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Staff at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York will themselves become works of art this autumn, when the choreographer Jrme Bel presents a performance piece featuring around 25 museum staffthe latest work in the institutions long-running Artists Choice series. The MoMA Dance Company, as Bel calls it, will perform during public hours in the Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium (27-31 October). Bel has invited each participating member of staff to choreograph a brief solo dance of their choice, a statement says. Curators had better start practising their Rockettes moves.

A German collecting couple have converted their private residence in Dsseldorf into a contemporary art complex housing an exhibition space and artist studios. Rosi and Rudolf Dahmen, a retired lawyer, have transformed a former squash centre in the centre of the city, into the 1,500 sq. m Privatsammlung gallery, which can be viewed by appointment.
 
We intend to show temporary exhibitions, but not on a regular basis. There is no permanent curator. The artists will mainly curate these private exhibitions. It is about a dissolution of the private and public [aspects], Rudolf Dahmen says.
 
The launch show is dedicated to two German artists, and includes 54 works by Gregor Schneiderincluding the sculptures Blauer Sack (2001) and Man (2004), and the photograph Cube Venice (2005)as well as 20 sculptures, videos and photographs by Ralf Berger (until 28 August). Schneider says that the couple live with their art. The boundary between private and public disappears in the building. The collection is even in the bedroom!

The couples 1,000-strong collection includes works by Richard Long, Franz Erhard Walther, Sigmar Polke, Nina Canell, and Christian Boltanski. The Dahmens also run an art space in the town of Mnchengladbach in North-Rhine Westphalia, which incorporates both artist and music studios.

Two major philanthropic organisations on either side of the Atlanticthe Los Angeles-based Getty Foundation and the UK charity, the Rothschild Foundationhave announced a new joint, annual fellowship which, say the founders, will support innovative scholarship in the history of art, collecting, and conservation, using the collection and resources of both institutions. 

The first recipient of the Getty Rothchild Fellowship is David Saunders, "a foremost expert in the area of conservation science," formerly of the National Gallery and the British museum, who plans to use his time under the fellowship, to focus on museum and gallery lighting. Saunders will study at the Getty in Los Angeles from January to March next year, and at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, from April to June. 

"The Getty and the Rothschild Foundation hold similar values regarding the understanding and conservation of visual art around the world, and it is only appropriate that we would work together to support individuals who demonstrate these values through their research, says Jim Cuno, the president and chief executive of the J. Paul Getty Trust, in a statement. 

Lord Rothschild says he is thrilled with the selection of Dr Saunders as the first Getty Rothschild Fellow, since his "work is of the greatest possible relevance to Waddesdon, as a historic house seeking to present itself in innovative ways".

In celebration of La Fête Nationale, Felix is celebrating Bastille Day all week!

Every night there will be a special dish designed by Head Chef Nathan Johnson, plus beautiful installations to deliver an exceptional experience for you and your guests.

Toast the occasion with Ruinart Blanc de Blancs at the special price of $95 per bottle or $20 per glass. Available from Monday 11 – Sunday 17 July.

The dinner menu for Thursday 14 July can be viewed here.

Bookings can be made online, or by contacting our reservations team.

King Street bakery café Bakers Maison are preparing for one of their biggest days of the calendar year – the French National Day known as Bastille Day. Just another day in Sydney for most Australians, 14 July – le 14 juillet – in France marks the day of the storming of the Bastille in 1789 and the end of feudalism for the French people.

As a traditional French-style bakery, the Bakers Maison team hope to commemorate the momentous day of French democracy with 1789 free croissants with purchase for the hard-working people of Sydney, starting from 7am until 6pm!

The afternoon will see patrons offered some of the best of France with a free wine and cheese tasting. The wine will be red, the cheeses a sharp blue and a devilish triple cream brie, paired with our hot out of the oven French breads.

All are welcome and we hope to see you drop in for a free croissant with your coffee, cheese and wine tasting on the day!

In the early 1920s, an exhibition of war photographs toured Australia, attracting crowds and enthusiastic reviews.

Most of the photographs were taken by Australian personnel who served at Gallipoli, in the Middle East and on the Western Front. The photographs were enlarged and hand-coloured by ‘digger artists’ at Colarts Studios from smaller snapshots.

In most cases, we don’t know the names of the photographers, nor the returned servicemen who coloured the images, but we do know that the exhibition was a tremendous success.

Some 90 years after the original exhibition toured the country, these prints — which came to the State Library in the 1960s — are displayed together in Colour in Darkness.

Stuart Davis (1892-1964) is known, perhaps more than any other American artist, for his ability to combine the formal inventions of the avant-garde with the political spirit of the American scene. The drama of his paintings (which are the subject of a survey titled In Full Swing at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York) were deepened by the early Modernist debates of out of which they were borndebates in which abstraction and realism came to loggerheads at a defining moment for American art. As the exhibition title implies, Davis synthesised the lessons of Cubism with a jazzy and politically-aware adoption of American popular imagery: shop windows, consumer packaging and the high-key colours of the radiant city. As Duke Ellington put it: it dont mean a thing if it aint got that swing, a lyric that Davis painted into American Painting (1932/1942-54).

Daviss roots are in Ashcan School realism, but we dont see any of this at the Whitney. The exhibition begins in media res with a room flexing Davis breakthrough mastery of Cubist forms in the 1920s. Here, in a work like Lucky Strike (1921), Davis registered a near total departure with the naturalist pathos of Ashcan realism, opting instead for a penetrating geometric analysis of an everyday object. But most of the works in this initial gallery are aspirational and clumsy. There arent any masterpieces, only imitations of other leaders of the American avant-garde who were galvanised by the Armory Show in 1913. Still, these works show the young artist formulating the building blocks of a style that he would later perfect on a much grander scale.

His Egg Beater paintings are his first novelties. There are four eloquent compositions on view in a section that bridges the exhibitions first and second rooms. Here we witness the first flash of Daviss ability to balance a composition while reducing a subject to its most elemental form. Its also the first sign of his mastery of colour. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney agreed. She and her circle supported Davis, which allowed him to dig deep into his newfound fascination with analytical depiction. More importantly, his patrons helped fund a trip to Paris in 1928, an almost required right of passage for American artists at the time.

There, Davis discovered simultaneity. This went hand-in-hand with his rediscovery of the urban scene, one now littered with telltale signs of global commerce, communication and politics. A work like House and Street, painted in 1931 after he was back in the US, depicts, in part, a sign that reads "Smith", a reference to Al Smith's 1928 campaign for the White House. It is an unmistakably urban American scene. Yet its flat, geometric composition also brings to mind the Paris of Cubism. The implied cacophony and verve reads like a stark poem to urban chaos and simultaneitytwo hallmarks of modernity.


These revelations come through in other works with floating text, which punctuate his frenetic and semi-abstract arrangements. In New York-Paris No. 2 (1931), Davis again mixes landscapes, this time more explicitly. The view is of two cities united by technology, travel and an aesthetic kinship: modernity gripped both, though in separate ways.

The 1929 stock market crash led to a period of activism that slowed Daviss productivity as a painter. Except for wall texts in the third gallery, there is little sense of Daviss avowed socialism, especially his advocacy for the notion of the artist as a cultural worker. Such a glossing over of political conviction about the artists place in society could not come at a worse time. Today, in a period of increasing wealth for the collecting class, many artists are nevertheless in a precarious position. Groups like Wage (Working Artists in the Greater Economy) have pushed arts institutions to pay artists in a manner reminiscent of the cause of the Artists Union, which Davis led during the Great Depression. In May, Wage issued a letter to the New Museum in New York asking them to commit to paying artists for performances, talks and other work. No artist, if at all realistic, will tolerate this denial of the principle that a man must be paid for his labor. Thats Davis in the pages of the radical magazine Art Front in 1935. The Whitney curators missed a golden opportunity.

Instead, the Whitney show is testament to a different kind of force. What distinguished Davis as such an important bridge in the history of American art? What set him apart from his peers? The curators answer these questions in the final rooms through a crescendo of works in Davis mature style. Colonial Cubism (1954), for example, is so balanced in colour and rhyme that it momentarily tricks the viewer into thinking that it depicts a whole scene. Like work that precedes it chronologically, this one drew inspiration from things Davis encountered in his surroundings, which he collided with the analytical style that took his entire career to perfect. Part of the joy of this show is the way it charts Daviss penchant for a self-referential re-working of past forms. In Colonial Cubism, the explorations of the 1920s pay dividends. The result is a microcosm of how Davis left American art much different than when he found it.

Davis is one of the best American examples of the notion (though it remains fiercely debated until today) that artists are most powerful when they commune with the outside world and when they use contemporary lifewhatever that may meanas subject matter to produce a result that captures a particular moment in time.

Davis left us with two lasting lessons: that Modernism didnt just happen in the artists studio and that artists ought to be paid for their labour. These lessons, rendered in a politically-tinged realism that assimilated stylistic innovations imported from European Modernism, were his greatest source of strength.

Mike Pepi is a writer living in New York. His work has appeared in frieze, e-flux, Flash Art, Art in America, DIS Magazine, Rhizome, and The New Criterion.


Stuart Davis: In Full Swing, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, until 25 September


For an interview with the curators of the exhibition, see Back to the beginning with Stuart Davis

The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, which holds the largest collection of antiquities in northern Europe, has agreed to restitute illegally excavated artefacts to the Italian government. In an historic agreement under negotiation since 2012, the Danish museum will return the eighth-century BC bronze chariot, shield, weapons, incense burners and tableware from the tomb of an Etruscan prince, among other archaeological objects, to Italy between December and the end of 2017. 

The pieces, believed to have come from the Sabine necropolis at Colle del Forno near Rome, could be sent to the Museo Civico Archeologico di Fara in Sabina, where additional material from the tomban unusually large structure indicating the special status of the deceasedis on display. A statement issued by the Glyptotek acknowledged that: "investigations have shown that the objects had been unearthed in illegal excavations in Italy and exported without licence".

According to the Danish newspaper Politiken, the museum will hand over around 500 items acquired in the 1970s through the late US ancient art dealer Robert Hecht. Hecht was tried by Italian courts in 2005 for conspiring to receive antiquities that had been illegally excavated and exported from Italy. The case against him ended without a verdict in 2012 after the statute of limitations expired. He died weeks later, aged 92.

The director of the Glyptotek, Flemming Friborg, confirmed that the objects to be restituted were "mainly acquired" from Hecht, who "at that time was regarded as a respectable individual". Friborg says: "With the benefit of hindsight it is clear that these acquisitions should not have been made, but judging the past by the moral and ethical standards of the present is seldom constructive."

"What at first looked as if it would turn into a legal, political deadlock, has now, through an intense academic dialogue been transformed into a powerful and visionary agreement," Friborg says. In exchange for the long-awaited restitution, the Italian ministry of culture has pledged to lend significant artefacts to the Danish museum on continuous rotation. The Glyptotek will also collaborate more closely with Italian institutions on research and exhibitions. The first Italian loans are due to feature in the museums new presentation of its antiquities collection. 

Visitors to Goethes house on the Frauenplan at Weimar pass through the Maiolica Room, where samples from his collection of Italian tin-glazed pottery are displayed. The Klassik Stiftung Weimar, which conserves and studies the heritage of Weimar Classicism, has now sponsored a beautifully produced new catalogue of Goethes maiolica. Since it contains large coloured illustrations of every one of the 105 items, along with detailed descriptions and accounts of their provenance, Italienische Majolika aus Goethes Besitz must be considered exceptional value for money.

The introductory essay tells us about the production and sale of maiolica. Two-thirds of Goethes pieces come from Urbino, one of the great centres of istoriato potterythat is, plates and the like with brightly coloured historical, mythological or Biblical scenes, which were particularly popular in the early and mid-16th century. Some of Goethes maiolica can be traced to specific workshops, including the two leading ones in Urbino, belonging to Guido di Merlino (active in the 1540s) and his rival Guido Fontana (last recorded in the 1570s). Most of the remaining items come from Venice, mainly from the workshop of Domenico da Venezia (documented from the 1560s). Surprisingly few come from Faenza, the great centre of maiolica production where the istoriato style originated soon after 1500. The collection also contains a few non-Italian items: three bowls from Germany, and some cups and salt cellars from Limoges.

In Germany, the trade in maiolica and other artefacts centred on Nuremberg. In the late Middle Ages Nuremberg, like Augsburg, was an important commercial city governed by patricians. The value they attached to art is apparent to anyone who visits the handsome four-storey house occupied by Albrecht Drer. By the 18th century, however, Nuremberg had fallen on hard times, and many art collections had been offered for sale. When in Nuremberg in 1797, Goethe almost certainly visited the collection of Hans-Albrecht von Derschau, a Prussian officer whose poor health induced him to retire and devote himself to art. Early in 1817, after prolonged negotiations over the price, Goethe bought from Derschau 42 pieces of maiolica and three enamelled vessels. After Derschaus death in 1824, his property was auctioned, and Goethe then acquired more pieces, notably a plate with a fine depiction of Scipio Africanus in Spain (no. 36 in the catalogue).

Why did Goethe collect maiolica? He was of course an enthusiastic collector of paintings, sculptures (including plaster casts of famous statues), drawings, porcelain, gems and much else. His collection numbers some 26,500 items, only a small proportion of which can be shown to tourists. But his interest in maiolica developed late. During his stay in Italy, from 1786 to 1788, he showed no interest in it. In a satirical epigram of 1797 he even mocked people who preferred maiolica to ancient vases. By 1804, however, he owned a few pieces, and from 1816 onwards he collected maiolica seriously.

It may not be coincidence that Goethes wife Christiane died in the summer of 1816. When his big purchase arrived from Nuremberg in February 1817, Goethe turned what had been the marital bedroom into the Maiolica Room. He spent a whole week arranging his new acquisitions, and had wooden cabinets made in which they could be displayed behind glass. This may be seen as valuable self-therapy for a grieving widower. But Goethe, though saddened, was not heartbroken by Christianes death. In the last few years of their marriage they had drifted somewhat apart, and Goethe had indulged a warm, romantic friendship with the young, pretty, gifted Marianne von Willemer.

Goethes maiolica provided light relief when his life was becoming increasingly sombre and difficult. As the catalogue lets us appreciate, the paintings are in cheerful colours, with lush green landscapes, dark blue rocks, seas and lakes, vivid orange robes for the figures, and orange curtains in domestic interiors. In a sense, too, maiolica gave relief from serious art. Malcolm Bull notes in The Mirror of the Gods (2005) that its artists gravitated towards a more light-hearted and erotic subject-matter. Goethe seems to have regarded maiolica as an indulgence; he never mentions it in his copious writings on art and he talked about it only with a few intimates. To one such, the composer Carl Friedrich Zelter, he wrote in 1827: The presence of these dishes, plates and vessels gives an impression of cheerful practical life You see how one can extenuate ones follies, but praise to any folly that gives us such harmless enjoyment.

The scenes painted on Goethes maiolica come from classical mythology, with Ovids Metamorphoses a popular source, as well as Roman history and the Bible. When in Italy, Goethe regretted that gifted painters had such repulsive subjects; he did not enjoy looking at aged monks and saints. But the maiolica pieces incur no such objection. The only saint here is the evangelist Mark, seated on a cloud and wrapped in a splendid blue robe (no. 68). The Last Supper takes place in public, at the top of a flight of stairs thronged with people (no. 35). Old Testament scenes are numerous: Joshua enthusiastically massacres the Amorites, the sun standing still to let him finish the job (no. 89); Mosess enemies led by Korah plunge into an abyss while their tent goes up in flames (no. 88).

Naked bodies, love scenes and bold erotic episodes make us think again about Goethes marital bedroom. Eve, Venus, Diana, and the three goddesses subjected to the judgement of Paris, all display their charms (though the two unsuccessful contestants give Paris very dirty looks: no. 13). Jupiters dealings with Io (no. 69) and Leda (no. 9) leave nothing to the imagination. More curiously still, Callisto is embraced by Jupiter disguised as a woman (no. 22).

The piece with the clearest link to Goethes poetic imagination must be no. 26, showing the triumph of the sea nymph Galatea. She stands on a shell, surrounded by amoretti, dolphins and a couple of ardent lovers on a raft. At the climax of the Classical Walpurgis Night in Faust, Part II, Galatea appears riding on a shell-chariot, attended by dolphins and symbolising the primal life-giving power of the sea. The maiolica paintings are certainly light-heartedand all the more delightful for itbut it would not be surprising if one of them helped to inspired what Goethe called the very serious jokes of Faust II.


Ritchie Robertson is the Taylor Professor of German at the University of Oxford. His most recent book is Goethe: a Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2016)

Italienische Majolika aus Goethes Besitz. Bestandskatalog

Johanna Lessmann, with contributions by Christiane Holm and Susanne Netzer

Arnoldsche Art Publishers, 360pp, 45/49.80/$85 (hb)

Diane Arbus saw the streets of New York City as a place full of secrets waiting to be fathomed, says Jeff Rosenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art curator of a show of early work by the photographer that opens today (12 July) at the Met Breuer. The pictures date from between 1956, the year Arbus began numbering her rolls of film, and 1962, when she took up her signature, square-format Rolleiflex camera. About two-thirds of the works have never before been shown or published, including Boy Stepping Off the Curb, N.Y.C. (1957-58), a spontaneous and sympathetic shot of a youngster.

In all of Arbuss work, she looked for the poignancy of a direct personal encounter, Rosenheim says. Even in her earliest studies of pedestrians, her subjects seem magically, if just momentarily, freed from the flux and turmoil of their surroundings. The museum acquired the Diane Arbus Archive in 2007 from Doon and Amy Arbus, the photographers daughters, as a gift and promised gift; it is the source of most of the photographs on show. The Alfred Stieglitz Society is the exhibitions main sponsor.

Diane Arbus, Met Breuer, New York, 12 July-27 November

On 26 May, US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump vowed to focus on real environmental challenges, not phony ones, cancel the USs participation in the global 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change and stop all payments of US tax dollars to UN global warming programmes. That same day, Unesco released its 100-page World Heritage and Tourism report, which showed how climate change is quickly becoming one of the most significant risks for natural and cultural heritage sites. As if on cue, three days later the River Seine reached a 30-year high, flooding areas of Paris and forcing the Louvre and the Muse dOrsay to close so staff could move works to higher ground.

Meanwhile, this week, delegates at the 40th Unesco World Heritage Committee session, at the Istanbul Congress Centre (until 20 July), will nominate properties and sites to be added to the World Heritage List.

While increased incidents of extreme weather, like the recent floods in France, reinforce the fact that the Earth is indeed getting warmerby 1C globally since 1880its effect on heritage sites is still largely misunderstood. Climate change can exacerbate existing stresses such as urbanisation, pollution and the extraction of natural resources. It can also amplify problems associated with tourismone of the worlds fastest-growing economic sectors. But responsible tourism, according to Unescos report, can help to secure the future of many World Heritage Sites in a changing climate.

The report, produced in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Program and the Union of Concerned Scientists, analyses 31 sites in 29 countries that are vulnerable to climate change. Globally, we need to better understand, monitor and address climate change threats to World Heritage Sites, says Mechtild Rssler, the director of Unescos World Heritage Centre. The report offers recommendations to government agencies, policy makers, tourism bodies, site managers and locals on how to respond to climate change threats.

Suggestions include: undertaking a comprehensive review of climate vulnerability of World Heritage Sites; making climate vulnerability assessment part of the World Heritage Site nomination process; developing strategies and policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Agreement of 2015; using archaeological data to learn about past human responses to climatic change; and involving local communities and indigenous peoples in all stages of climate adaptation and tourism development.


Here are six global World Heritage Sites listed as being at risk from climate change:
EUROPE
Venice and its lagoon, Italy
Venice has become the poster child for World Heritage Sites threatened by rising sea levels. In the past century, water levels have risen by nearly 30cm. Hundreds of Venices buildings and monuments have already been damaged, including the Basilica di San Marco. The effects of climate change are exacerbated by the annual influx of ten million overnight and 20 million day visitors, who spend hundreds of millions of euros in Venice. Many arrive by super-sized cruise ships. The mobile barriers being installed between the lagoon and the sea to prevent Venice flooding are due to be completed in 2017, but the frequency with which they will need to close each year will increase as the sea level rises. These closures will interfere with the cruise ships schedules. The ministry of the environment is considering a plan to build a structure in the sea outside the lagoon and bring cruise ship passengers into the port by boats that will produce almost no wake and no polluting emissions.

NORTH AMERICA
Statue of Liberty, US
The Statue of Liberty may have escaped the full wrath of Superstorm Sandy in 2012, but the island it sits on did not. Flood-waters inundated 75% of Liberty Island, causing millions of dollars in damage to the sites facilities and infrastructure. The total repair bill for Liberty and Ellis islands was more than $77m. This excludes the considerable loss of tourist revenue as the popular attraction was forced to close for months. A vulnerability analysis conducted by the US National Park Service in 2015 revealed that 100% of the assets at Liberty National Monument are at high exposure risk from sea-level rise due to the extremely low elevation of the island and its vulnerability to storms.

LATIN AMERICA
Rapa Nui National Park (Easter Island), Chile
Easter Islands monolithic Moai sculptures are some of the worlds most recognisable works of art, carved from around 1250 to 1500. Around 60,000 tourists visit the tiny island 3,500km off the coast of Chile each year and its people are dependent on this lucrative revenue stream. But coastal erosion and greater wave heights are putting the sculptures, which sit directly on the coast, at risk. Experts fear that increased damage to the basalt slabs upon which the figures sit could cause the sculptures to topple.   

AFRICA
Ruins of Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo Mnara,

United Republic of Tanzania

Gold, silver, ivory and Chinese porcelain were among the goods traded at these port cities in Tanzania in eastern Africa. The islands of Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo Mnara were major centres of Indian Ocean trade from the 13th century until the arrival of the Portuguese in the 16th century. Erosion and coastal flooding are the greatest threat to these sites coral and limestone mortar ruins.

ASIA AND THE PACIFIC
Hoi An Ancient Town, Vietnam


Tourists come to the ancient port city of Hoi An each year to see its 16th- and 17th-century wood-framed buildings. The architectural style of these remarkably well-preserved houses represents a fusion of foreign and native influences, namely Chinese, Japanese and European. The town is just two metres above sea level and is already prone to flooding during the rainy season. Experts estimate that the entire area could flood annually by 2020. 

ARAB WORLD
Ancient Ksour of Ouadane, Chinguetti, Tichitt

and Oualata, Mauritania


These four caravan towns or ksour were founded in the Middle Ages to serve the travellers crossing the Sahara desert and became major centres of Islamic culture. Chinguetti is the seventh holiest city of Islam. The encroaching Sahara Desert is threatening the towns preservation, extreme heat is damaging ancient masonry and earthen buildings are at risk from periods of prolonged rainfall.

This book is dedicated to maiolica, the tin-glazed earthenware of Renaissance Italy. Ceramic glaze whitened with tin-oxide made the perfect ground for painted decoration, and the period 1480-1550 saw an explosion of every kind of imagery as ceramic painters responded to the new technologies of printing and printmaking. Franoise Barbe concentrates on the 16th century as a golden age and on istoriato: narrative-painted ware which only ever represented a tiny proportion of the maiolica produced in pottery workshops all over Italy but which receives disproportionate attention from collectors and scholars. This is not perhaps surprising. Made for the urban elites of Renaissance Italy, the new art form of istoriato provides a fascinating index of artistic expression and documents a wide repertory of subject matter. Maiolica in all its forms was made and used both in the great artistic centres and beyond; within the ruling elites and lower down the social scale. It provides unique insight into literacy, dialect and language, regional identity, religious culture, the revival of classical subjects and a developing sense of history.

Majolique: lge dOr de la Faence Italienne au XVIe Sicle presents a very French emphasis on literary themes and their graphic expression. Barbe shows maiolica painters responding to the prints of Schongauer and Drer but also illustrates a more unusual pairing: Nicola da Urbinos translation of Hans Burgkmair the Elders chiaroscuro print of around 1510, Lovers Surprised by Death. Nicola did not merely simplify and copy the print to fit his curved, circular surface of a ceramic platedifficult enough in itselfby introducing an exergue as on an ancient Roman coin to fill the difficult space at the base and adding a wall on the right as a framing device. He has responded subtly to the way in which the feathered wings of Death meld into the hair of the young woman as she flees in fright; both are highlighted with minute touches of white pigment. The use of a pale blue tonality for the scene, enlivened with pale green in the architectural details, with dark blue drawing and white highlights, is restrained and sophisticated as a response to Burgkmairs vision and is an original work of art in itself.

Barbes attractively illustrated survey draws on the latest scholarship, acting as a useful introduction for the general reader and as a handbook for students. She reviews early istoriato as it developed contemporaneously in a number of different pottery centres around 1480-1520. Chapters follow on the high point in the 1520s and on lustre as a luxury finish in Gubbio and Deruta. Subjects and models, ornamental designs and the function of maiolica is then discussed, ending with two chapters considering istoriato around 1540-50 and the new taste for white maiolica from the 1550s.

A discussion of historic maiolica collections in France might have been enlightening; Maiolica scholars joke that pieces with erotic and pornographic subjects often derive from French collections. A case in point is the unique dish now in Oxfords Ashmolean Museum. It presents a composite head formed entirely from penises of a man in profile. Inscribed on the back with the mark of the painter Francesco Urbini of Urbino and dated 1536, the dish anticipates Arcimboldo and comments ironically on the more usual profiles of beautiful women on maiolica. It is inscribed: Every man looks at me as if I were a head of dicks. On the back is written: If you want to understand the meaning, you will be able to read the text like the Jews do (that is, like Hebrew: right to left).

As Timothy Wilson has pointed out, this kind of playful pornography is strongly associated with the writer Pietro Aretino, who had a series of sonnets addressed to him; in one, the Pope is accused of making cardinals from I visi di cazzo or prick faces. Proof that Grayson Perry is not the first artist in modern times to paint pornography with political themes on ceramic.


Dora Thornton is the curator of Renaissance Europe at the British Museum and of the museums Waddesdon Bequest gallery of 300 objets dart, supported by the Rothschild Foundation

Majolique: lge dOr de la Faence Italienne au XVIe Sicle

Franoise Barbe

Citadelles & Mazenod, 272pp, 59 (hb)

A new triennial is due to open next year in Aarhus, eastern Denmark, which will encompass four kilometres of coastline surrounding the city. The inaugural ARoS triennial, organised by the ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, will explore how man has depicted and altered nature according to his view of the world, a press statement says. The triennial is a key feature of Aaarhuss year-long run as European Capital of Culture in 2017. 

The triennial, entitled The Garden: End of Times, Beginning of Times, will be split into two parts: The Past (8 April-10 September 2017) and The Present and the Future (3 June-30 July 2017). Its scope is ambitious; the statement adds that the triennial covers the past 400 years and will be staged in three sections. "[It] will reflect on mans perception of nature according to philosophical, religious and political changes, the organisers say. 

The Past section, presented at ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, will be based on German Romanticism of the early 1800s, early 20th-century Modernism and 1960s Land art. The Present exhibition will be shown at venues dotted around the city while a series of public art pieces will be installed on the coastal route from Tangkrogen to Ballehage in The Future section. Participating artists will be announced in due course.

The ARoS Triennial is funded by the ARoS Aarhus Museum; sponsors include local and regional authoritiesincluding Aarhus Kommune and Region Midtjyllandthe Salling Fondene charity which is backed by Dansk supermarket, and European Capital of Culture.

The ninth edition of the Liverpool Biennial (until 16 October) invites international artists to examine the citys past, present and future. While the stories they spin are not all to be trusted, the works that linger in the mind are those that engage closest with the local context. 

In some cases, fiction proves more seductive than reality. The Iranian brothers Ramin and Rokni Haerizadeh and their collaborator Hesam Rahmanian, whose works run through three of the main exhibitions, overlay spliced footage of Isil iconoclasm with their own watercolour animations in Big Rock Candy Mountain (2015). The video, part of Tate Liverpools show mixing contemporary art with National Museums Liverpools 18th-century collection of classical sculpture, converts militants into bikini-wearing dancers, long-beaked birds and gaping fish, seemingly neutralising their destructive acts.

The glossy films of Fabien Giraud and Raphal Siboni in the spectacular, ruined ABC Cinema, which closed in 1998, and Lucy Beech at Fact (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) promise cinematic escapism. Both dystopian narrativesthe first an apocalyptic vision of 1920s factory workers with the look of a 1980s music video, the second an uneasy encounter with a cult-like therapy groupseem to make more sense in light of the fact that the University of Liverpool houses one of the largest science fiction libraries in the world.

The biennial feels strongest when the commissioned artists work directly with the citys people and places. One of the highlights of the opening weekend was Marvin Gaye Chetwynds Dogsy Ma Bone, a joyful Scouse musical inspired by Betty Boop and Bertolt Brecht with a cast of local children in handmade animal costumes. A film of the production, shot on the streets of Liverpool, will be screened daily at the Cains Brewery venue. 

A more sober collaboration with and for children comes in the form of Koki Tanakas exhibition at Open Eye Gallery, which revisits the 1985 march by 10,000 Liverpudlian school students against the Youth Training Scheme, Margaret Thatchers controversial government initiative intended to reduce mass unemployment among young people. In the wake of the UKs Brexit referendum, the project asks whether the new generation of digital natives can rekindle the same spirit of political protest. 

While the original participants seem doubtful in Tanakas interviews, there is cause for optimism at the longer-term transformation of Liverpools urban fabric. Beyond the city centre, the biennial has pushed out to the Toxteth community, where riots erupted between residents and police in 1981. The temporary interventions Portal, a web of green laser beams created inside the former Toxteth Reservoir by Rita McBride, and Momentary Monument, Lara Favarettos slab of granite on a boarded-up street, are a walk away from Granby Four Streets, the Turner Prize-winning project by the architecture collective Assemble to regenerate the areas derelict terraced houses. 

Meanwhile, Liverpool City Council, one of the biennials main funders, has granted planning permission to a ten-year redevelopment plan for the Cains Brewery site. After the biennial runs its 14-week course, the complex of disused warehouses is due to be refurbished as artists studios and gallery spaces. 

Liverpool Biennial, various venues, until 16 October

The leading Iranian artist Parviz Tanavoli says that he is facing criminal charges in Tehran after he was barred from travelling to London last weekend (2 July). Tanavolis passport was confiscated by border officials at Tehrans Imam Khomeini International Airport; he was subsequently unable to attend a talk on 3 July at the British Museum.

Tanavoli, who divides his time between Tehran and Vancouver, says in an email: Yes, I am accused by the police. The accusations are that my art is based on 'spreading the falsehood' and 'creating public anxiety'. On 10 July I went to court with my lawyer and I was given the above allegations. The artist may face a fine or possibly imprisonment. 

As certain elements of the Iranian regime push for closer relations with the West, other forces within the government push back. And often it is the artists, whose work is well known across Iran's borders, who get caught in the crossfires, says a source close to Tanavoli. As Iran tries to open up tourism and business channels to the West, such moves are chilling. Officials at the Iranian embassy in London declined to comment.

Tanavoli is known for pioneering a new form of Pop art in Iran in the 1960s. Next March, an exhibition dedicated to the artist, entitled The Lion in Iran and the Art of Parviz Tanavoli, is due to open at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran.

Meanwhile, the lecture at the British Museum, which focused on Tanavolis book European Women in Persian Houses, went ahead without the artist. The book, published by IB Tauris, examines why wealthy households in Iran at the turn of the 20th century collected and incorporated prints of glamorous, unveiled European women into the architecture of houses and residences. 

The northern UK city of Hull was a sea of blue this weekend (9/10 July) as more than 3,200 people braved the North Sea chill in their birthday suits for Spencer Tunicks latest mass nude art installation. The participants, painted in four fetching shades of blue, gathered at dawn across landmark sites such as the Scale Lane swing bridge and Queen's Gardens. Tunicks Sea of Hull photographs, which draw on Hulls maritime heritage, will be shown next year at Ferens Art Gallery during the UK City of Culture festival. One of our very own TAN team members, head of sales Kath Boon, bared all in the name of art. I want to support the City of Culture initiative, she says, adding: It was a humbling experience; there were people of all shapes and sizes. I was in a lovely shade of blue but after four hours naked in the streets of Hull, I was actually turning blue with cold.

Chase away the cold with the launch of Pier One Sydney Harbour’s winter lodge on the pier. Partnering with the oldest distillery in the Scottish Highlands, Chivas Regal Whisky, the lodge is open throughout the colder months.

Chivas Lodge on the Pier provides the perfect winter escape, where guests can watch the sun set in the harbour from the comfort of the lodge. With all the luxurious features of an alpine ski lodge, guests can sip drinks by the fire and relax with friends, in the comfort of lush throws, rugs and opulent finishes.

Special offers over the 3 months include:

• Thursday – Complimentary tasting plate
• Friday – Live music with roaming three minute massage angles
• Saturday – DJ
• Sunday – Live performance.

Chivas Whisky masterclass with Chivas ambassador Rachel Macdonald
14 Jul, 12 Aug, 26 Aug, 2 Sep, 23 Sep

Mumm Tasting Class with G.H.Mumm ambassador Chris Sheehy
29 Jul, 19 Aug, 16 Sep

The Gantry Restaurant Whisky Degustation Dinner with Executive Chef Joel Bickford
15 Sep

Pricing:

• Masterclasses and special dinners: from $40 per person
• Exclusive hire of the Chivas Lodge on the Pier is available.

For more information and to purchase tickets visit the official website.

Chivas Lodge on the Pier is open to all over 18 years old.

From the utterly marvellous writer of Neighbourhood Watch and The Dog/The Cat comes a modern romance about wanderlust, heartbreak and karate. Lally Katz has spent the past decade turning her life into a series of hilarious and theatrically gorgeous plays. This time it’s her parents’ turn.

After nearly losing his mind in the abandon of 1960s America, young Danny (who happens to share a name with Lally’s father) finds his way again with the help of an enigmatic sensei. At a New Jersey karate dojo, he and other mislaid souls make their way back into the world, and Danny bumps into a woman called Lois… Meanwhile, in present-day Australia, Danny’s long-lost grandchild has decided to become Patti Smith…

Inspired by the true events that brought Dan and Lois Katz together, Back at the Dojo features a Hogarthian parade of characters, two real-life karate instructors and the incomparable Luke Mullins (Angels in America, The Glass Menagerie) in a role written specially for him. Belvoir joins forces with legendary Melbourne company Stuck Pigs Squealing for this ravishing, nourishing story about the myths families live by.

A co-production with Stuck Pigs Squealing

Image: Luke Mullins and Natsuko Mineghishi. Photographer: Brett Boardman.

The Cleftomaniacs are an auditioned community choir which meets each Thursday evening during school terms at the South Sydney Uniting Church in Raglan St Waterloo. The choir has a long and distinguished history and have been singing together for over 20 years.

Highlights include performances of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, the presentation of the 2008 Sydney Acappella Festival and many tours to regional and interstate festivals. In 2015 The Cleftomaniacs undertook a tour of New Zealand and this year they participated in the 2016 season of The Events at The Belvoir St Theatre. They will also appear at the Blackheath Choir Festival in late August.

The choir is led by arranger, composer and music educator, Gary Smith, who currently directors 5 Sydney community choirs as well as managing a choral website; Acappella Central. Gary also leads music tours to international festivals.

The Cleftomaniacs will present their next major concert at The South Sydney Uniting Church on Saturday evening, September 24.

In 2017 they plan to make a musical tour of Hawaii.

The Choir will have a 2 week break on Thursday July 28 and August 4.