Exhibitions Abroad
Though Brussels has an art scene for every taste, The Bulletin's art critic Sarah McFadden decided to map out current exhibitions worth traveling to
Lee Lozano
One of the most uncompromising, enigmatic artists to emerge anywhere, any time, Lozano was one of the few women to succeed in New York’s male-dominated art world in the 1960s. Holding her own at a time when Minimalism was giving way to conceptual practices, she created sexually provocative, cartoonish drawings and paintings, then hard-edge paintings of menacing tools, and nally systems-based, performative paintings and texts which were and every bit as evocative as her early work. Lozano dropped out of the art scene in 1972, never to return until rediscovered posthumously in the late 1990s. This retrospective of 60 paintings and hundreds of works on paper signals Europe’s abiding fascination with her work.
Moderna Museet, Skeepsholmen, Stockholm,
February 13 to April 25, closed Mondays, tel
0046-(0) 8.51.95.52.89, www.modernamuseet.se
Botticelli
Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus may well be the world’s most widely recognised Renaissance painting. At the very least, it is one of the most widely reproduced. Marking the 500th anniversary of the Florentine artist’s death, an exhibition of 40 works by him and his assistants plus 40 others by his contemporaries (Verrocchio, Filippino Lippi, Pollaiuolo) presents the full range of Botticelli’s art and places it in the context of its time. Portraits, allegorical and mythological scenes and religious pictures evince the graceful, solemn ideal of beauty which is the hallmark of his work. The Birth of Venus cannot leave its home in Rome’s Uffzi Gallery, but another Botticelli Venus, said to be the first post-ancient monumental nude, is among the many paintings and drawings gathered for this show from top museums in Europe and the US.
Städel Museum,
63 Schaumainkai, Frankfurt,
Germany, until February 28,
closed Mondays, tel 0049-(0)69.60.50.98-0,
www.staedelmuseum.de
Henri Rousseau
Henri Rousseau was a self-taught artist, but he was hardly naive. Much admired by the Parisian avant-garde (Apollinaire, Picasso, Robert and Sonia Delaunay) in the early years of the 20th century, his folk style and fantastic imagery were his most valuable assets – his ticket to the artistic vanguard. It was his imaginative approach to art-making which won them over and inspired them and Surrealists such as Max Ernst and René Magritte. Coinciding with the centenary of Rousseau’s death, this exhibition of 40 major works from leading international museums contains some of the celebrated customs offcial’s best loved paintings and challenges more than a few received notions about the man and his work. It’s widely known that Rousseau never set foot in a jungle, but this show reveals much more about his canny inventiveness.
Fondation Beyeler, 101 Baselstrasse, Riehen/
Basel, Switzerland, February 7 to May 9,
tel 0041-(0)61-645.97.00, www.beyeler.com
Carsten Höller
Known for his participatory sculptures and installations which a lab experiment, Brussels-born (in 1961), Stockholm-based Carsten Höller tests and tries to alter perceptions and states of mind. Nothing malevolent, mind you. He’s also interested in division, as can be deduced from Divided Divided, a 1,500-square meter installation of diverse works (paintings, flicker films, a mobile composed of seven bird cages with live canaries) arranged in mathematical fashion. Visitors can spend the night in Holler’s Revol ing Hotel Room, above, a staggered stack of four slowly rotating disks supporting a double bed, wardrobe, table, etc. Guests are given a private nighttime tour of the museum plus dinner and breakfast (included in the room fee, which starts at €275). Check-out time is 11.00, when the room returns to display mode in Divided Divided. To reserve, tel 0031-(0)10.43.63.041 (Bilderberg Parkhotel Rotterdam).
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, 18-20 Museumpark, Rotterdam,
The Netherlands, February 6 to April 25, closed Mondays, tel 0031-
(0)10.441.94.00, www.boijmans.nl
Theo Van Doesburg
Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde looks to be the most comprehensive examination to date of its central figure’s prolific, polyvalent output and influence upon his peers. With more than 300 works by the Dutch-born (in Utrecht, in 1883) principal of the De Stijl movement and his European associates – a disparate cohort that included Dadaists and Constructivists, Futurists and members of the Bauhaus – the exhibition includes paintings, sculpture, furniture, architectural models, films, posters, typography and magazines – all mediums in which Van Doesburg was engaged. He was also a tireless writer, lecturer, and travelling spokesman for the radical but generously inclusive De Stijl movement, which reflected his own complex character.
Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1,
February 4 to May 16, closed Mondays,
tel 0044-(0)20.78.87.88.88, www.tate.org.uk
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