Editor-in-chief Fabian Peters takes you to the 2021 Architecture Biennale in Venice.

Editor-in-chief Fabian Peters is currently in Venice. He is taking you on a tour of the pavilions, like here in the Austrian Pavilion.

In their project, the two curators of the Austrian pavilion, Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer, examine the manifestations and effects of platform urbanism. As part of their research, they have ultimately identified and categorized the physical manifestations of the digital and platform industry that are typical of the times with great precision. To present their findings, Mörtenböck and Mooshammer chose different forms of presentation – both artistic and more documentary. The artistic approaches to the topic include the two slogans that greet visitors at the entrance to the two wings of the pavilion: “Access is the new capital” and “The platform is my boyfriend“.

An installation of stools has already been set up in front of the pavilion, allowing the words “we like” to be read from a distance and in an extremely “instagrammable” way. The stools are the kind of DIY furniture that can be found in countless internet companies today – especially those that have long since outgrown start-up status. Dozens of examples of such contemporary phenomena are depicted on two walls of the pavilion in the form of patent drawings – from the Corporate Campus and the Co-Working Headphones to the Food Truck and the Vertical Forest to the Corporate Bus and the Pop-up Container Market. They leave the interpretation of their findings to the visitors, who can stretch out on the pavilion terrace on the currently ubiquitous outdoor lounge furniture.

A major Dix exhibition is currently running in Colmar. It focuses on the reception of the Isenheim Age by the German artist. A highlight of the show has been restored for the occasion. An insight. Since the beginning of October, the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, Alsace, has been showing the major special exhibition “Otto Dix – Isenheim Altarpiece” and is exploring the extent to which […]

A major Dix exhibition is currently running in Colmar. It focuses on the reception of the Isenheim Age by the German artist. A highlight of the show has been restored for the occasion. An insight.

The Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, Alsace, has been showing the major special exhibition “Otto Dix – Isenheim Altarpiece” since the beginning of October and explores the extent to which Otto Dix’s work was influenced by Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece. At the same time, the museum is also honoring the 125th anniversary of the artist’s birth and the 500th anniversary of the mural altar, the museum’s main attraction, which is on permanent display there.

“I saw the Isenheim Altarpiece twice, an enormous work of unheard-of boldness and freedom beyond all composition or construction and inexplicably mysterious in its contexts,” wrote Otto Dix to his wife Martha on September 9, 1945. This letter can be seen with more than 100 works by the painter at the Museum Unterlinden. Paintings, drawings, prints and archive material from all over the world, including loans from major public collections such as the Musée national d’art moderne in Paris, the MoMA in New York and the Vatican Museums.

The Isenheim Altarpiece, created by Matthias Grünewald in the 16th century, has inspired many artists such as Böcklin, Klee, Baselitz and Picasso since its rediscovery in the late 19th century. However, Dix referred to the Isenheim Altarpiece throughout his work, emphasizes curator Frédérique Goerig-Hergott.

Restored highlight

One of the highlights of the exhibition is the triptych “Madonna in front of barbed wire” from the Maria Frieden church in Berlin-Mariendorf, which is rarely lent out and has been restored by the museum’s conservators. It is the last triptych painted by Dix in 1945 and was intended for the Catholic chapel of the prison camp where Dix was sent shortly before the end of the Second World War. It shows the Virgin and Child as well as St. Paul and St. Peter in front of a crowd of prisoners of war and a landscape of houses destroyed by the war. “The most important part of the restoration was to check the adhesion of the paint layer and to locate any areas at risk of flaking. We also carried out a light cleaning of the paint layer, which meant minimal intervention in the paint substance,” explains restorer Carole Juillet. The wooden panels are in excellent condition and have been primed with gesso to prevent the wood from warping.

Examination of the painting revealed three different overpaintings. The oldest overpainting can be found in the area of the sky and the clouds in the middle panel. The overpaintings on the panel with St. Peter in the area of his cloak and in the area of Mary’s dress could be by Dix himself. The technique in oil/tempera is similar to that of the entire triptych. Juillet continues: “We have benefited greatly from this loan, as it is always interesting to be able to study an artist’s painting technique at close quarters and thus contribute a piece of the mosaic to Otto Dix research.”

Interested parties can view the restored painting with its overpaintings and its reference to Grünewald in the exhibition “Otto Dix – Isenheim Altarpiece” until January 30, 2017.