The world of the landscape

In his article "The World of the Landscape" Bart Verschaffel analyzes the visual logic of the landscape genre in painting, as it was developed from the sixteenth century on. He argues that the structure of a minimal foreground, a middle ground cut off from the foreground, and a background that gives way to the distant, corresponds to a meditative attitude, proper to the nature of the image as such. The landscape is essentially a calm image. Second, Verschaffel puts forward that the middle ground in landscape images is not, as in history painting, a waiting room adjacent to the action in the foreground, but is rather oriented towards the horizon and beyond: a landscape always represents the world. In the romantic landscape tradition, moreover, the vagueness resting on the horizon comes to the fore and creates an "atmosphere" that touches a lonely soul and transforms an image of the world into an intimate encounter

What is cultural planning?

What is cultural planning about? As always, metaphors secretly direct and limit what we are able to think and formulate. One can, roughly, distinguish between metaphors taken from the mechanical and taken from the organically. Is cultural politics and management about good ways to ‘produce’ culture or is it about ‘cultivating’ culture? Or – the same opposition now transferred to the organically – is cultural politics about how to squeeze oranges in the best possible way or about growing oranges? Is cultural politics about realizing ‘projects’ or ‘creating possibilities’? The current domination of mechanical metaphors is assessing ‘productivity’ is not without danger

Reading Rem Koolhaas

This article discusses the metaphors of time Koolhaas uses and its implications for understanding architecture

Tempus ridendi?

De tekst bestaat uit een oriënterend eerste deeltje over het genre van de 'komedie' in de kunst en 10 secties die telkens een groep werken van Wim Delvoye bespreken, gaande van de vroege tapijtschilderijen tot de late, 'gotische' werken