The same goes for a painting canvas. Paint, however well it covers the chosen painting medium, is semi-transparent. As much as that can be a pain, as much it can be used to similate the real world where the light travels through tissue and surface and is bounced back at us creating a sensation of form and depth.

Just how transparent paint is, comes down to how much binder versus pigment. If you buy professional grade paint, it has a higher pigment load. If you buy cheap and nasty student grade paint, then you are glazing your way to the finishing line.

If one accepts the premise that paint is not opaque, it provokes the question: should we prime and underpaint or not?

It is a very individual choice for every painter out there, and it is subject to heated collegial debate amongst artists. Great observation, skill and ‘mileage’ are fundamentally more important for a degree of realism, say.

In that sense, you can achieve anything with successive layers of paint. At the same time, a great many artists produce breathtakingly beautiful paintings, which have been painted in one go. This is called Alla Prima or all wet in wet. Certainly, ever since the invention of tubes containing synthetic pigments of high pigment load, Alla Prima has been the preferred route to great paintings. On a white primed canvas, the light bounces beautifully back from paintings painted in a one-colour layer.

Now there are more ways to under paint than you could throw a stick at. There are the tried and tested Old Flemish, Venitian, or French methods focusing on value layers. There is even the old mixed style where a mix of paint medium is a variable at play. The initial work would be done in egg tempura and the finishes in oil. Similarly, contemporary artists may work in acrylics all the way through or do the under painting in fast-drying acryics and finish off in oils.

Even within specific schools of painting, there are variants to each stage of the painting. For instance, Imprimatura can be Ochre, Sienna, Black, Red Bole, Pink or whatever else the artist fancies.

Flemish and later Dutch method

The Flemish old masters invented the oil painting. Initially, they worked on wooden panels later on canvas. For a long time, they primed with gesso made from rabbit skin glue and chalk. Then they under painted in egg tempura, followed by oils. Later again they did most of their work in oils. They began with a brown/yellowish tinting of the painting medium, a semitransparent brownish underpainting was created called Bistre, and on top sometimes cooler layer.

The Venitian method

The Venitians whole-heartedly adopted oil painting from the Flemish, mostly because their Italianate love affair with Fresco painting didn’t really work locally due to the varied levels of humidity and temperature in the laguna. They introduced a greenish dead layer called Verdaccio, which incidentally made flesh tones rather convincing.

The French painting method

The classical French way of painting involved establishing the initial structure of a painting and all the correct values in a range of grays from white to black. This single carefully rendered layer was called Grisaille, which simply means greyscale. Once this task was completed, then the work would slowly but surely turn into colour through fat over lean over fat colour through many successive layers of glazing which got oilier and thinner as the painting progressed. A variation to the Grisaille is the Brunaille, which is a range of browns instead of greys. The idea here is to retain some more warmth in the initial work.

Modernism

In the 20th century, many artists for whom under painting was still in practice, blocked in colours in various ways. For instance, they could choose to under paint in complementary or opposite colours. Alternatively, they could work from dark to light, and textbook example is work from Picasso’s blue period.

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Whatever the core meaning of the title may suggest, the idea of a Curator has always played an important role in presenting and preserving the articles of museums or the private collections of wealthy individuals. From the Cabinet of curiosities to the Enlightenment and beyond, and as the direct result of the changing nature of expectation of how art is to be displayed, the Curator became a key figure in the representation of art to the public.

Almost 200 years later, the public understanding and perception of the term curate and the idea of the “Curator” has moved on to something that would have been completely alien to Victorian custodians of arts and culture. Even if it is written as a slight parody on contemporary usage of the English language, a recent article published in The New York Times highlights the current misperception of what “curate” really means to the wider public. “The word “curate,” lofty and once rarely spoken outside exhibition corridors or British parishes, has become a fashionable code word among the aesthetically minded, which seem to paste it onto any activity that involves culling and selecting. In more print-centric times, the term of art was “edit” — as in a boutique edits its dress collections carefully. But now, among designers, disc jockeys, club promoters, bloggers and thriftstore owners, curate is code for “I have a discerning eye and great taste.” (Williams, 2.10.2009, On the Tip of Creative Tongues:)

Aside from the term being applied far more creatively than the Latin roots perhaps suggest, the real seismic change has also shifted the meaning of Curator as it was known before. According to David Levi Strauss of the Centre for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, in the past decade or so the Curators of Contemporary Art have become mediating figures in highlighting the relationship between the role of Art and Artist in society and by doing so they themselves were burdened and are often forced to take “a curving and indirect course” between arts and public. (Strauss, 22.1.2007, The Bias of the World: Curating After Szeemann & Hopps).

As put by the graduates of the final year students on the MA Curating Contemporary Art of Royal College of Art, in 2003, implicit in this change is the recognition of the new and radical shifts surrounding the boundaries of the Title “Curator” and perhaps allowing new values free from the expectation of the past. “The curator’s role has in fact furtively shifted onto higher ground. His or her competence is relocated from a direct relation with selection and display to an ability to generate narrative and direct a sequence of experiences”. (The Straight or Crooked Way, (2003): 12)

Next > Changing Nature of Curating

Contribution by Mediha Boran, Curator

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Szeemann defined himself as the “Ausstellungsmacher” a maker of Exhibitions (Obrist, 2008: 79) and Jennifer Allen, in her talk titled “Care for Hire” refers to Szeemann as a legendary figure who has heroically broken away from his institutional expectations. After he was rejected by the commission of Kunsthalle Bern, with regard to the Joseph Beuys exhibition, he resigned and on that same year he formed his infamous Agentur für geistige Gastarbeit – the Agency for Intellectual Foreign Labour “By casting the freelance curator as a temporary foreign guest, Szeemann mapped out a resolutely international freelance curatorial territory.” (Rakier, Schavemaker, 2007: p148)

His signature exhibition “When Attitude Becomes Form: Live in your head”, combining works of 70 artists including Joseph Beuys, Richard Serra, Eva Hesse, Lawrence Weiner, Richard Long, and Bruce Nauman, became the first exhibition of its kind which redefined the role of the Curator. “By taking risks, being entrepreneurial, creative, risk-taking, making things happen and keeping it going. Szeemann stated that every project was an adventure, but starting again with every project” (Irving, 4.8.2009, Independent Contemporary Art Curating: – Harold Szeemann)
In his interview with Obrist in 1996, he defines the role of a curator as; ‘The curator has to be flexible, sometimes he is the servant, sometimes the assistant, sometimes he gives artists ideas of how to present their work; in group shows he’s the coordinator, in thematic shows, the inventor..” (Obrist, 2008: 100)

The fundamental value for Szeemann, which also a summary of why he is a defining character for the changing nature of Curating, is accurately captured by David Levi Strauss, in an article titled The Bias of the World: Curating After Szeemann & Hopps” – an understanding of the importance of remaining independent of institutional prejudices and arbitrary power arrangements; a keen sense of history; the willingness to continually take risks intellectually, aesthetically, and conceptually; and an inexhaustible curiosity about and respect for the way artists work”. (Strauss, 22.1.2007, The Bias of the World: Curating After Szeemann & Hopps).

Next > Introduction of “In-Between”: Hans Ulrich Obrist

Contribution by Mediha Boran, Curator

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The most prominent example of this new breed of curators is the Swiss National and current co-director of exhibitions and programmes at London’s Serpentine Gallery, Hans Ulrich Obrist. He was described as “one of the most active and well-networked figures the contemporary art world has seen. It has been reported that since the beginning of the 90s he has curated more than 150 shows around the globe. He is also the first curator to top Art Review magazine’s “power 100” list for 2009 – who’s who to contemporary art. (Evening Standard, 22.10.09, Hans Ulrich Obrist – the God of planet art)

In his book he describes the function of the Curator as: “The curator should be like a dervish who circles around the artworks, there has to be a complete certainty on the part of the dancer for it all to begin, but once the dance has started it has nothing to do with power or control.. I also like the idea of the curator or critic as a supplicant. It’s about forgetting everything you think that you know and even allowing yourself to get lost”. (Obrist, 2008: 235). For him the aim of the profession is “not to follow the anti-museum activity of the 60s or 70s, but more or less welcoming an era for “in between spaces”. He goes on to describe the curating in the mid nineties as “IN – BETWEEN displaying and concealing, near and far, concentration and distraction, fragment and connection, original and copy, affirmation and negation, horizontal expansion and vertical depth. From maximum exposure to exhibitions on the verse of invisibility: back and forth”. (Obrist, 1997, In the Midst of Things, At the Centre of Nothing, A&D Vol 12: 86)

At the same period, despite the fervent activities of curators around the globe, and energy within there was much criticism levelled at curators as well. In an article entitled Museum Curator to Exhibition Auteur, Nathalie Heinich and Michael Pollack argue that this further “crisis” of the profession of curator was due to a number of factors, such as the rapid increase in the number of posts, widening recruitment criteria, and the opening up of entry routes into the profession, increasing the diversification of institutions as well as increasing specialisation among curators. (Greenberg, Ferguson, and Nairne, 1996: 232)
Melanie Townsend in her book Beyond the Box, argues that in the 1990s “The idea of curator as “auteur” stamping their mark on the exhibition has become a flashpoint in the “crisis of authority,” wherein the notion of the curator as author is placed under interrogation. Who is speaking for whom? Where are the artists and the audience presentation and interpretation of contemporary art?”. (Townsend , 2003: 18)

Contribution by Mediha Boran, Curator

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The term ‘Conceptual Art’, however, is an audaciously arrogant assertion in the sense that it relegates all other art to something lacking in concept. By that assertion, of course, is implied that what is not conceptual has involved fewer brain cells.

Apart from its name having poor table manners, the art is a logical continuation of all art that came before it, if not a great supplement to all other contemporary art. Since its inception, conceptual art has long evolved into various strands, which deserve mention here.

One example is shock art though that too fails to shock because we have come to expect shocks in art, and have subsequently turned immune to them. Another strand is the minimal minimalism, the junk art, the political activism and finally pranks on the established art world.

As with so many things, the last category is tricky to manage. More often than not, pranks are brain farts intended to impress the knowing elite. For budding artists that might score points with tutors whilst at art college. But the real world is not an academic art crit, and collectors bore themselves stiff over how derivative and me-too it all turns out.

A potted history of conceptual art

Of course, it all began somewhere, and that somewhere is the earlier 20th century. Then objects became more and more like art, and art became more and more like objects. In art historical discourse, the trouble started with Marcel Duchamp. He was French chain-smoking, chess-playing, intellectual who – with his offset in dada – created his first readymades. Everything from urinals, bicycle wheels, bottle racks to snow shovels worked as art. It was art as soon as the artist intended that the objects were art and exhibited them as such. Since then lots of water has run under the bridge.

Fast forward to the late 1950ies and Piero Manzoni takes on the world of art with everything from signed bodies to artist’s breath and artist shit as tinned, numbered and signed. In 1972, the Tate collections acquired the non-assuming minimal works called Equivalent VIII by Carl Andre. The sculpture consisted of 120 firebricks arranged in a rectangular formation. 4 years later the works cleared all the headlines in British tabloids and broadsheet newspapers for reasons altogether unclear.

Fast forward to the late 1980s, and in comes graduates from the Goldsmiths who soon receive the umbrella term Young British Artists. Everything from unmade beds, frozen blood to sharks and sheep in formaldehyde caught the public imagination. In 2001 Martin Creed, a Slade Graduate won the Turner price for works number 227: the lights going on and off. Creed used an electrical timer in order to switch the light on and off at the Tate. The artist has other gags on his witty conscience, such as Work No. 88 which is simply a sheet of A4 paper crumpled into a ball and sold in square boxes as an edition. A more recent addition to the art vernacular come from China, Ai Wei Wei and other political activist have used concepts to raise awareness of issues far more pressing.

What it is not

To clear up one or two confusions, concept art and conceptual art means two different things to two different audiences. If you work in Hollywood, and produce storyboards for sci-fi films, you are officially a concept artist pursuing the illusion of a different world with a combination of vivid imagination  and great draughtsmanship.

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It is kind of a big deal because it helps understand our present and the role that art commands in our lives today. In part, it explains the elevated status the artist has held in our society ever since. Before the artist had been on par with artisans such as plumbers and bricklayers. If you live in London today, the emergency plumber has reversed that mad asymmetry perceived rock-star status. But outside central London, at least, every major national gallery is desperate to own a slice of the Renaissance. Typically, it manifests itself in paintings by Botticelli, Raphael, Caravaggio or Leonardo da Vinci; and sculpture by Michaelangelo and Bellini. The art leaps out at us with a three-dimensionality and drama never seen before. As a result, some even consider the renaissance early modernism.

However, the French term ‘Renaissance’ [Rebirth], which we have all adopted, is a slippery term because it lacks nuance. It is also a loaded term which keeps insulting Gothic and Medieval art. In fact, it relegates the latter to the dark ages, i.e. a deliberately nondescript but otherwise long period between the classical era and the then present age, and then just labels it the ‘middle ages’.

While the notion of the Renaissance is much attributed to Georgio Vasari (b.1511 d.1574), the author simply referred to a phenomenon and zeitgeist shared by many of his creative contemporaries. His writings on the Lives of Artists* prove very detailed, highly biased, and in their rambling adoration of contemporary artists and defamation of others, they provide us with unique insights into what has come to be known as Italian Rennaissance art.

Paying homage to the artist Giotto (d 1337), many of Vasari’s contemporaries were rediscovering things past and proclaimed the rebirth of grand classical roman age and Greek enlightenment. They looked at Roman ruins, Roman copies of Praxiteles sculptures, and read letters of Vitruvius. Artists and architects of that Giottotesce tradition even had the audacity, and perhaps rightly so, to suggest that their age was bringing that bygone era to its intellectual pinnacle in their own age. This perhaps inflated view of art in society comes as no surprise. Amongst other things, Vasari was a painter and in a sense, he was the first to write art history and was the first to use the word art gallery. As an architect and florentine bureaucrat, he also helped create the Florentine Uffizi Gallery.

This self-confident view met with approval in the nineteenth century, and in 1855 we find, for the first time, the word ‘Renaissance’ used—by the French historian [Jules] Michelet—as an adjective to describe a whole period of history and not confined to the rebirth of Latin letters or a classically inspired style of the arts. Very soon in 1860 to be precise — it came to have some of that over-life-size glamour which still lingers; when all Italians were conscious exponents of virtù, all statesmen Machiavellian, all Popes either monsters like Alexander VI or splendidly enlightened patrons like Julius II and Leo X

Linda and Peter Murray

Much of the venerated art from the period was religious in nature. It would be tempting to conclude that all art was produced by god fearing artists with divine inspiration. Simply the wealthiest patron of the art was the church and it briefed the commissions accordingly. The artists did not necessarily work with any religious zeal and they bent the unwritten rules at times. For instance, they recruited models from brothels.

Much secular art was indeed produced by the artists. It was everything from portraits, still lives to history painting that drew on Greek mythology and pagan elements. One reason why it is not with us today is that the art was kept by custodians who did not preserve it as well as the church could. But more importantly, secular art was deliberately destroyed by the Church and its followers.

The destruction came in the form of the Bonfire of the Vanities (Falò delle vanità). It was the burning of objects condemned by authorities as sinful. Pretty much anything that was beautiful and did not refer to Christianity was sinful. The phrase itself was coined after the bonfire of 7 February 1497. Supporters of the Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola burned thousands of paintings and books in Florence, and the exercise was repeated over and over and again.

Renaissance across Europe

As mentioned at the very beginning, the renaissance is not just an Italian job, as confined to the Vatican and the city-states of Florence, Venice, Rome and Sienna — and fueled by patrons such as the Medici, the Doge or the Pope.

No there was a cross-pollination across Europe. Flemish artists invented the oil painting, which later made Italian art flourish. Venetian art, in particular, received a real boost from the Nothern Europe. Venice had previously relied heavily on tempera painting. Also, it was not doing well with its Frescos because the latter suffered from the damp conditions of the Venetian lagoon. Both Fresco- and tempera painting are swift and skilled artist works. But in terms of convincing illusion, it was inferior to oil painting. Simply the drying times did not allow for the slow and deliberate work that the oil medium offered.

To sum up the Renaissance in Europe, art historians divide the whole topic up into geography and years. While 100% consensus rarely exists between scholars. The following may help contextualise the vast topic:

Proto-Renaissance in Italy 1280–1400

Also called pre-renaissance, proto-renaissance signifies the warm up to the ‘real renaissance’ where medieval art kind of make attempts to become more three dimensional and convincing. Gothic art with some remains of Byzantine art dominated. It manifested itself in fresco murals, tempura panels and relief sculptures. As ab example the works of Giotto (b1267 – d1337) are today considered proto-renessance contributions to art.

Early Netherlandish (Dutch) art 1400–1525

In the Low Countries, art constantly evolved. Netherlandish art in this context refers to the works of artists called Flemish Primitives. These artists were active in the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands during the 15th- and 16th century. They often resided in the cities of Bruges, Ghent, Tournai and Brussels and counted such names as Rogier van der Weyden, Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck, Petrus Christus, Hans Memling, Hugo van der Goes and Hieronymus Bosch.

Early Renaissance in Italy 1400–1479

Renaissance artists emerged in Florence around 1400. A defining moment was the year 1401 in which a competition was held. The winner was to sculpt a set of bronze doors of the Baptistery of Florence Cathedral. The competition drew entries from seven young sculptors including Brunelleschi, Donatello and Lorenzo Ghiberti. Ghiberti won the commission and Brunelleschi, in turn, became famous for architecting the dome of Florence Cathedral and the Church of San Lorenzo.

Donatello became renowned as the preeminent sculptor of the Early Italian Renaissance, his masterpiece is the unusually erotic statue of David, which became an icon of the Florentine republic. The painter Masaccio, furthered the trend towards figurative naturalism of face and gesture. Masaccio completed several panel paintings but is best known for his fresco work.

Early Renaissance in France 1385–1520

Ordinarily, the French Renaissance is said to extend from the French invasion of Italy in 1494 during the reign of Charles VIII until the death of Henry IV in 1610. However, certain artistic, technological or literary developments associated with the Renaissance arrived in France much earlier as evident from the Burgundy court and the Papal court in Avignon. The Black Death of the 14th century and the Hundred Years’ War in France put a dampener on French adoption of Renaissance thinking.

High Renaissance in Italy, 1475–1525

What most people have come to associate with the renaissance is art from its maturing High Renaissance. Two artists stand out as the epitome of High renaissance art. One was the multi-talented Leonardo da Vinci. The other was the sculptor Michelangelo.

German Renaissance art 1497 – 1600

The German renaissance is sometimes also tucked into the umbrella term of the Nothern Renaissance. German states and principalities were highly influential in both transforming and transmitting the Italian craze to the rest of Europe. The German innovation here was, with some sweeping generalisations, a more gothic-looking painting style. But more importantly, it was the printing press. With printing ‘dangerous ideas’ spread, and some took hold in the populations leading to the Protestant Reformation. The perhaps most significant German Renaissance artist is Albrecht Dürer. He is known for his prolific printmaking in woodcut and engraving, which spread all over Europe.

The German Renaissance spread from Germany to France, Poland, and back into the Netherlands, which, in part, explains why it has become almost synonymous with Nothern renaissance. Finally, the English cottoned on to the Nothern Renaissance rather late and somewhat reluctantly.

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There are over 100 biennales held across the world, each vying to be better than the other. Venues compete with one another for premier-league artists and iconic curators, to cement their biennales as the most memorable and spectacular. It’s not unusual to find venues commissioning artists to create elaborate and spectacular installations and works, in a bid to give their biennale the edge. With so many to choose from, deciding which ones you’re going to visit can be daunting – so we’ve put together our list of the best biennales in Europe.

The Venice Biennale

Founded in 1895, by King Umberto I and Queen Margherita de Savoia, the Venice Biennale is widely recognised as one of the most prestigious and important art festivals on the planet. In its infancy, this biennale was held in the Padiglione Italia, set in the Giardini gardens, in the east of the shimmering city of Venice. With a central pavilion and over 30 national pavilions, each built by their associated country, this is where the art world shines its spotlight.

The 2015 Venice Biennale saw over 500,000 visitors pass through its doors, with 89 national participants and Granada, Mauritius, Mongolia, the Republic of Seychelles and the Republic of Mozambique taking part for the first time. Highlights included an immersive installation of film and sculpture by Joan Jonas, a beautifully considered and expansive show, All the World’s Futures, by Okuwi Enswezor – which featured interactive performances from Adian Piper and films from Steve McQueen and Carsten Höller – and an exhibition of copies of classical sculptures, curated by Professor Salvatore Settis and Davide Gasparotto.This biennale is the art-world’s main event: it’s where important artists and big-name curators are discovered, assessed and venerated.

Documenta

Although not technically a biennale, as it takes place every five years, Documenta is second only to the Venice Biennale, in terms of prestige and attention. Set in the small German village of Kassel, Documenta is also a celebration with politics at its heart: it was founded in 1955 as an artistic response to the Nazi’s embargo on what it saw as deviant art; Documenta sought to unify a divided country through the common-grounds of art and culture.

Compared to the settings for other biennale, Kassel is small and pleasant – but relatively unremarkable. In addition, its approach to the installations, exhibitions and works is uniquely intellectual. However, it’s this melting-pot of thoughtful interpretation and appreciation that sets Documenta apart from its cousins; Documenta is a trend-setting festival, where artistic themes and intellectual schemata are decided upon and quickly followed, by the rest of the art-loving world.

Perhaps because it only occurs once every five years, Documenta is fiercely well-attended; Documenta 2012 played host to around 907,000 visitors. Given its political origins, you’ll tend to find powerful contemporary art that reflects on the big issues taking place on the world-stage. 2012 saw a number of haunting and moving installations and works, such as Susan Philipsz’ extraordinary and bleak soundscape, installed on Platform 13 of the Hauptbanhof train station, Lara Favaretto’s junkyard sculptures and an exhibition of masks and busts, depicting war and self-inflicted facial wounds, by Kader Attia.Documenta is for those who want to come to a full understanding of how works such as these came to be and to explore the themes that gave them life.

Manifesta

Describing itself as “the roving European Biennale of Contemporary Art”, Manifesta is a nomadic celebration, setting up shop in a new location very two years. Founded after the fall of the Soviet Union and launched in Rotterdam in 1996, Manifesta eschews conventional art centres, in favour of engaging with what it’s latest host city has to offer. Previous venues have included a defunct coal mine and Russia’s Winter Palace.

Manifesta’s manifesto is to “present local, national and international audiences with new aspects and forms of artistic expression.” To keep everything fresh, a new team of curators are chosen for each edition and up-and-coming artists are encouraged to think beyond the confines of a traditional exhibition, to create ambitious and experimental works that they might not otherwise be given room to explore. Given its unconventional approach to the concept of biennales, Manifesta is the place to go to see contemporary art that pushes boundaries and challenges established thinking.

Despite its wandering nature, Manifesta is a consistently-popular biennale; 2014 saw in excess of 100,000 visitors flock to see seminars, installations, discussions, exhibitions and works presented by 54 artists. In the current political climate, Manifesta has proposed that its focus will be set on minority groups and cultures that have made their homes in Europe, in its ongoing mission to create “an interlocking map of contemporary art.” Always surprising and never run-of-the-mill, Manifesta is for art-lovers who want art to be an experience, rather than a concept.

La Biennale de Lyo

La Biennale de Lyon has firmly staked its claim as the France’s principal art festival, with its list of artists and curators reading like a directory of luminaries. Established in 1991 by the director of the Musee d’art Contemporain de Lyon, Thierry Raspail, this biennale is a festival with a mission.

Each year, Raspail invites each guest curator to consider a word. This word informs the theme of the next three editions, creating an artistic trilogy that takes places over six years. 2015’s biennale began with the curator, Ralph Rugoff, being asked to consider the word, ‘modern’. As a result, that year saw the opening of a new triptych, beginning with ‘La Vie Moderne’; an exploration on the way our everyday lives have been – and continue to be changed and challenging the very notion of the word, itself.

Part of La Biennale de Lyon’s ongoing success must be attributed to its desire to span all classes and cultures. This is an event for everyone, regardless of their degree of exposure to contemporary art. In 2014, almost 205,000 visitors came to experience the works, thoughts and installations of 52 artists. The 2016 edition is set to include artists, such as Michael Armitage, Yto Barrada and Céleste Boursier-Mougenot. La Biennale de Lyon is one of Europe’s younger biennales and holds dear those ideals that most artists aspire to, when embarking on their careers: that art can effect change and isn’t the monopoly of the intellectual elite.

Berlin Biennale

Inspired by the Venice Biennale, the Berlin Biennale was founded to throw focus on less-established artists. Describing itself as “an open space that experiments, identifies and critically examines the trends of the art world,” this is a festival that brings together established artists, alongside new talent, to incubate and grow artistic expression and viewpoints evolving in the art scene.

Berlin is a city with an extensive cultural history that has infused music, art, film and literature with its own particular flavour. The biennale tends to be at its best when focussing on artists, rather than themes, and it’s served as a launch-pad for a number of luminaries, such as Hans Ulrich Obrist, Massimiliano Gioni and Elena Filipovic. The Ninth Berlin Biennale will be taking place from June 2016, to September 2016. Attendance is expected to be high, with attendance in 2014 exceeding 120,000. Its focus on experimentation has, on occasion, been the festival’s downfall: for the most part, the Berlin Biennale is an eclectic and important artistic hatchery. However, there are occasions where organisation and cohesion have been forsaken, in favour of artistic endeavour. While this hasn’t taken away from the impact of the exhibitions and installations, it has made the festival confusing for visitors.Established in 1996, this another of the younger biennales and is ideal for those who want to catch up-and-coming artists before they become stratospheric.

Liverpool Biennale

The Liverpool Biennale is the largest international, contemporary art festival in the United Kingdom. A free festival, it continues to push the envelope, in terms of presentation and content; the 2016 Liverpool Biennale will reveal itself as a story, narrated in artistic ‘chapters’, in various locations across the city. Liverpool is still very much a city re-establishing itself, after declining as an international trading port. As a result, there are numerous empty buildings within its walls, offering excellent ad out-of-the-ordinary exhibition spaces. Visit the Liverpool Biennale and you can expect to find artistic worlds sited in museums, pubs, hotels, car-parks, supermarkets and train stations.

Ever mindful of the need to expose children to art at an early age, the 2016 Liverpool Biennale will, for the first time, be launching exhibitions and installations aimed at younger visitors. These will have been designed and executed by children collaborating with artists, to create works that are for young people, by young people.Perhaps because it is free and aims to communicate the importance of art across all classes and ages, the Liverpool Biennale is incredibly popular, having attracted over 400,000 visitors to the 2012 edition. This is superb festival for those who feel they want to dip their toes the artistic waters, without fear of being completely submerged by intellectual interpretation and academic appraisal.

Dublin Contemporary Biennale

While this might be the baby of the bunch, the Dublin Contemporary Biennales is quickly establishing itself as a force to be reckoned with. The 2016 Dublin Contemporary Biennale will be the third edition of the Dublin Biennale Pop-Up, which was launched in 2012, under the eye of Maggie Magee. This has now expanded to take in venues and sites across Dublin and, despite being smaller than many of its contemporaries, has attracted some of the biggest names in international art, including Yoko Ono, Ellen Rothenberg and Fergal McCarthy. The biennale’s original pop-up status was, most likely, a result of Ireland’s poor economy in the early Noughties; with little money to fund a festival of the size of its European counterparts, a small-scale solution was found. However, as time passed, each festival has been bigger than the last, gaining more attention and attracting bigger names. The Dublin Contemporary Biennale is a very interactive exhibition, be it presenting artworks for contemplative purposes or to fully immerse spectators in a multi-sensory installation. Continually growing in popularity, this biennale attracted over 62,000 visitors to its last edition and numbers are anticipated to have doubled for the next.

Biennale de Cerveica

While the Biennale de Cerveica might be Portugal’s oldest arts festival, it is always looking forwards; the theme to be explored in the 18th Biennale de Cerveica is: “look to the past to build the future.” This biennale was established in 1978 and has always made a point of maintaining the balance between cultural tradition and contemporary creation, through bringing together Portuguese and international artists to undertake a project that has its roots in both creativity and culture.

The 18th Biennale de Cerveica will focus on understanding regional traditions and cultural practices and responding to them, through the use of multidisciplinary exhibitions and installations. Through mining the past, the aim is to inspire modern artists to create works that are fresh and new, but have their roots in older customs.With a program of around 500 artworks, presented by over 300 artists from 33 different countries, the Biennale de Cerveica continues to be exciting and refreshing, despite its longevity.Athens Biennale With its rich history of art, it would be something of an oddity of Greece didn’t hold its own biennale. However, it took until 2005 for the first Athens Biennale to be launched. Founded by Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, Poka-Yio and Augustine Zenakos, the Athens Biennale has quickly established itself as Greece’s largest and most prestigious contemporary art festival.

Using contemporary art to address contemporary issues, the Athens Biennale has politics and culture at its core. The sixth biennale will examine matters such as the development of alternative economies, the way in which political parties perform and the redefinition of structure-systems, in a bid to challenge the way people see the laws that govern us. A variety of immersive and interactive events will be curated by political thinkers, social philosophers, art theorists and an abundance of contemporary artists.The sixth biennale’s home will be in Omonoia Square, Athens’ oldest, right in the centre of the city, with exhibitions, events and seminars taking place in various buildings in the vicinity. This festival is for those who want to see art in action; used in a modern context to interrogate modern constructs.Biennales Around the World

You can find further information on any of the European and worldwide biennales at the Biennal Foundation.

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Perry is an award-winning draftsman, sculptor, potter and performance artist who won the Turner Price in 2003 and knighted with a CBE a decade later. In 2015 he was appointed to succeed Kwame Kwei-Armah as chancellor of University of the Arts London. His open transvestitism is part and parcel of his public appearance. It is also an entertaining asset for the rest of us. Perry’s alter ego, Claire, is a flamboyant lady, and an Essex girl at heart who dresses in Dame Edna-like outfits of poor taste, all referred to as ‘claires’.

For a successful international artist, he considers himself unusual in the sense that he does not employ assistants. He is painfully aware that it limits his output, and to some extent his income potential. However, he argues that he likes to conduct his own quality control on everything he does. According to Perry, art is a series of controlled accidents, and so for it to be Grayson Perry art, it must contain his own mistakes and not those committed by another person.

The artist is increasingly considered a national treasure because he has a way with words. He possesses a quick wit in debate which is marinated in his dry sense of humour. As he is equally insightful and entertaining about art; broadcasters frequently invite him to comment on contemporary art. As an example, he has appeared in the venerated Reith Lectures BBC, The Culture Show BBC2 Arts Magazine, Brilliant Ideas Bloomberg, and countless interviews in the Guardian Newspaper on art. In addition he shows up occasionally in more light-hearted shows such as Have I got news for you BBC, and Loose Women ITV.

A big part of Perry’s work revolves around Identity. For many years, his autobiographical work externalised his childhood experiences such as the missing father role model or his teddy Alan Measles as a surrogate father instead of his stepfather. His drama-queen mother receives some mention as does his model aeroplanes and his very own trans-gender questions. Later on his career, he has concerned himself far less with his own ‘baggage’ and far more with society at large. It had to follow that order. Perry’s life disintegrated somewhat when he was fourteen, and he has since invested some time and energy in counselling. He regards psychotherapy a little like sorting out one’s garden shed. You know a garden shed tends to be full of useful tools. But when everything in there is a messy tangle, then it makes sense to pull it all out piece by piece and put some of it back in order.

A sub-theme in Perry’s preoccupation with identity is the notion of class. He is profoundly interested in how it determines not only our tastes but also our choices in life, and how we think about just about everything. Beyond recognising that impulse control has some say in where we end up in life, he occasionally questions how mobile social mobility really is. In 2012, his interest in the topic resulted in a three-part TV documentary called ‘All in the Best Possible Taste’ as first aired on Channel 4 and winning a BAFTA as the Specialist Factual Winner a year later. Perry presented the documentary on the premise that Society is jungle full of taste tribes directly linked to class stratification. So he embarked on a personal taste safari whilst adopting a novel format consisting of ‘class specimen’ interviews, anthropologist’s statement, and his own artistic interpretation thereof. His art was that of conceptualising tapestries to illustrate each class. For instance, the middle class got treated to two tapestries depicting their anxiety-laden business of being middle class. The process involved his idiosyncratic hand drawings, which were then imported into Photoshop, and then the tapestries were machine-woven in Belgium.

Julie’s house is a fairly recent addition to the artist’s oeuvre. FAT Architecture and Perry co-created the holiday home in Wrabness, Essex following the artist’s vision. The somewhat eccentric structure overlooks the River Stour. The concept house, which has some parallels to Dalí’s Cinema museum, encapsulates the story of Julie May Cope. Julie is a fictional Essex woman based on all things stereotypical and existential for an Essex girl in our present age. Sadly Julie passed away from injuries sustained from the freak accident involving a delivery man on a moped. It makes the house a kind of mausoleum to a fictional character replete with her achievements and the display of the perpetrator’s moped repurposed as a chandelier.

Decoration is just about everywhere. Outside the house, there are green external tiles depicting Julie’s rock-chick youth. Inside you find colourful tapestries recording her life’s full narrative.

Grayson Perry is also an Author and illustrator of the following book titles here listed in chronological order:
Playing to the Gallery: Helping contemporary art in its struggle to be understood.
The Vanity of Small Differences, (Co-authored with Suzanne Moore, Adam Lowe and Caroline Douglas).
The Tomb of the Unknown
Cycle of Violence 2002, written a decade earlier and dealing with uncomfortable if not creepy aspects of a traumatised childhood.

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Humour plays a big part in his flamboyant work. I.e. not in the sense of some contrived intellectual brain fuck, but as sophisticated visual puns that project a refreshing joy of life. The objects are precisely the sorts of exuberant things that make you smile—even when you are least in the mood of smiling. One thing is for sure about Stone’s contribution to art and design. If we were to choose our own legacy, that would certainly be up there amongst our favourites. It’s all like that proverbial fart in the funeral procession, that we so desperately need to get through the day.

Whilst having an affinity with great many materials, Finn Stone is fond of working with aluminium and fibreglass. He upcycles found objects and re-purposes everyday household items such as Lego and toy cars. Take for instance the kingpin desk made from Resin, leather and 1000 silver studs or the Cyberdog wall lamp which applies a 70s TV case to the design. It is stuff you just have to have.

But more to the point Finn Stone’s work is bold and significant when you see it in the context of our age. You see the fact that art can be useful in more than its aesthetic sense; relegates his genre to being neither art nor design by people stuck in the past. Of course, in the not so distant future, we may all regard that as a misnomer because the work is as much art as it is design

The overlap is intelligent and potent stuff, indeed

In fact, what is daringly pushing the boundaries these days is neither shock art nor minimalism nor concept art.

No, it is fine art that also has a functional design element to it.

It is daring because it goes upstream and carries a heavy cargo of otherness when considering the past. Before the first world war, the avant-garde, as the elite was called then, quite quickly decided that the philosophy for producing design and art were two very different entities.

For a start, design underwent a terrible clean-up act, though the upshot of that spring cleaning was democratised and mass-produced design we could all afford. However, for the modernist purists, design equated to 90% functionality ever after. And, though never spelled out explicitly, the remaining 10% aesthetics should somehow just take care of itself. It was understood that an ergonomically designed chair, say, would simply create its own kind of beauty. Besides that, furniture- and industrial design soon got very serious indeed. Where furniture used to have charming quirks – as lent from its originator – it now obeyed the new dogma like a religion.

Fine art fared no better in terms of tunnel vision. Beauty, for instance, became a swear word. In retrospect, it was a legitimate reaction to centuries of slavery to the beauty doctrine (cf academic art). Fine art was now easel art, readymades, land art, sculpture and performances. The latter got somewhat schizophrenic and saw themselves as happenings for a period in the seventies.

In that age, the intersection between furniture design and art were frowned upon and referred to with a certain frostiness. Granted, there were rare exceptions. Think here Verner Panton and his Plastic House (It might help to take LSD to keep up) or Salvador Dalí with his lip sofa, hands chair and lopster telephone. Those stunts were just about tolerated because Dalí was an eccentric genius if not certified fruit basket.

But with the postmodern 1980s, high society suddenly warmed to Il Banale furniture from Italy. Fast forward to the 1990s, we witnessed a refreshing urge for not being too far up our own backsides. All of a sudden, it was welcome to inject a bit of humor, satire and quirkiness in both art and design. In came the Kitsch, the lowbrow, Japanese superflat and the pop-surreal revival.

Fast forward to 2015-2016, and there are still only few who really work comfortably in that grey zone where the object is as much fine art as it is design. Finn Stone happens to excel at that hot frontier that neither wins you a Red Dot design award nor much column space in Artforum Magazine.

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I am trying to explore the woman inside me, and accept my weaknesses and fears. I’m discovering human emotions, fears, hidden wishes, internal processes and show them from a female perspective

The Belkina methodology

The artist works in series which are the result of having chosen a topic of interest and summing it up in one or just very few words. E.g. Revival, Not a Man’s World, Hieroglyph, Home Work; Empty Spaces. The same word economy is aptly applied to each work of art. In these serial explorations, she uses herself as a motif captured through a camera fixed to a tripod. But she is not necessarily herself in these compositions. At times, she is a stand in in the service of conveying meaning or to depict an emotional state within the narrative. Of course, many aspects of her work clearly reflect personal experience. The Race, for instance, is a take on the quest of many fellow Eastern European women. The quest is that of finding a successful man.

Entreaty (see below), is also not autobiographical as much as it reflects the sometimes mixed feelings shared with many women when becoming an expectant mother.

For Belkina, photography offers the basis for total freedom throughout the artistic process from shutter speed and aperture to extensive yet subtle image manipulation. There is the act of compositing everything seamlessly and colour-correcting the many layers of elements to create a whole new world in a somewhat painterly way. Often enough, she sets out with an abstract idea, which then leads to a choice of subject. From then on, the planning of composition and other details help her prepare sketches and have everything ready to begin photographing. However carefully planned, welcome opportunities arise to improvise along the way. Yet once things settle, Belkina invests many hours on post-production image manipulation and retouching, achieving the precise mind-boggling concepts we have before us. Like anyone else in art, she has several influences, but by the end of the day she insists on being herself on her own terms.

if you can’t be yourself as an artist, who can you be?

The track record

The artist is getting noticed purely on the strength of her work, and she has recently (2015) won the International Lucas-Cranach-Award, the International Photography Award (IPA) in 2012, and Px3 for portraiture in 2010. In addition, she was nominated for the Kandinski Prize in 2007, which in Russia is on par with the Turner Prize in the UK. Clearly, for that to happen in our age, an artist can no longer concentrate solely on producing fantastic art. No, you have to share yourself tactically. You have to mount exhibitions in galleries and art fairs. So in common with many other artists, Katerina Belkina has a punishing time schedule requiring relentlessly high work ethics. So far she has exhibited solo and group shows in far-flung places such as Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Germany, France, Korea, Hungary, Italy, Malaysia, Monaco, Netherlands, and the USA.

To find out more about the artist, please visit her official website.

Image credits:
© All images courtesy of the artist Katerina Belkina, all rights reserved.

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