Surrealist painters and poets

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Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter, born in Dresden in 1932, is one of the foremost painters of his generation. A great deal has been written about the bewildering heterogeneity of his work over the past 30 years, his seemingly willful and defiant movement between abstract and figurative modes of representation and his use of a variety of methods of applying paint to canvas. And Richter himself is the master of the paradoxical statement. Although he has emphasized that he is foremost a painter and has never been a theorist, throughout his career he has issued provocative and memorable statements. Over seven years in preparation, this book makes available a selection of Richter's texts, many translated for the first time. These texts come from all periods of his career, beginning with a letter he wrote to a film company promoting the first group show of German Pop Art in 1963, in which he was a participant. There are public statements about specific exhibitions, private reflections drawn from personal correspondence, answers to questions posed by critics, and excerpts from journals discussing the intentions, subjects, methods, and sources of his works from various periods. The writings are accompanied by 87 biographical illustrations from the artist's personal collection.

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story and art by Arina Tanemura

High school student Maron Kusakabe has a secret: she's Phantom Thief Jeanne. She sneaks into private art collections to steal paintings in which demons reside. Jeanne's task is to seal the demons before they can devour human hearts. So far she's been able to evade the police on her midnight outings, but now another thief has come onto the scene--Phantom Thief Sinbad--and he's trying to take the paintings before she does!.

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Zohar Eitan

Highpoints investigates a universal melodic phenomenon - the melodic peak - in Western repertories ranging from eighteenth-century Galant music to twentieth-century Expressionism. Using "hard" statistical analysis, Zohar Eitan examines the rhythmic, melodic, harmonic, and dynamic configurations associated with contour peaks in the music of Haydn, Chopin, and Berg, three composers of decidedly different musical casts. This empirical examination serves as a starting point in Eitan's exploration of the structural and expressive functions of melodic shape in these diverse bodies of music. Melodic contour has received increasing attention from psychologists, music theorists, and ethnomusicologists partially because, unlike functional tonal relationships, it is a universal facet of auditory patterning and may be strongly related to primeval, "natural" aspects of perception. By focusing on this elemental aspect, rather than on pitch syntax or conventional form, the author provides fresh insights into the work of the individual composers he discusses as well as an innovative approach to broad issues of musical style and style change. Highpoints concludes with a discussion, drawing on empirical findings, of melodic gesture and syntax as distinct, independent dimensions of style, style boundaries, and style change.

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Hans-Christian Kirsch

Im August 1889 kehren die befreundeten Maler Otto Modersohn und Fritz Mackensen dem Akademiebetrieb den Rücken. Sie lassen sich in dem niedersächsischen Dorf Worpswede am Rande des Teufelsmoors nieder, einem Flecken in der Nähe von Bremen, den in dieser Zeit kaum jemand in Deutschland kennt. Die Kollegen Heinrich Vogeler, Hans am Ende und Fritz Overbeck folgen ihrem Beispiel. »Der Erlolg, den die Maler von Worpswede auf der Jahresausstellung im Münchner Glaspalast errangen, hat in der Geschichte der neueren Kunst nicht seinesgleichen«, befand danach ein Kritiker. Ein Bauerndorf wurde zu einem Begriff der Kunstgeschichte. Vollends zum Mythos wurde Worpswede dann, als Rainer Maria Rilke sein Buch über die Künstlerkolonie veröffentlichte. Selbst um die Jahrhundertwende sporadisch in Worpswede lebend, heiratete der Dichter 1901 die Bildhauerin und Malerin Clara Westhoff. Zentrum des künstlerischen Lebens war in jenen Jahren der von Heinrich Vogeler erworbene und umgebaute Barkenhoff. Waren die «Alten Worpsweder noch von den französichen Landschaftsmalern der Schule von Barbizon beeinflußt, gelangte mit Paula Modersohn-Becker die Moderne nach Worpswede. Nach 1945 erlangte der Surrealist Richard Oelze internationale Anerkennung. Heute beeindrucken Künstler wie Waldemar Otto, Frauke Migge und Fritz Meckseper mit Werken, die das Wissen um die Gefährdung des Menschen und der Natur reflektieren. Hundert Jahre nach Ihrer Gründung legt Hans-Christian Kirsch mit diesem Buch eine sich auf exakte Recherchen und bisher unbekannte Aufzeichnungen stützende Darstellung der Künstlerkolonie vor.