MoCA. We met mainly in Athens and New York, but one of our meetings about the exhibition design took place in Andros. It was a privilege to know Mrs. Goulandris who was a soft spoken, sophisticated, gentle, gracious and private person.

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[3, 4, 5] MOCA architectural plans, designed by I. M. Pei in Rigillis st. - Athens.

Could you describe the Museum originally designed by I.M. Pei, the one that would have stood on the plot at Rigillis St. should things have not turned out as they did?

Mrs. Goulandris traveled all over the world and admired the architecture of the East Wing of the National Gallery in Washington DC, designed by I.M. Pei. She envisioned a museum similar in scale and contemporary style for the people of Greece. Like the East Wing, all plans and building facades consisted of interwoven isosceles triangular geometric shapes, although in the case of Rigillis St. the site was rectangular, unlike the challenging triangular site in Washington.

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Mrs. Goulandris admired the architecture of the East Wing of the National Gallery in Washington DC, designed

by I.M. Pei. She envisioned a museum similar in scale and contemporary style for the people of Greece.

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The Al Manara Cultural Centre on Saadiyat Island, UAE.

What was the most challenging problem you have been faced with in your work? How did you tackle it in the end?

Design is a process of creative problem solving. I like the challenges of design and I like turning them into opportunities. It is any designer’s preference to be involved in a project from the initial stage when the concept takes shape to the stage of completion. At concept stage the design team can brainstorm and look at all possibilities from various perspectives to come up with the best solution. But if they are only hired at a late stage of the project, the designer faces constraints and limitations in fully developing their ideas.

The Al Manara Cultural Centre on Saadiyat Island, UAE, was a fast track project that had to be completed within six months. Fast track projects and programs which are continuously changing, even as construction is going up rapidly, can be both challenging and rewarding. When there are last minute design changes, the project team must work closely together to make sure they are all adopted and coordinated. This was the case with the Al Manara Center, which opened in 2010. I was pleased with the end result, in which we managed to incorporate significant design changes and still create state of the art lighting for the exhibition galleries, while keeping the exterior façade illuminated as originally envisaged, and remaining within a limited budget. Designers need to be adaptable and work toward achieving beautiful design solutions, whatever the constraints.

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Although your practice is based in Washington D.C., your activity spans the globe. Where have you felt your work more complemented and enhanced by natural light?

As the architect Louis Khan wrote “No space, architecturally, is a space unless it has natural lighting,” while Le Corbusier said that “Architecture is the masterly correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light.”

A good design incorporating natural lighting will enhance spaces, improve ambient lighting and the well-being of the public, all the while reducing the use of electricity. I believe in having natural lighting in each project as far as possible. I also lecture about natural lighting and its impact on buildings and museums to audiences of architects, designers, professional lighting designers, art collectors and museum representatives. We can study historic projects where natural lighting was celebrated in buildings and learn from them.

Would you care to give us a few examples of projects where a combination of natural and artificial lighting has been achieved in the most creative way?

One of my first successful projects at the National Gallery of Art was carrying out the exhibition design for An American Sampler: Folk Art from The Shelburne Museum. The National Gallery of Art (NGA) has various skylights designed by IM Pei both in the main public atriums and in selected gallery spaces. Often, depending on the requirements of particular exhibitions, natural lighting was not welcome in the gallery spaces. But for the Shelburne exhibition, safe natural lighting was captured in the most subtle and effective way to showcase the art and enhance the experience of the visitors. Natural lighting made the spaces magical and alive.

The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Md. (2003) was another example where we brought safe natural lighting into the gallery spaces.

In the Al Manara Cultural Center in Saadiyat Island, UAE, the space benefited from both filtered natural light and artificial lighting to provide greater flexibility.

Sometimes we recommend re-creating an artificial luminance ceiling to capture natural lighting effects in interior spaces. The illuminated ceiling enhances the overall space, which can be magical. A typical example of this are the FGIC headquarters on Park Avenue in New York City, NY.

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[1] Sad-Al-Saltaneh in Gazvin, Iran (17th century). [2] National Gallery of Art, East wing, Washington.

[3, 4, 5] The Walters Art museum in Baltimore, Md. [6] FGIC headquarters on Park Avenue in New York City, NY.

Furthermore, in the Washington DC area we are currently completing a penthouse where contemporary American art is displayed and a private collector’s residence. In both cases, safe natural lighting plays an important part in the lighting design of interior spaces.

Other museum projects and collectors’ residences where I have used natural lighting include the Walters Art Museum, in Baltimore, MD (2003); the Thaw Collection, American Indian ArtFenimore Art Museum, in Cooperstown, NY (1998); the Public Museum of Grand Rapids, Grand Rapids, MI (1998), the Mezzettie and Soldo Collector’s Residence (2011), Chevy Chase, MD and the Harrington residence in Alexandria, VA (2011). All of these projects received IES Illumination Design Awards.

I should add that in 2007 and 2008 I gave lectures at the PLDA (Professional Lighting Designers Association, Europe) about learning from the past and about re-introducing natural lighting in contemporary spaces through the use of artistic colored glass.

Which projects are currently in the design stage?

In 2010 we teamed up with Aedas International to work on the amazing utopian Masdar City project in Abu Dhabi organized by the Mubadala Development Company. The Masdar City project will burn no gas or oil, so its contribution to greenhouse gases will be minimal. Masdar is one of the centerpieces of Emirate Abu Dhabi’s plans. We envisioned highest quality natural and minimal artificial lighting becoming the dominant element that can embrace the sites at night, while bringing a comfortable and pleasing experience into residences and businesses at full build out.

The positive effects of lighting will add to the quality of the new town which can have a magnetic effect on both residents and tourists, while creating a safe urban environment. Light attracts, and people attracted to the city will extend their stay, providing more business for restaurants and the entertainment industry.

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Al Manara Cultural Center in Saadiyat Island, UAE.

Left: Symphony of lights

by Farah Barnes

How have international guidelines regarding energy conservation influenced contemporary lighting design?

New international energy conservation directives are reinforcing the need to find natural ways to bring light into buildings and reduce energy consumption. The restraints imposed by these new programs may encourage us to find different ways to bring natural light to our spaces. Instead of conceiving this as a problem dictated by current technology, we have an opportunity to recall the past of architecture and its methods, such as the use of colored glass and mosaic mirrors.

Brightness and its contrast are important in creating a stimulating environment and can be undesirable, but dull uniform lighting can lead to tiredness, resulting in an unproductive environment. All lighting design issues are a question of balance.

Finally, Ms. Barnes, how would you describe the significance of architectural lighting?

Lighting evokes delight in architecture. Natural light is a divine source of spiritual values and a symbol of the human soul. Artificial lighting also needs to address the social and physical needs of human beings, but most of all it must evoke delight. I believe light is the soul of architecture and its spaces.

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I N S I D E T H E F O U N D AT I O N ’ S PERMANENT COLLECTION

Jean-Louis Forain (1852-1931)

Danseuse (Dancer) pastel on grey paper 35.5 x 28 cm c.1900

“I was born in Rheims on 23rd October, 1852 and I love dance.” This was the artist’s reply to the newspaper Le courier français, when, in 1888, they asked him for his biographical details. As was also true for Degas, whom Forain met at the end of the 1870s and with whom he developed a friendship filled with admiration, dance was in fact one of his favourite subjects. But the view he had of that world and its actors, like the view he had generally of society and his contemporaries, is peculiar to him. At times caustic and sarcastic, it reflects the quirk of mind which made Forain the much appreciated caricaturist of several satirical publications at the time and which caused him to observe not only the spectacle in the hall and on stage, but also behind the scenery, both literally and metaphorically; for example, those episodes which happened behind the backstage curtains where the ageing gentlemen ‘protectors’ came to visit their petit rat (as young ballerinas were called), approaching them with familiar gestures which speak for themselves. In this way he became a chronicler of daily life in all its aspects, even those sometimes less than glorious.

Certainly, dance itself was his passion, but also the entire microcosm and the multiplicity of its realities captured his attention.

Several of Forain’s pastels, a medium he used extensively, may bring to mind works by Degas, who was older than the artist. He was, however, the author of a body of work whose originality is derived from a personality which rendered him merciless toward the world which surrounded him and, at the same time, made him a profoundly generous human being, sensitive to the miseries of the human condition.

In this pastel, it was the pose of a ballerina at rest, as graceful as a dance movement, which captured the interest of the artist; a theme which already appears in his work from the late 1870s.

In the background, dominated by a range of cold blues and greens which darken in the immediate vicinity of the figure, the face and bust of the girl, irradiated by light, are contrasted in order to stand out better; while the pale yellow tulle of the tutu, which its fuzzy execution suggesting a misty quality and giving a warmer tone to the whole composition, is placed exactly at the center.

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FORMER BEGF SCHOLARS

Yorgos Zois BEGF Scholar 200, for direction.

Casus Belli then: is this what we are currently experiencing really is?

I think that it is. And what shocks me the most is that it does not seem to be a result of the major debates emanating from the world of current affairs, where negotiation and compromise are common, but rather to belong to the realm of the everyday. It is the small moments of daily life that tend to become a setting for war at the slightest cause.

One might note that there is a different feel to the Greek title of your new film, ‘Titloi telous’ [Closing Credits], a more pronounced sense of finality perhaps, as opposed to ‘Out of Frame’, which is the film’s international title. If this is true in any way, what would be your reading of those ‘closing credits’ rolling on contemporary Greek reality?

The film’s title is at once literal and metaphorical. Its literal sense refers to the actual roll of the film’s closing credits, while it is also a metaphor for the end of an age, not to mention an entire system. What I cannot predict, though, is what the opening titles that must follow will be like.

We live in a world where a picture is not just ‘worth a thousand words’ anymore, but seems instead to reign supreme replacing language altogether as a medium for meaning. How does a ‘non-verbal’ world such as ours strike an artist like yourself?

I have no answer to your question. The issue of language has been an abiding concern of mine over many years. Lately I have come to think of the image not as language, but as something printed directly onto our nervous system. The images that appeal to me the most are those that seem to generate in us a sense of ontological anxiety the reason for which is not immediately clear. I try to be an organic part of the reality that surrounds me so that I can discover them.

Contemporary social problems are clearly the focus of both your films. Could we perhaps say that there is a connection between your two films; that they somehow tell the same story?

I wouldn’t think so. The first is obviously an allegory of contemporary social conditions, but the second one, to my mind at least, is clearly personal. I found the sight of empty billboards so profoundly haunting that I started filming them in search of an answer. To me, this is an existential film, not a film about the [financial] crisis.

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Filmmaking is something you eventually arrived at following studies in applied mathematics and physics. Do these belong to two different chapters in your life so to speak, or is there a ‘golden thread’ running through them both and binding them somehow?

They belong to two different chapters, but as in a typical fictional narrative one is carried within the other, one draws on the other, depends on the other for the kind of energy that takes it a step further. Besides, what is in us is processed there and ultimately comes to inform what we do, whatever that may be.

The narrative in both your films takes 10-12 minutes to complete. Is this the result of a conscious choice?

No. The story has a certain length: it is the material itself that each time determines the length of time it takes for the story to unfold.

The extensive use of technology in art has fostered a ‘regime’, in fact a whole ‘culture of facility’ in art production. At the same time art that is satisfying, surprising, or, even more so, life-changing is becoming increasingly rare. What is your view of this contradiction?

In art as in science failure is the rule. For every powerful work of art, or major scientific breakthrough there are thousands that have failed. But it is these failures that will often open up new roads for the artist or scientist to tread, going off in different directions. It just so happens that instead of finding what you were looking for, you often stumble upon something when you least expect it, something that might just change everything around next time you try your hand at a creative project.

What has been the most valuable advice extended to you by your instructors in the art of filmmaking, the kind of guideline that would set you on your course?

Don’t talk about doing a film. Do it.

How do you envision the future of cinema? Or, to put it differently, what would you hope the future of cinema to be like?

I neither hope nor envision: I want to be surprised by others and myself alike. No matter what we do, no matter how hard we may try to escape, filmmaking in a way always mirrors who we are. I only wish that in dealing with this art of deception we may be as honest as we can.

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INTERNATIONAL LISTINGS / CULTURE

LIVERPOOL

PERRY GREEN

TATE LIVERPOOL CHAGALL: MODERN MASTER

THE HENRY MOORE FOUNDATION MOORE - RODIN

Exhibition runs from 8 June through to 6 October 2013 www.tate.org.uk

Organized in collaboration with Musée Rodin, Paris.

Exhibition runs from 29 March through to 27 October 2013. www.henry-moore.org

A major retrospective of the Russian artist bringing together more than sixty works painted in Paris in the years leading up to WWI, during his stay in Berlin in 1914, and in the years he spent in Russia around the time of the Revolution in 1917. It is the time during which Chagall’s vision takes shape and the core concerns of his long career in art emerge.

LONDON

The Courtauld Gallery COLLECTING GAUGUIN SAMUEL COURTAULD IN THE ‘20s

The gallery presents its complete collection of works by the French artist plus two loans secured especially for the purpose of this exhibition.

Exhibition runs from 20 June through to 8 September 2013. www.courtauld.ac.uk

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It is the first time such a significant group of Rodin’s works is presented alongside the work of Henry Moore in a way that fosters dialogue between the two masters. The exhibition draws its material from the Musée Rodin, Paris, as well as public collections such as those of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

BARCELONA

MUSEU PICASSO SELF- PORTRAITS

The museum celebrates its 50th anniversary with this major exhibition of Picasso’s selfportraits, which spans a period of almost eighty years in the artist’s career, from early childhood (1894) until shortly before his death in 1972.

Exhibition runs from 31 May through to 1 September 2013. www.museupicasso.bcn

MADRID

Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza Reflections. From Van Eyck to Magritte

The exhibition is part of the Spanish museum’s ‘exchanging gazes’ series and presents works from its permanent collections that explore the theme of reflection, the play of light on a surface that has fascinated many an artist especially since the fourteenth century. A compelling juxtaposition of works that span the last five hundred years.

BASEL

FONDATION BEYELER MAX ERNST

A prominent member of the avant-garde, Ernst started out as a dadaist and soon joined the ranks of Parisian Surrealists. He was an indefatigable inventor of new forms and methods, and his works bear the mark of a tumultuous life across Europe and America.

Exhibition runs from 26 May through to 8 September 2013. www.fondationbeyerel.ch

Exhibition runs from 10 June through to 15 September 2013. www.museothyssen.org

MADRID

MUSEO REINA SOFIA DALI

This major retrospective, presented last Spring at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, comprises almost two hundred works (paintings, sculptures, drawings, films, and photographs) including Dali’s celebrated Melting Watches, on loan from New York’s MoMA. Exhibition runs from 27 April through to 2 September 2013. www.museoreinasofia.es

MARTIGNY

FONDATION PIERRE GIANADDA Modigliani et l’ Ecole de Paris

The exhibition is the result of a renewed collaboration between the Foundation and the Centre Georges Pompidou. Among the works on show Modigliani’s portraits and nudes hold pride of place. Works by Chaim Soutine, Jules Pascin, Marc Chagall, and Moïse Kisling among others are included. Emphasis is placed on the friendship between Modigliani and Constantin Brancusi.

Exhibition runs from 21 June through to 24 November 2013. www.gianadda.ch

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INTERNATIONAL LISTINGS / CULTURE

PA R I S

ΜUSEE-ORANGERIE Les Macchiaioli 1850-1874

PA R I S

MUSEE D’ORSAY A Passion for France.

The Marlene and Spencer Hays Collection

This is an important private collection put together by an American art-loving couple with a penchant for French culture. The exhibition features work by: Vuillard (including one of the nine works in his Public Gardens series, of which five more belong to the Musée d’Orsay permanent collection), Bonnard, Ranson, Roussel, Denis, Redon, Fantin-Latour, Tissot, Caillebotte, Morisot, and Gonzalés. The exhibition’s chronology ends with works by Derain, Matisse, and Modigliani. Most of the works on show are ‘returning’ to France for the first time.

Exhibition runs from 16 April through to 18 September 2013. www.musee-orsay.fr

Des impressionnistes italiens?

The exhibition explores the art of the Macchiaioli, a group of Tuscan painters active through the 1850s. They are considered the fathers of modern Italian painting, their influence extending far beyond the realm of painting itself into the work of many Italian directors including Luchino Visconti and Mauro Bolognini.

Exhibition runs from 10 April to 22 July 2013. www.musee-orangerie.fr

PA R I S

Centre George Pompidou Lichtenstein: A Retrospective

After London’s Tate Modern it is now the Centre Pompidou’s turn to host the most extensive retrospective to date of the major twentiethcentury American artist. The exhibition brings together as many as 125 seminal paintings and sculptures.

Organized in collaboration with The Art Institute of Chicago.

Exhibition runs from 3 July through to 4 November 2013. www.centrepompidou.fr

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AIX-EN-PROVENCE MARSEILLE

LE GRAND ATELIER DU MIDI

MUSÉE GRANET FROM CÉZANNE TO MATISSE MUSÉE DES BEAUX-ARTS, PALAIS LONGCHAMP FROM VAN GOGH TO BONNARD Titled ‘the great studio of the outdoors’ this exhibition is an attempt at revisiting the great movements that shaped art in the twentieth century, from Impressionism to Postimpressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Surrealism, and Abstraction. The exhibition, a diptych presented simultaneously in Marseille and Aix-en-Provence, brings together almost 200 masterpieces, 115 of which have never been exhibited before.

NEW YORK

THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes

This is a major survey of Le Corbusier’s (Charles-Edouard Jeanneret) multi-faceted work as an architect, interior designer, city planner, writer, and photographer. The exhibition visualizes Le Corbusier’s manner of observing and imagining landscape throughout his career, from his youthful watercolors of Italy, Greece, and Turkey, to his sketches of India, his photographs and models.

Exhibition runs from 15 June through to 23 September 2013. www.moma.org

Exhibition runs from 13 June through to 13 October 2013. www.museegranet-aixenprovence.fr

NEW YORK

BUDAPEST

MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS EGON SCHIELE and His Age

The exhibition features 70 works drawn mainly from the collection of the Leopold Museum in Vienna and is complemented by drawings and paintings found in other important collections.

Exhibition runs from 26 June to 29 September 2013. www.szepmuveszeti.hu

Guggenheim Museum Kandinsky in Paris, 1934–1944

The exhibition presents work created over the last decade of the artist’s life in the Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. This period is marked by a change to his visual vocabulary coupled with a lighter pallete of soft pink, violet, turquoise, and gold that echoes his Russian origins.

Exhibition runs from 28 June through to 23 September 2013 www.guggenheim.org

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