Germany's big five anniversaries in 2025
While other countries in Europe mark special occasions in 2025, Germany has noteworthy dates of its own to celebrate, with legendary talents, sights and stories coming under the spotlight.
275 YEARS SINCE THE DEATH OF BACH
Decades before Mozart and Beethoven were born, there was another composer who stirred hearts and minds across Europe. That's Johann Sebastian Bach, whose tunes were the sound of the late baroque era. This year, commemorative events are taking place around Germany, including Bach festivals in the state of Thuringia, where he was raised in the town of Eisenach, and in the city of Leipzig, where he composed many of his famous works and passed away on July 28, 1750. Dresden is another focal point for the anniversary celebrations. Bach was a regular visitor to the 'Florence of the Elbe' and the landmark church, the Frauenkirche, at the heart of a city rebuilt after World War II Allied bombing, will be among the concert venues showcasing his compositions, such as the Brandenburg Concertos and Goldberg Variations.
50 YEARS OF THE FAIRY TALE ROUTE
Buoyed by the success of the Romantic Road, tourism bosses conjured the Germany Fairy Tale Route, hoping it would do for the country's centre and north what the former did for the south. Winding 600km between Hanau (near Frankfurt) and Buxtehude (near Hamburg), this route is heavily driven by the lives and works of those fairytale masters, Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm. There are dozens of locations to visit en route, including chocolate-box towns and villages like Marburg and Steinau and the woodlands that characters like Hansel and Gretel would have played in. Other places you may have read about in your childhood include Hamelin, famed for its pied piper, and Bremen, where there's a statue of its animal musicians. Elsewhere, there's Sababurg Castle (the model, it's said, for Sleeping Beauty's home) and Rapunzel's Tower, which soars from the medieval fortress in Trendelburg, a town in the Diemel Valley. Throughout the Fairy Tale Route, you will find museums about the Brothers Grimm, open-air performances of their stories in the warmer months, and walking tours led by guides in period and character costumes.
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The Age
21 hours ago
- The Age
She was the face of Picasso's Weeping Woman. But there was more to Dora Maar than a woman crushed
A notable surrealist photographer and painter in her own right, Dora Maar is best remembered for her eight-year relationship with Pablo Picasso. Often regarded as a muse to Picasso's genius, Maar modelled for many of the artist's anguished 'weeping women' portraits, painted while he created his anti-fascist masterpiece, Guernica. Yet, Paris-born Maar also painted Picasso, transforming him into her subject and similarly distorting his features. 'What most people also don't realise is that Maar was a radical, subversive and respected artist before she met Picasso,' says David Greenhalgh, the National Gallery of Australia's expert on international art. 'Her photography, her politics and her Surrealist provocations challenged Picasso.' Maar's artistic legacy is highlighted alongside Picasso's in the National Gallery of Australia's blockbuster Cézanne to Giacometti: Highlights from Museum Berggruen/ Neue Nationalgalerie which runs until September. The exhibition draws from the extraordinary collection of art dealer Heinz Berggruen, who, after World War II, established a small gallery on Paris's Left Bank and collected avant-garde works. The exhibition will feature some 100 major works by six modern masters – Picasso, Paul Klee, Georges Braque, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, and Alberto Giacometti. These will be shown with 75 works from the National Gallery's collection to demonstrate the revolutionaries' influence on Australia's leading artists. The exhibition notably features works by Maar, with whom Berggruen felt a particular affinity, perhaps due to his empathy for her tragic life and tumultuous, ultimately destructive relationship with Picasso. 'She never quite recovered from her separation with Picasso, and turned away from her great talent as a photographer and a painter,' Berggruen's son Nicolas says. Long-overdue credit finally came to Maar with a 2019 retrospective of her work at Tate Modern, part of an international curatorial effort to reframe collections with greater biographical honesty. This move followed the highlighting of Cézanne's muse, Hortense Fiquet, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Madame Cézanne exhibition five years earlier. Cézanne to Giacometti offers another important opportunity, says co-curator Deirdre Cannon, to examine who these women painted by the modernists were and their true role in the creation of the art. Maar's most striking photograph, Portrait of Ubu – an extreme close-up of an armadillo fetus – will hang alongside four other works by her. Her 1936 pastel of Picasso similarly depicts her lover in a fractured, Cubist-inspired style, emphasising his wide cat's eyes, moustache, distinctive nose, and wide mouth in cool green shades, all composed like an inverted comma. 'We acknowledge now that artists do not work in a vacuum, and the idea of the sole, primarily male genius making art from god-given talent or through an act of divine intervention has been repudiated for a long time now,' Cannon says. 'This has included a reappraisal of the subjectivity of the muse. These individuals, often artists in their own right, influenced other aspects of artists' practice and personal lives.' The concept of the muse dates back to Greek mythology, where nine sister goddesses, daughters of Zeus, served as patrons of the arts. Homer himself invoked these ethereal women of divine inspiration to narrate the tales of Achilles and Odysseus in The Iliad. Later, masters from Raphael to Rembrandt embraced the muse as an object of beauty, personifying their creative expression. In the 19th century, model Elizabeth Siddal embodied the ideal of virginal beauty and rectitude in John Everett Millais's Ophelia, leading the BBC to describe her as art's greatest supermodel. 'Often, those identified as muses are depicted in a very idealised manner and described in literature as having striking physical attributes or a distinctive presence,' Cannon says. 'Or, in the case of an artist like Picasso, their likenesses are rearranged and experimented with in pursuit of breaking new artistic ground. Traditional understandings of the muse involve feminine subservience to the creative will of men. 'The term itself has specific connotations that prompt reflection on the role of inspiration in visual art.' Among European modernists, Cézanne's radical yet doubt-laden experiments in colour and composition were the first to challenge accepted artistic ideas of the figurative form, emboldening generations of subsequent artists. 'Every artist in Cézanne to Giacometti is linked in a huge genealogy or family tree of influence, as they found inspiration in each other's example,' says Greenhalgh. 'In a sense, the 'muse' we investigate is how artists inspire each other.' Cézanne's model across two decades of often plodding experimentation was Hortense Fiquet, the mother of his only son, Paul, whom he first met in 1869 when she was a 19-year-old model. Among the works on display in Cézanne to Giacometti are one of 29 paintings and four of the approximately 50 drawings he made of Fiquet, including Portrait of Madame Cézanne (c. 1885). Her inscrutable expression has led historians to suggest emotional distance between the pair or to interpret it as evidence of Fiquet's dour character. British critic Roger Fry even described her as 'that sour bitch,' and her husband's friends nicknamed her 'La Boule' (French for 'the ball'). However, Greenhalgh argues that characterising muses like Fiquet as 'crones' or Maar as 'unstable' is simply an example of misogyny. 'But we must remember that history is a discourse, and that we can always see things from new perspectives.' Context is everything. Cézanne and Fiquet lived an unconventional life; she resided in cosmopolitan Paris while the artist painted the Provence countryside. Their relationship was characterised by social and financial inequality, common in many marriages of the period. They only married to secure his family's inheritance. 'Cézanne was incredibly slow when he painted, and it is thought that this was because he doubted everything he created,' Greenhalgh says. 'It drove his sitters crazy, as they had to pose motionless for a dozen hours each day, sometimes for hundreds of sittings, only for him to abandon the painting. 'There are letters that demonstrate Fiquet's supportive business dealings to try and sell Cézanne's work, but the most direct and simple evidence we have of her importance to his practice is that she sat for Cézanne's paintings time and time again, and that to me is a demonstration of their love for one another.' European art history is full of stories where the female perspective is hidden or missing, says artist Natasha Walsh. At best, the women subjects are frequently depicted either as passive vehicles for the artist's talent or in an exploitative and violent manner. 'When artists are painting, they are painting their own perception,' Walsh says. 'It's only problematic when the muse exists solely in the context of the artist, when we look at it as a child does, only within the frame.' Walsh is one of several contemporary artists who are reimagining the portrayal of the female sitter. Instead of a passive subject, these artists seek to show the creative insight originating from the female subject herself, or through a collaborative, reciprocal exchange between the artist and their subject. As a teenage art student, Walsh often faced requests to sit for male painters, which she declined. She recalls one artist advising her to agree soon, 'as if my worth were reduced to solely my physical appearance and my value was temporary and fleeting'. In her series Hysteria, Walsh challenged the male gaze by reinterpreting Gustav Klimt's 1907 painting Danaë, which romanticised an ancient Greek myth of rape. Reimagining herself as the mother of Perseus, she painted her eyes actively gazing back at the viewer – Klimt painted them closed – and vanished Zeus's impregnating shower of 'golden rain' that glossed over rape in the original painting. Walsh has since painted fashion duo Nicol and Ford in the likeness of 16th-century Gabrielle d'Estrées and one of her sisters. It was a finalist in the 2024 Archibald Prize. Walsh has continued to reinterpret art history, painting fashion duo Nicol and Ford in the likeness of the 16th-century Gabrielle d'Estrées and One of Her Sisters (a finalist in the 2024 Archibald Prize). She also depicted musician Montaigne as Medusa, and posed artist Atong Atem as Matisse's Yellow Odalisque, shifting the focus to Atem's African heritage. Walsh collaborated with writer Bri Lee on a collage of Picasso nudes, created in the Brett Whiteley studio. Their aim was to reimagine a nude free from Picasso's gaze, depicting the figure in an act of self-pleasure. Lee later posed for Walsh's Hysteria exhibition the following year, with Walsh stating, 'We wanted to create a nude that existed for herself.' Walsh is particularly scathing of Picasso's depiction of Dora Maar as an archetypal figure of suffering. It was a portrayal that Maar herself rejected. 'All these portraits of me are lies. They are all Picasso; none is Dora Maar,' she says. 'Picasso does an immense disservice to Maar's practice and rich individual identity present in her work to reduce her to mad crying women.' According to independent curator and writer Julie Ewington, the reevaluation of women's roles has significantly increased over the last 50 years, running 'absolutely hand in glove with social movements' like women's equality and #MeToo. 'By 1975, when the UN recognised International Women's Day, it was already well established that women were not just the subject of other people's pictures, they were the makers of their own,' Ewington says. 'Younger women are very clear where they stand on all this. That doesn't mean there isn't still a lively trade in pictures of beautiful and desirable women.' Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, a pioneer of self-expression, famously declared, 'I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to know better.' She depicted her disability, physical pain, and emotions, even as her relationship with Diego Rivera influenced both their lives and art. Julie Ewington also points to earlier female artists who challenged norms: Suzanne Valadon defied 19th-century conventions by painting nudes of herself and other women, and German expressionist Paula Modersohn-Becker was the first woman artist to depict herself pregnant and nude. Georgia O'Keeffe, whose fame was initially overshadowed by her partner, photographer Alfred Stieglitz, is now celebrated as a feminist icon, her legacy casting a far greater shadow today. Progress, says Walsh, is when 'everyone becomes a muse to someone'. It doesn't have to be a beautiful, young woman serving the artist in some way. If we embrace all kinds of perspectives, then all kinds of muses can come into being. Artist Deborah Kelly, whose animation Beastliness was included in Art Gallery of NSW show Her Hair, a collection of 'sexy and salty' collage and animation works, now considers an artist's muse to be 'the curator who believes in your work, encourages your wildest dreams, and helps you realise them.' Her Hair examined how female hair has functioned as a powerful symbol in art, with braided hair representing profane love and long, unruly hair signifying penitence, virginity, or youth. Loading 'For me, it's mainly been other women who are keen to enable the more preposterous of my aspirations – I mean, right now, I'm founding a religion of climate change and queer identity and giving it meaning and expression in art and performance – and I see this as a significant historical shift from the era when women were supposed to view each other primarily as rivals for male attention,' Kelly says. 'So that makes me think that the idea of the muse is obsolete – but that actual human beings make and hold space for artists and their support is priceless.' As new generations of artists find fresh inspiration, so Dora Maar is being recognised as a more fully rounded artist. Only Maar was allowed to photograph the painting of Guernica. Her radical leftwing politics stood behind Picasso's rage at the bombing of the Spanish town of Guernica, which gave rise to his masterpiece, painted in a monochromatic style, almost photographic in its detail, and said to have borrowed from her work.
Perth Now
6 days ago
- Perth Now
Cézanne the modernist influencer in NGA blockbuster
Modernist artworks from Germany's Museum Berggruen are on show in Australia for the first time, including big names such as Cézanne, Matisse and Picasso. Cézanne to Giacometti: Highlights from Museum Berggruen is the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra's winter blockbuster show. The museum collection has been touring internationally while its Berlin building is closed for renovation, and the exhibition has already visited half a dozen cities and been viewed by about a million people. But the Australian version is different - it's no out-of-the-box show, instead integrating art from giants of European modernism with works by Australian artists. The result is a story of the dynamic exchange of 20th century artistic ideas over decades and across the world, and the development of modernism in Australia. "I think it is the most accomplished and the most meaningful venue so far in the entire tour in terms of research into art history, because of this dialogue," said the head of Museum Berggruen, Dr Gabriel Montua. More than 80 works from the museum sit alongside 75 works from the national collection, by artists such as Russell Drysdale, Grace Cossington Smith and Dorrit Black. The exhibition opens with Cézanne's experiments in form and perspective, on show with works by Australian artists like Drysdale and Ian Fairweather, who were influenced by his innovations. Rarely seen works by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque show the breakthroughs of Cubism, hung with Australian artists such as Dorrit Black, Grace Crowley and Roy de Maistre. There are sections devoted to Paul Klee, Dora Maar and Henri Matisse, while a sculpture by Giacometti measuring more than two metres high represents the first time a such large scale Giacometti has been displayed down under. All of the artists in the exhibition ultimately come back to Cézanne's innovations, according to NGA curator David Greenhalgh. "He is the figurehead who inspired so much of what came after," said Greenhalgh. "There's a real sense of a lot of these artists looking at one another and deriving inspiration from one another." The Berggruen collection is the life's work of art dealer Heinz Berggruen, who fled Germany before World War II and sold his collection to the German state in 2000, ensuring it would be available to the public. Many of the artists he collected were deliberately removed from German art collections, because they were deemed degenerate during the Nazi reign. The exhibition opens Saturday and runs till September 21. AAP travelled to Canberra with the assistance of the National Gallery of Australia.
Sydney Morning Herald
25-05-2025
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘We cherish everything': How the Japanese make perfect drinks
'The young generation here start drinking creative cocktails,' Ohtake says, 'but then they graduate from that into more simple, classic cocktails. The reason for that is Japanese people like really simple things, like sushi, tempura, where the procedure is so important.' Think of sushi: just a few ingredients, rice, vinegar, fish, but treated with such skill and dedication that a thing of alchemical beauty emerges. And now consider, say, a negroni, which is just gin, vermouth and Campari, but here at Royal Bar and indeed at many high-end cocktail bars across Tokyo and the rest of Japan, these simple ingredients are used to create something amazing. Cocktail culture is huge in Japan. Though, you will rarely find a packed nightclub full of partygoers standing shoulder-to-shoulder at a bar, yelling orders for espresso martinis. Instead what you will discover is intimate spaces like Royal Bar, where jazz tinkles over hidden speakers, drinkers perch on leather-bound stools, and suited bartenders take their time mixing perfect drinks. 'Cocktail culture in Japan started in Yokohama because they have the harbour, the port,' Ohtake explains. 'And specifically, the culture of Japanese cocktails began [in the late 19th century] at the Yokohama Grand Hotel, where they have a signature cocktail called the Bamboo, a very Japanese cocktail. After World War II, this culture became very popular.' Royal Bar has played its own vital part in Tokyo's cocktail scene. Back in the 1960s, the original iteration of this bar, at the original Palace Hotel site, was run by Kiyoshi Imai, a legendary bartender who was known as Mr Martini, such was his dedication to one of the world's greatest cocktails. Imai's legacy spread throughout Tokyo, where areas such as Ginzo, Omotesando, Ebisu and Shinjuku are strewn with tiny bars turning out expertly created, classic cocktails in refined surrounds. His legacy has even more directly been passed to Ohtake, himself an award-winning bartender intent on perfection. Loading And so I try Ohtake's whisky sour, where every ingredient is in harmony, presented in a short glass with a large and perfectly clear ice cube. Ohtake also recommends his take on the negroni, where he replaces the gin with shochu, a Japanese spirit that the bartender says is drastically underrated on the world scene. I also sample his version of the Penicillin, another classic cocktail, this time with apple juice added to acknowledge the autumn season. It's perfection, of course, draped with a thin slice of apple that Ohtake has patiently, slowly been dehydrating for the past few days.
