Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 01.11.2005

In view of the radicalisation of Muslim youth in Europe, Tahir Abbas, head of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Culture at the University of Birmingham, argues for more "direct and sobre dialogue". Yet in his view, "the authorities have failed miserably in this regard": "One could even say that England's leading Muslim figures, whether political, cultural, intellectual or theological, were disavowed once and for all by the London attacks. If many young Muslims are disoriented and live with the feeling that they are being deprived of their civil rights, the causes lie only partly in the larger social context. Above all these young people have been left in the lurch by their parents' generation.


Die Welt, 01.11.2005

Richard Schröder, SPD politician and chairman of the association for the rebuilding of Berlin's city palace (more here) which was destroyed during World War II then demolished in the early years of the GDR, hopes that Berlin will succeed in following Dresden's example. Dresden's Frauenkirche suffered a similar fate, and was rebuilt after the fall of the Berlin Wall through private donations. "The historical facade of the palace will be financed through donations. We need 80 million euros. Although the construction start hasn't been fixed, we already have 10 million euros in confirmed donations. The German mason's association has agreed to make parts of the facade free of charge, as journeyman's pieces and masterpieces – if they are provided with the basic materials. Who says that just because the economy is depressed, people have to be depressed as well? Over the years, the facade will create 800 jobs, financed entirely through donations."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 01.11.2005

Hans-Joachim Müller reports enthusiastically from a major exhibition of works by Willem de Kooning at the Kunstmuseum Basel. "One of the great things about the exhibition is its focus on the orgiastic climax in de Kooning's career. It's like a flush of intoxication that lasted twenty years. The earliest painting is from 1966 when de Kooning, the star among New York artists, moved to the countryside in East Hampton. The last is from 1980, when a new phase in his life and work was starting." Müller admonishes those too quick to brand de Kooning an "abstract expressionist". "The term 'abstraction' doesn't do justice to De Kooning's work. These paintings don't designate opposed worlds or transcendence, they don't make hidden things appear. They show what they immediately see, feel, dream, think. People often wonder what lies behind the wild, grotesquely depicted women's bodies that show up here and there in the magma of colour. Franz Meyer, former director of the Basel museum, once gave a psychological explanation, 'as if de Kooning were trying to settle accounts with his own violent, dominating mother.' Perhaps he's right. But perhaps the sudden, abrupt appearances of a woman's figure are nothing other than that which brings the painting back to the world around it. And perhaps the sheer violence of the figure is nothing other than an attempt to keep a distance between painting and the world."

Julia Hummer, the young German star of Christian Petzold's film "Gespenster", or Ghosts (see our article here), is entertaining thoughts of throwing in her acting career in favour of a life of rock 'n' roll. Andreas Rosenfelder was pleasantly surprised by her recent concert in Cologne's Rose Club with her band "Julia Hummer and Too Many Boys." "At the age of twenty five, she performs as a sort of female Bob Dylan – albeit one who's listened to plenty of Nirvana and can stand her ground before a droning wall of sound. The way she aims a semi tone short of each note like a half-hearted darts player can only be described as skilled imitation."


Die Tageszeitung, 01.11.2005

Isabelle Graw is impressed by the coolly confident retrospective of German artist Rosemarie Trockel's work in the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. For Graw the highlight of the show is in the museum's Heldensaal (hall of heroes) "where Trockel's entire knitted repertoire is hung like a compact system of notes in a musical score which produces new orderings and constellations of different image formats. ... For the first time it really becomes clear that Trockel with her now canonical knitted images not only created an internationally sought-after brand but that she established knitting, formerly associated with craft and female occupational therapy, as a legitimate painterly process. The knitted stitch consequently emerges as a painterly figure. And it is ideally suited to this role because it embodies a balance of anonymity and expression. In Trockel's work it is generally machine produced and yet it betrays individual traits because as every knows, no two stitches are ever the same. Put another way, in Trockel's hands, the stitch becomes a carrier of a sort of 'residue expression'."