“As a person I am not extra interesting” – Klimt
By Herwig Prammer
When you walk through central Vienna now you get the impression there are almost no other cultural events this year besides Gustav Klimt’s 150th birthday anniversary. Posters, postcards, sketch books, scarves, curtains, neck ties and gloves, umbrellas, cups and glasses, bottles and plates, boxes and containers on every corner are covered with his paintings. Copies of “The Kiss” even beautify toilet seats!
Originally I wanted to look at how Vienna pays tribute to this important Austrian “Wiener Jugendstil” (parallel to “Art Nouveau” in France) artist. But the growth of tacky commercialization of Klimt’s art has begun to taken center stage.
I learned this is mostly because the copyright time limit for Klimt’s art has recently run out and is partly due to his trend-setting work just being simply popular.
The fight over Berlin’s Tacheles
Over the last decade Berlin has been changing more rapidly than most of its inhabitants can stomach. Because of its history, the brunt of gentrification that changes everything (from social fabric to architecture) has hit the German capital more than other cities around the world.
Before the Wall came down, Berlin used to be a mecca for bohemians, artists, left-wing idealists and military service dodgers, mostly from West Germany. The collapse of East Germany resulted in an abundance of neglected buildings available in East Berlin. Punks and artists flocked in and the city became Europe’s capital of squats. A maelstrom of unfettered subculture productivity ensued, bestowing the city with an aura of the urban cool that feeds into its reputation to the present day.
But the Berlin of the wild nineties is long gone. Most of the squatters have been evicted or their housing projects legalized. Some of those whom back then ran underground clubs are well-off nightlife entrepreneurs today. Ordinary people who shared their neighborhood with the artists have had to move away, because rents have gone up manifold. And the influx of bohemians from abroad has turned into a stampede of party tourists, turning the last subculture enclaves into playgrounds for reckless twenty-somethings.
The Tacheles art center mirrors the evolution of Berlin’s underground culture in many ways. It started as an art squat in a run-down eastern working class district and quickly became an international icon. But the fall of the Wall also meant that its neighborhood, the Mitte district, moved from the edge of East Berlin into the very center of the unified capital. Mitte became the focus of a real estate development boom and with it came the media types and those who could afford to live in Class A property. Amidst the fancy bars and boutiques that sprang up everywhere, the gritty, graffiti-adorned Tacheles building became a major tourist attraction.
A traditional art with young faces
Cantonese opera, one of the major categories of Chinese opera, targets tens of millions of people speaking the regional dialect, mostly based in the southern Guangdong and Guangxi provinces, including the cities of Hong Kong and Macau.
The United Nations recently proclaimed Cantonese opera, which involves singing, acting and sometimes martial arts, as one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
Among all such opera groups in the territory, the Hong Kong Young Talent Cantonese Opera Troupe is made up of the youngest professional artists in town, many of them in their 20s. In this opera, a 16-year-old girl, who has studied Cantonese opera for ten years, is cast in the main role of a man, normally performed by older actors.
With younger faces on stage, the troupe hopes to attract a new generation of audiences to this centuries old art form.
Is it ironic to China that majority younger generation in Shanghai cannot speak Shanghai dialect ?
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