#monograph

Radenko Milak (*1980) is a wanderer between worlds, the worlds of painting on the one hand and the seemingly endless stream of images on the other. From the latter he selects his motifs and translates them into predominately black and white watercolors. They show events of the 20th century that continue to inform our present, multi-panel cityscapes of stunning size and detail, heroines of feminism or scenes from movies that made history. 

Depending on the breadth of your own visual inventory, Milak's watercolors will often make you think "I know that image"  and, like his depictions of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York on 9/11, evoke additional images and feelings. Upon closer inspection Milak’s paintings also reveal his immense precision and mastery of the medium watercolor, a reference to his comprehensive training at the art academies of Banja Luka and Belgrade.

From January 17 to March 8 the Haus am Lützowplatz in Berlin showed „Post-Millennium Tension“, Milak’s first institutional solo exhibition in Germany since 2014, which also lent its title (which in turn has been borrowed from Tricky’s 1996 album) to the present monograph. Recently published by Snoeck and edited by curator Max Dax it offers an unprecedented overview of the artist’s oeuvre to date. Browsing through it one soon recognizes that Milak is drawn to catastrophes, an insight that is likely related to both his first-hand experience of the war in Bosnia and the very fact that the last quarter of a century is a succession of crises and catastrophes. 

At the same time the artist remains open to outside input and, as Udo Kittelmann explains in his essay, e.g. developed the series „Musical Transcendences“ with Max Dax. The series depicts key moments in music history since the invention of photography and reflects Dax’s as well as Milak’s deep knowledge and love of music. On the part of the viewer these paintings resound on both a visual and an acoustic level and evoke memories and emotions.

The Japanese designer Shiro Kuramata (1934-91) has often been described as a poet of material and form who with a twist of Surrealism transformed everyday objects into something special. He once stated that „enchantment should also be considered a function“, a quote that his designs perfectly reflect: with the „Glass Chair“ (1976), the „Miss Blanche“ chair (1988) or the „How High the Moon“ Sofa (1986) are restrained designs that Kuramata instilled with a playful and immediately recognizable twist.

In 2013 Phaidon published Deyan Sudjic’s monumental two-volume monograph, a worthy tribute to this extraordinary designer whose life ended way too soon at the age of only 56: the first volume is devoted to the analysis and history of Kuramata’s work and the second is a catalogue raisonné collecting some 600 individual entries, a significant amount of works given the designer’s rather short career. As Sudjic explains, Kuramata combined ancient and modern Japanese folk fantasies with European minimalism and achieved objects that both light and mysterious. At this point also his material preferences come into play: glass, acrylic and wire mesh offer different degrees of transparency, impressions of weight and weightlessness.

In contrast to the material-driven character of his seating furniture, his drawers and bureaus in their asymmetrical configuration seem like nods to the fantastic world Alice discovers in her adventures in Wonderland or, as Sudjic speculates, to American sculptor Joseph Cornell’s boxes. Either way, their forms create a sense of wonder and mystery that rarely characterizes modern design.

Together with Michel de Klerk and Joan van der Mey Pieter Lodewijk (Piet) Kramer (1881-1961) forms the triumvirate of the Amsterdamse School, the expressionist architectural movement that shaped much of Amsterdam’s social housing between the late 1910s and 1930s. Together with de Klerk he designed the Dageraad complex, one of the most beautiful housing blocks in Amsterdam and highly distinctive due to its sculptural corner design. Later, Kramer became the aesthetic advisor of the „Publieke Werken’s“ bridge department and for some forty years shaped the distinctively organic style of Amsterdam’s bridges.

The German architectural historian Bernhard Kohlenbach on a study trip discovered Kramer’s work and in 1994 published his doctoral thesis with Wiese Verlag in order to put a new spotlight on the architect: at the time of the book’s release Kramer had been significantly lesser-known than his e.g. Michel de Klerk whose name had become synonymous with the School of Amsterdam. Kohlenbach examines Kramer’s oeuvre from his early Arbeidersbeurs (1915) at Passeerdersgracht up until the aforementioned bridge designs and in between of course highlights his most significant works: besides the well-known Amsterdamse School designs of the 1920s and 1930s these include the Park Meerwijk in Bergen and the studio he built for artist Charley Toorop as well as the Bijenkorf department store in Den Haag. The author also elaborates on the self-conception of the architects as artists who sought to evoke emotions and in fact designed the facades for the scientifically developed floor plans of the flats lying behind them.

The Swedish architect Peter Celsing (1920-74) is often mentioned in the same breath as Sigurd Lewerentz, mainly due to their shared appreciation of honest materials and skillful craftsmanship. And just like Lewerentz Celsing also traveled Italy, an experience that subcutaneously informed many of Celsing’s projects.

In the mid 1990s photographer John Håkansson, then still a student at the Stockholm Academy of Photography, was commissioned to photograph Celsing’s architecture all over Sweden for a planned publication on the architect. Unfortunately, the book didn’t materialize back then but thanks to Park Books finally saw the light of day very recently. „Architecture by Peter Celsing - Photographed by John Håkansson“, edited by the photographer himself, is a wonderfully „sachlich“ publication that captures the essence of Celsing’s architecture. Håkansson, influenced by the Düsseldorf School of Photography’s exponents Bernd & Hilla Becher, Thomas Ruff and Candida Höfer, photographed Celsing’s buildings not in perfect conditions but in the bleak of winter, an approach that corresponds to the austerity and material beauty of the architecture. Accordingly, key projects like the Filmhuset, Kulturhuset and Riksbank in Stockholm, the Härland kyrka in Göteborg or the Tomas kyrka in Vällingby are documented in their special beauty. As Staffan Henriksson points out in his introduction to Peter Celsing, he was influenced not only by his study trips to Italy but also by Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp Chapel: although not immediately discernible on the surface, Le Corbusier’s use of lighting profoundly informed Celsing’s churches and his use of light. This aspect again is beautifully reflected in Håkansson’s photographs.

Hendrik Petrus Berlage (1856-1934) not only was one of the most significant Dutch architects of all time but also a pivotal mediator between Traditionalism and Modernism. Admired by none less than Mies van der Rohe, Berlage was an architect of material honesty and structural clarity, sharpened by his reading of Semper and Viollet-le-Duc. His Amsterdam Stock Exchange (1898-1903) had a major impact on numerous functionalist and Amsterdam School architects and justly ranks among the top monuments of the Netherlands.

It is rather surprising that the name of Dieter Oesterlen (1911-94) has largely faded into obscurity: as one of three figureheads of the so-called „Braunschweiger Schule“ Oesterlen trained countless students at the Technical University in Braunschweig and also significantly contributed to German postwar architecture. During the course of his career he developed two major typological strands, namely church architecture and the construction in existing contexts, most prominently represented by the Christuskirche in Bochum and the Landtag of Lower Saxony in Hannover, the city where Oesterlen also spent most of his life.

Although in recent years a critical monograph on the architect by Anne Schmedding has been published the present volume still offers the most comprehensive visual source to his work: „Dieter Oesterlen - Bauten und Text 1946-1991“, published in 1992 by Wasmuth Verlag, is a personal compilation of 36 buildings and 19 texts by Oesterlen himself and illustrated with plans and photos, many of them taken by Heinrich Heidersberger. They demonstrate not only Oesterlen’s development from a restrained postwar modernist towards a Brutalist architect but also show his dealing with reconstruction: especially in the case of the Marktkirche in Hannover Oesterlen sought to purify the interior by exposing the brick walls and vaults and intentionally juxtaposing the old and the new.

In the back of the book the architect’s texts and lectures provide interesting insights into Oesterlen’s long-term teaching at TU Braunschweig as well as his conception of architecture. From these texts, lectures and speeches Oesterlen’s increasing alienation from contemporaneous concepts of space and architecture becomes clear, probably one of the reasons why he fell into obscurity in the late 1970s.

monograph

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