News: Design and business, art and technology, ideas and good stuff
Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson | Abundance | Political Science | Books to read
2025
Scarcity is a choice
From journalists Ezra Klein (New York Times) and Derek Thompson (The Atlantic), Abundance is a call to renew a politics of plenty, face up to the failures of liberal governance, and abandon the chosen scarcities that have deformed American life. The book examines the reasons behind the lack of progress on ambitious projects in the United States, including those related to affordable housing, infrastructure, and climate change.
Copy ©Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson (book’s back cover) and (in part) Wikipedia.
Dr Seuss | The Lorax | A contemporary fable | Books to read
2025
The Lorax is a children-adult book written by Dr. Seuss and published in 1971. It chronicles the plight of the environment and the Lorax, the main character, who “speaks for the trees” and confronts the Once-ler, a business magnate who causes environmental destruction. Part philosophical tale, part political manifesto, part moral lesson, its message is frightfully prescient.
Thanks to Luigi Mangione.
Copy ©Wikipedia (in part)
Jon Fosse | Morning and Evening (Morgon og kveld) | A novella | Books to read
2025
A 2000 novella by the 2023 Norwegian Nobel Prize in Literature that reads like a Biblical prayer: “pared down, circuitous, and rhythmic prose skilfully guides readers through past and present. A hypnotic meditation on life and death”. Totally brilliant.
Thanks to Pete Buttigieg.
Copy ©Wikipedia (in part)
Marlene Dumas | Solo exhibition | Cycladic Museum | Athens, Greece
5 June 2025 – 3 November 2025
The abstracted, anthropomorphic marble figurines known as Cycladic Art, were produced on the islands of the Aegean Sea from around ca. 3300 to 1100 B.C.E. Its enduring importance has been brought to the fore by the Museum of Cycladic Art by bringing these ancient works into dialogue with the paintings and works on paper of contemporary South African artist Marlene Dumas.
Image: ‘Cycladic Blues’ (2020) ©Marlene Dumas. Copy: ©Artnews.
American Photography | Retrospective | Rijksmuseum | Amsterdam
7 February to 9 June 2025
The more than 200 works on display in American Photography reflect the rich and multifaceted history of photography in the United States. The exhibition presents the country as seen through the eyes of American photographers, and shows how the medium has permeated every aspect of our lives: in art, news, advertising and everyday life.
Image: ‘America seen through Stars and Stripes’, New York City, ©Ming Smith / Copy @Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.
Anselm Kiefer | Retrospective | Van Gogh Museum + Stedelijk Museum | Amsterdam
Mar 7 until Jun 9, 2025
“Where have all the flowers gone” (Sag mir wo die Blumen sind) – For the first time in their history, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Van Gogh Museum are joining forces to stage a major exhibition of one of the most important artists of our time: Anselm Kiefer.
At the Van Gogh Museum, key works by Vincent van Gogh are combined with that of Kiefer. At the Stedelijk, all the Kiefers from the Stedelijk’s collection are on display together for the first time.
Image: ‘Innenraum’, 1981, collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam ©Anselm Kiefer. Copy ©Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Miriam Cahn | Reading Dust | Exhibition | Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
October 5, 2024 until January 26, 2025
Artist Miriam Cahn evokes powerful emotions with simple brushstrokes and a vigorous drawing style. Her paintings and drawings depict human atrocities with brutal reality.
Copy ©Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Image ©Miriam Cahn, ‘o.t.’, 8.3.2021, photo: François Doury. Courtesy of the artist; Meyer Riegger and Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris
Vincent Namatjira | Aboriginal artist | Museum of Contemporary Art Australia | Collection
2024
I paint people who are wealthy, powerful, or significant – people who have had an influence on this country, and on me personally, whether directly or indirectly, whether for good or for bad. Vincent Namatjira
Namatjira’s portraits resemble caricatures, bordering on outsider art. But according to the art historian Wes Hill they also have “a level of sophistication that only a colourist, not a satirist, could possess”. Born 1983, Alice Springs, Northern Territory, he lives and works Indulkana, South Australia Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands.
Text: Wikipedia, image ©Vincent Namatjira, The Royal Tour 12 (detail), 2020, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia
Jeff Cowen | Provence works | Photography | Huis Marseille, Amsterdam
22 June to 13 October 2024
Analogue craftsmanship and experiment
In a world that is dominated by digital screens, technology, speed and overproduction, Cowen seeks to draw our attention to the sublime experience of nature’s beauty through his work. As a photographic artist, he keeps well away from the digital world and has a real hands-on approach to the craftsmanship of the photographic process. He uses self-made enlargers to create large analog prints on thick, wavy photographic paper. He experiments with darkroom techniques and chemical formulas, rendering each print a unique work.
Image: P126, 2020-2023, Digitalisation: Farbanalyse Cologne ©Jeff Cowen, Copy ©Huis Marseille
Marina Abramović | Retrospective | Performance Art | Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
March 16 until July 14, 2024
Marina Abramović has been a prominent figure in performance and body art since the 1970s and is considered one of the most important founders of this art form. An early proponent of using the human body in performance, she has consistently pushed herself to the limit emotionally and physically, exposing herself to exhaustion, pain and even the possibility of death.
Featuring over 60 works, including photographs, videos, sculptures, four iconic live performances (all making their debut in the Netherlands) and two participatory works, this survey covers her entire impressive oeuvre.
Copy ©Stedelijk Museum
Image Marina Abramović and Uwe Laysiepen (detail), 1978 ©CC CODA Museum-Wikimedia
