Monthly Archive: September 2001

Women on the Edge of Feminism

This exhibition took place in the Saint Sofia underpass in the shops and pedestrian zones between the Central Universal Shop and the Sheraton Hotel, June, 20-24, 2001.

“The 8th of March” women’s group has existed in the cultural horizon of Bulgaria since 1997 when a few female artists got together to react against the “Erotica” exhibition in which only male artists were invited to take part. Little by little, spontaneity gave way to organized work and, since then, eight exhibitions, a few international projects, catalogues, brochures, and a CD have been issued.

“The 8th of March” carries all … Read more

Alexander Rodchenko

Magdalena Dabrowski, Leah Dickerman, and Peter Galassi. Aleksandr Rodchenko. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1998. 

This exhibition catalogue, published in conjunction with the first major American retrospective of Aleksandr Rodchenko at the Museum of Modern Art in 1998, is a significant contribution to the fairly limited literature on this artist currently available in English. Scholarly essays by exhibition organizers Magdelana Dabrowski, Leah Dickerman, and Peter Galassi are supplemented by texts contributed by Varvara Rodchenko and Aleksandr Lavrent’ev, the artist’s daughter and grandson (custodians of the Rodchenko-Stepanova Family Archive, a major source of materials for the exhibition).

The numerous … Read more

The Hero in Recent Romanian Painting

University of Fine Arts, Bucharest. June, 2001 

A successful exhibit of recent painting by Alexandru Radvan opened at the gallery of the University of Fine Arts in Bucharest at the end of last June. Radvan is an important player among those among young Romanian painters who have chosen figuration as a means of expression. Like them, Radvan has discovered, or rediscivered, the value of representation.

Radvan has organizes his dynamic compositions by means of a narrative thread. In this way he recovers universal myths (the Ghilgames saga, Ulysses’s fights in the war of Troy, or Arabian tales), giving them a … Read more

Methods of Madness: The Old and The New In Prague

Considering all the drastic changes the face of Prague has endured during the last 10 years, the inside of Czech art institutions and galleries has actually seen very little transformation. Mass refurbishments continue to dominate the mise-en-scene of the city in a desperate attempt to catch up after the last 50 years of isolation, and although since 1989 Prague has quickly become one of the hottest tourist spots (“it’s just so cheap”) in all Europe, not everything sweeps easily under the rug.

Czechs, among other Post-Communists, were expected to immediately embrace the exact system they were taught to despise and … Read more