Henry IV – World Shakespeare Festival 2012

As you may know this year in London is the World Shakespeare Festival – a celebration of Shakespeare as the world’s playwright. They are currently running 37 plays in 37 languages from actors of all over the world at The Globe theatre in London.

I went to see two plays in Spanish last week. The one on Monday, Henry IV Part 1, was performed by a Mexican company called Compañia Nacional de Teatro. Part 2, was performed on the Wednesday by an Argentinean company called Elkafka Espacio Teatral.

The Mexican company was absolutely brilliant, with three musicians providing almost continuous background music, and seemingly enjoying the show as much as the audience. There were 8 actors in the cast, with most performing multiple parts, who were absolutely brilliant. Falstaff, interpreted by Roberto Soto, was fantastically hilarious. With a careful and clever translation into Mexican Spanish the jokes came across very well.

Then on Wednesday I went to see the Argentinean show which was a huge disappointment. The director opted to create a modern day version of the play. The costumes were horrible and had nothing whatsoever to do with the show, and certainly not suitable for the prestigious Globe theatre. The impression was that they were trying to be cool, and they just weren’t. You can use modern costumes if they are in context but this was not the case, they were just inappropriate. There was no music either which detracted further from the overall effect.

But that was not the worst thing. The actors started confusing the name of the King. The play was called Henry IV and they started referring to him as Harry, Harry the dead King. I couldn’t believe it. The only actor that was more or less ok was Falstaff again, the rest were very poor. I was ashamed for my country, and disappointed, particularly after waiting 8 months for this display.

Overall the festival has been well received, and is a great idea. They have drawn together an eclectic mix of theatre companies from all over the world with Shakespeare’s plays presented in interesting mediums such as sign-language, hip hop rap and native Mauri. I’m sure there were a lot of amazing plays displaying a lot of talent. I feel that, from the two I’ve seen, I saw the best and the worst of what the festival had to offer.

Adrian Lirman

Adrian Lirman is an Argentinian contemporary artist. His abstract paintings are like labyrinths, you get lost in a world of lines and colours that vibrate on the canvas.
Stains that say much more that a spot of colour. Textures and shapes talk in a friendly way, inviting the spectator to participate in the conversation.
His new painting are 3D, something that I am amazed by. The first time I saw them, wearing the red and blue glasses like when I was a kid and I had the stickers album, I thought it was a joke. But when I saw these amazing shapes of colour coming towards me I couldn’t believe it. Extraordinary.
Last month during his exhibition “In Concert” in Uruguay, he released a new book with the same name featuring 45 recent paintings, 10 of which are 3D.
At the moment he is exposing in ArteBA in Buenos Aires from May 17th with the Bisagra Gallery, and very soon he will be exhibiting in Rome in Galeria Spazio Nuovo.
For more information you can check his website

The Queen’s Beasts

This gallery contains 12 photos.

As you may know in two weeks we are celebrating here in England the Queen’s Jubilee.
I was walking through the South Bank and I found these amazing animals made of cans. A lion of England, a yale, a griffin, a bull, a dragon, a falcon, a greyhound, and a unicorn are the animals that you will find if you walk near the River at the moment….read more…

Bauhaus: Art is Life

On Saturday, before going to the theatre I went to see the Bauhaus exhibition in the Barbican Gallery. The number of originals that they have there is amazing, more than 400 originals ion display. I saw one exhibition in Buenos Aires about Bauhaus, but this one is much more complete.
According to the head of the gallery, this is the largest UK Bauhaus exhibition since that of the Royal Academy in 1967, and the first ever to collaborate with all three Bauhaus centres in Germany – Weimar, Dessau, and Berlin – which has only become possible since the reunification of 1990.

Bauhaus was a German School of Design that opened in Weimar in 1918 and was closed under the Nazi Regime Government in 1933. It had 3 directors with different points of view, the first one was Walter Gropius, the second one was Meyer, and the third one Mies van der Rohe. If you study Art, Design or arquitecture, there is no way you don’t know about the work of this school.

Based on geometry and simple lines, the idea of mass production, in the aftermath of Germany the First World War, was a number one priority for the members of this school, in order to help get Germany on it’s feet again.
If you look at these objects with ’2012′ eyes, the objects still appear so modern and have influenced so much of what you find in the market today.

It is fantastic that they included in the exhibition several examples of the Preliminary Course directed by Itten so you can see the his expressionist influence, even though it didn’t marry with the spirit that Gropius envisaged for the school. And you can see that in the objects – they were impossible to reproduce.

Catalogues, prints of Albers, typography studies, furniture, photography of Moholy-Nagy, puppets made by Paul Klee for his son, wall hanging textiles of Gunta Stölzl, Bayer´s poster for Kandinsky 60th birthday, teapots of Marianne Brandt, lamps of Wilhelm Wagenfeld. Everything I´ve been studying for years and years, finally I have it in front of my eyes in the same room. It was like a dream come true.

This exhibition will be on until August 12th at the Barbican Gallery, London.

“Snow White” – Ballet Prelcocaj at Sadler´s Well Theatre

I went to Sadler´s Well Theatre yesterday afternoon to see the ballet. It was the classic Grimm´s brothers story of Snow White, about a Mother and daughter complex.
One of France’s most successful choreographers, Angelin Preljocaj put together an impressive, contemporary setting and choreography. Surprisingly this play is extremely sexual, which I found very interesting because is not necessarily what you expect when you go to see ballet. The spectacular costumes were designed by Jean Paul Gaultier and they were superb. It did help the story a lot and gave the characters more sensuality, supporting the amazing movements and making them more visually powerful.
The Queen was my favourite as there was so much passion in her role. The stag in the middle of the woods came out nude, which was fantastic.
A lot of aerial movement using wires, romance, drama, an impressive scene setting, and accompanied by the sound of extracts from Gustav Mahler´s symphonies, this show is well worth seeing.

Hubcap Creatures

Ptolemy Elrington had an excellent idea. He collects hubcaps that he finds on the side of the rode, that were exposed to the environment for some time. This cause marks and impressions on them, and the artist see this as a plus. He creates creatures, animals from this metal shapes, very interesting idea of recycling metal in a creative way.

Gregory Euclide – Bon Iver

I normally write about art, but music was one of the muses in Ancient Greece so then why not (she was called Euterpe).
Eight months ago I bought the new Bon Iver album. I thought the first one was amazing, but the second one titled ‘Bon Iver’ really blows my mind.
Every song (except the last one that is my least favourite) is magnificent. I love that there is something unique about Bon Iver, the way he records himself 4 times making a choir of voices, and the whole arrangement behind makes him an outstanding artist. I can’t wait to see him live soon. (Please come to England).

Anyway, the artwork of this album attracted me from the beginning from the moment I saw the posters in the tube.
I discovered recently the wonderful artist behind it. His name is Gregory Euclide, and he make installations which combine painting and paper, plants, plastic model trees, rocks, pencil, acrylic. Everything is coming out of the paper, coming alive.
And it is exactly what Bon Iver reminds me, to woods, to nature, peace, trees, green, this is what I breathe when I listen to his album. Recently I’ve started making trees out of paper because this guy just inspires me to leave my house and get a tent and go into the deep of the woods of England. It makes me shiver, and it was a long time that an album had such an interesting impact on me.

Ricardo Celma

Ricardo Celma tells stories. He actually paints pictures in pictures.
Coming from the old school, his details of the human body are so real that is hard to believe that it is a painting. But its much more impressive when the canvas are over 2m. The clothes over the characters are so impressive that you want to touch them. Erotism and pleasure comes out and fill the air when you are in front of one of his paintings. Evoking the Great masters, you can see a reminiscence of Classical painting in his artwork as backgrounds or hints of stories and myths. I truly admire his work, its absolutely impressive.

This talented Argentine painter has been around the world doing exhibitions in Japan, Holland, Polynesia and Mexico. He is having a solo exhibition at Buenos Aires in Galeria Zurbaran on from May 28th to June 30th 2012.
He was designated curator to represent Argentina in the exhibition of Argentinian figuration in Brasilia, which is going to be over Brasil for the next few years.

For more info about him, here his website and his blog.

Adaptahaus

I was watching “Grand Designs” last night and I was fascinated by this story. Alan Dawson is an architect who invented a revolutionary method of building a house. He made his house in different pieces and then assembled all the pieces together, a bit like Lego. First he built the base out of metal in his warehouse and then he takes it to site and installs it. After that, he puts in the panels that will construct the house. But wait, the most interesting bit is that each piece already contains wiring, carpet, plumbing, electricity and it is already painted! So he set himself the challenge of building this gorgeous house in Cumbria in 4 months, and he only took 20 days to assemble the WHOLE house. It is absolutely impressive. The house has a lift and stairs in the middle of the house, both in metal, that give an impressive column in the middle of the living room. The best bit is when they put the wall with the windows already in and they didn´t break any! Unbelievable.

I bow down to this guy. This design system is revolutionary and is very adaptable for places where tsunamis and tornados can devastate a city and you have a rebuild a house very quickly. If I had the money, I would definitely hire Alan.

This is the website of Adaptahaus, his company

And here, if you are in England, you can see the episode of Grand Designs where they show how they built this impressive house.

“The Scream” by Munch sold by $119.9 million/ £73.9 Million

Do you have £73,9 Million extras in your account? well, Petter Olsen, a Norwegian businessman does!

The painting of E. Munch “The Scream” was sold last night in Sotheby´s to a singular price of $119.9 million/£73.9 Million/€91 Million, making this a new world record price for a piece or art at auction. Seven bidders battled for more than twelve minutes before the hammer came down. Amazing ah?

It seems that Olsen´s father was a friend and patron of the artist and they are planning to open a new museum, art centre and hotel in Hvitsten, Norway, where Olsen’s father and Munch were neighbours. At least, it goes back home.

Find out more, check Sotheby´s website