Previews

Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life 1990–2005

Exhibitions of master photographers are commonplace at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. Museum visitors are familiar with the works of Helmut Newton or Peter Lindbergh. This autumn belongs to Annie Leibovitz, and quite right too. Annie has become one of the world’s most famous photographers. Musicians and politicians often line up to be photographed by this lady, because her portraits, which she seems to create so easily, are by default iconic. The current exhibition at the department of private collections is based on a book of photography that was published five years ago. The exhibition brings together about two hundred images of famous public figures together with personal photographs of her family and close friends. Arranged chronologically, they project a unified narrative of the artist’s private life against the backdrop of her public image. “I don’t have two lives,” Leibovitz says. “This is one life, and the personal pictures and the assignment work are all part of it.” At the heart of the exhibition are Leibovitz’s personal photographic documents: scenes from her life, including the birth and childhood of her three daughters. There are vacations, reunions, rites of passage with her parents, her extended family and close friends. The exhibition features Leibovitz’s portraits of well-known figures, including actors such as Jamie Foxx, Daniel Day Lewis, Demi Moore, Nelson Mandela, Scarlett Johansson, Al Pacino, Nicole Kidman and Brad Pitt as well as artists and architects such as Richard Avedon, Brice Marden, Philip Johnson, Chuck Close and Cindy Sherman.

Moscow Design Week

Almost every country of the world is holding its own design week at this time of the year: in Copenhagen, Sydney or Helsinki events of this kind, with shows and exhibitions dedicated to design, are held regularly. Moscow Design Week is a new event (last year’s was the first), but with such ambitious directors it is very competitive. The organizers are keeping to the idea of turning the city into a huge design space for seven days. Events will take place at the following locations: Provision warehouses (Park Kultury), at the Red October Chocolate Factory and the State Museum for Architecture. The programme is extended via private galleries, show-rooms and restaurants that create an integrated space for this professional environment. This year’s red line is “Design” in the extended sense, meaning that all the major steps in design from product to fashion, graphic design and architecture will be covered. Among participants are Maarten Baas, Giulio Cappellini, Luigi Colani—these are the people who worked on the images of Canon, Swarovski, Armani Casa or Boeing. For Russia, a country which has its own famous designers like Alexander Rodchenko, whose exhibition is being held in parallel at the Tretyakov gallery, it is a good chance to assert the status it deserves. Luckily there are some good teachers around.

Vladimir Spivakov invites

The “Magic of Music” is the name that Vladimir Spivakov gave to the first of a series of musical festivals held at the House of Music in the autumn. The name has stuck. Ever since the festival was launched six years ago, it has been a major event for classical music fans. For the maestro, “the quantity of the festival days is not that important, as to show what I admire in music myself: something new and various in different genres and styles—that is significant.”

Vladimir Spivakov is well known for his attachment to programs uniting orchestral performances with highclass vocalists. The current festival is no exception. For the opening, Spivakov invited baritone Matthias Goerne, one of the best known soloists internationally who has performed in theatres from Carnegie Hall, New York and Wigmore Hall London, to Teatro alla Scala in Milan. The programme is dedicated to magic and miracles, and is crowned with Mahler’s miniatures from his series of Youth’s Magic Horn, an overture to Stravinsky’s The Fairy’s Kiss, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Three Miracles.

NETFEST

How do you get to find out what’s “in” in the world of contemporary theatre nowadays? October is the month in Moscow when the NETFEST, New European Theatre Festival, is held. This brings sought-after European directors to Moscow. Many of the debuting directors at the festival later become famous theatrical personalities. In this year’s programme the name of the Russian-Soviet writer Maxim Gorky figures twice: Oskaras Koršunovas, the best known Lithuanian director, brings his production of The Lower Depths to Moscow, and Ivo van Hove, a Dutch director, will show his interpretation of Gorky’s Children of the Sun, a play which is rarely

October 18 - 30 For venues and schedule see www.NETFEST.ru

staged in Russia. Jo Strømgren, the choreographer and director who showed his previous Monastery and Hospital productions at last year’s NETFEST, is back with a new story about coffee and tea-bags named Society. NETFEST is about innovations, too. So this year a performance featuring a lot of video art is on the list. Pierik Sauren from France shows 22.13, which signals that it is acceptabe to use video on theatre stages. And Victor Bodo from Hungary with his last year’s Golden Mask award in his pocket, will present his brand new “Diceman” production.