Grete Trakl biography now in print edition

Virtual Mondrian Museum - Mondrian3D

On Piet Mondrian's birthday, March 7, a new Mondrian museum opens its doors to the wide public: Mondrian 3D. The museum is a production of Activeworlds Europe, DXMedia and Bax Art Concepts & Services.

The concept of the museum is an extension of the ideas of Mondrian himself, even though the idea of a virtual environment didn’t exist in his time, at least not in this way. Mondrian wanted his art to be available to everyone, so that everyone could become familiar with his ideas. He had high ideals about the function of his art in modern society. He wanted his art to fit in with the latest technological and social developments, and at the same time it should deepen cultural awareness and awareness of the inner self.

Concept and goals of Mondrian 3D

The idea for a virtual museum dedicated to one artist dates from several years ago. In the real world museum organizing a retrospective of a major artist like Mondrian is a growing problem. An exhibition takes many years and is extremely expensive, in money, time, transportation and security. In this time of economic tightness sponsorship of exhibitions is increasingly under pressure. In the course of time works become progressively fragile; restoration prior to transport is costly and intensive. Some works are in private collections and are not available for loan at all. In the course of history work is lost, perhaps also the pictures of works that no longer exist, through fire or theft or disaster.

In a virtual museum is it possible to without all these restrictions to bring all of the works of an artist together and preserve the history of an oeuvre and an artist. A virtual museum is an environment where everyone in the world has access on his own time, now and in the distant future. The virtual museum can act as an interactive map connecting to centers of expertise in the real world, and in which discussions of professionals and enthusiasts can lead to understanding the cultural value of an artist. Collaboration between professional partners ensures that the virtual museum and its educational goals have the same high level as that of a physical museum.

Click here for the trailer of Mondrian3D

For many a virtual museum may appear science fiction, but among younger generations outside the traditional museum this is by no means the case. The youth of today is accustomed to moving in virtual worlds. Their way of communicating and forming communities is intricately connected with such environments. For young people the virtual world is not ‘testing place’ for social interaction; it is a real and natural part of daily life. In addition, young people at home and at school are now accustomed to gather knowledge and insights via the digital way. Working with digital sources has become an integral part of study skills taught at primary school. In this way, the virtual museum serves as an important and dependable first source of knowledge for the oeuvre of an artist. The next step is a visit to the real museum, where young people can smell the paint. Young people, in short, move from the virtual to the real. In pedagogical respect, one can be critical about his, but it is also possible to use this constructively.

Activeworlds

ActiveWorlds is a virtual environment, similar to Second Life or Sims. In this virtual world is it possible to exhibit a complete body of work, make your own exhibition, create separate spaces for private collections, hold meetings, lectures and tours, to offer educational projects and sell merchandise. The possibilities of a virtual museum as an extension of a physical museum are basically endless. Behind the avatars are real people, who can inform visitors, be it at a set time on the day (so real-life) but also when a visitor activates a button. And just as in a real museum you can meet each other at the meeting point, go to the café, walk to a specific work and discuss it together. A virtual museum offers even more: have you ever stood in front of a painting and secretly thought: what happens when I turn a painting? How does it look when it hangs upside down?

Visit the museum

Mondrian 3D is a virtual museum on a private area of the web. A simple plug-in is needed to access the world, the work, yourself and other visitors you see on your screen and with whom you can communicate. All information about the plug-in, visiting the museum and your presence at the opening can be found at www.museum3d.eu.

Grete Trakl biography. Including 5 unknown poems by Georg Trakl

During the last four years I have been researching the life of Grete Trakl (1891-1917), sister of the well-known Austrian 'expressionist' poet Georg Trakl (1887-1914). Although Georg’s life and work have been extensively researched, the biography of his sister Grete, with whom he is said to have had an incestuous relationship, has remained remarkably sketchy.
This biography describes her life in full detail, based on newly found facts and a review of existing facts. It debunks the myths which were created around her and her brother Georg. In the book I take you with me on my journey into the discovery of the real Grete Trakl, sometimes in a literal sense, as I visited many places related to her life and that of her family. The e-book therefore contains films and music to bring you close to Grete's world. The writing style is smooth and accessible and thus suitable for many audiences: not only for the general lover of non-fiction and for people interested in feminist/gender issues, psychology and cultural history in a very broad sense, but also for the more scholarly audiences who appreciate thorough research, especially for those who study the work and life of Georg Trakl.

Bax Book Store

Behind every idea or project is a person. As a person I am largely a conceptual thinker. I like to develop things. Call it my creative streak.
Creativity actually seems to run in my family. A few years ago, while reconstructing my pedigree chart and at the same time compiling a small book on the diary the artist Albrecht Dürer made of his travels to the Netherlands in 1520-1521, I ironically discovered that one of my ancestors was the famous Renaissance artist Lucas van Leyden (1494-1533), of whom Dürer made a portrait in Antwerp. Suddenly one of my distant ancestors got a face, and a famous one!

Fair use policy and copyright control

Albrecht Dürer was an interesting person. Not only was he the first artist to make prints in large editions, sometimes compiled into a book, his diary shows clearly how he consciously maintained his personal network to widen his circle of potential buyers. Giving ‘freebies’, from individual prints to his immense Große Passion Christi, was part of his marketing strategy.
Dürer was also the first artist to consciously claim and exploit his copyright on his work. He used what we now would call a fair use policy. While retaining full control over his copyright, he had agents who sold his work while he was on tour and who received a fair share in return.

Dürer, in short, nicely fits the picture of the contemporary author, who has become increasingly fed up with the monopoly of the print publishing industry and who wants to regain or retain control over his authorship.

Democratic values in publishing

Dürer’s self-awareness was a product of a new time, formed by the new humanistic concepts circulating within his close circle of contacts. Humanism forms the basis of our modern democratic society, based on equality, mutual respect and a fair share for everyone.

These ideas in turn form the basis of Bax Book Store and of the two partners, who have joined forces to realize Bax Book Store: myself and Sjoerd van Essen, marketing specialist at DX Media and also a conceptual thinker.

By stressing fair use and shared values Bax Book Store offers creators of digital content an alternative to the existing monopolies of traditional publishing companies. Instead of being merely merchandise hidden in an online shop, content creators can be in the driver’s seat by partnering with us.

How?

Bax Book Store platform

Bax Book Store provides an international platform for publishers, writers and artists to publish their works digitally as an e-book, video or photo. It also offers authors and publishers the possibility to publish their books through so-called ‘private labels’: your own special section on the store, as an extension of your existing brand or in the look and feel you want it to have.

Bax Book Store communicates with a special app, Mybookreader, in iOS and (soon) in Android.

Next to new books, which are only available digitally and which will increasingly consist of interactive productions, the store also offers books which have stood the test of time because of their intrinsic quality. Declared dead, as of no commercial use to the original publisher, these books are now given a second life in digital format at Bax Book Store, thus offering inspirational value to a new audience.



Fair deals, shared values, joint effort

In short: We at Bax Book Store believe in a fair deal and a joint effort to bring content to the targeted audience, fully respecting the intellectual property of the (co-)creators. We don't review books and we don't judge the makers. That's up to the customers.

If you want to publish in our store we only ask you three questions:
Do you share our values?
Do you want to share your audience with the others?
Does your publication fit in?

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Hilma and the enigmatic Mathilde N.

This year I have been in Sweden twice, for the retrospective exhibition on Hilma af Klint. The invitation came through the Ax:son Johnson Foundation, founded in 1947 by the late Consul General Axel Ax:son Johnson together with his wife Margaret, owner of the Nordstjernan group. The foundation, led by the highly amiable Kurt Almqvist, facilitates scientific research in general, but in particular the liberal arts and the social sciences. I was deeply impressed by their hospitality and professionalism. The foundation has clearly thought very deeply and constructively about their strategy how to inform a wider public about pressing issues in society. Conferences with scholars from all over the world, a website, a magazine, even their own TV channel with the top-Swedish interviewer Thomas Gür, who courteously and tongue-in-cheek said it was his fun ‘to ask stupid questions and get intelligent answers’. All in all: amazing. I wish we had such an institution in my country!

The adventure started in February, when an expert meeting was organized at the opening of the exhibition. The meeting was held in Engelsberg, a top-list Unesco heritage site own by the Ax:son group. Mid-winter, snow-covered landscape in the middle of the woods, paths at night lighted with candles along the sides, in the typically Swedish manner. A truly romantic setting. And a relaxed place to meet many international colleagues from other disciplines. For me personally, my acquaintance with Hilma’s work came full circle, when I met Maurice Tuchman again, who in 1986 organized The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985. Its venue at The Hague constituted my first job as a curator. That exhibition showed Hilma’s work in public for the first time after WWII.

In May some of the scholars travelled to Stockholm again, at the closing of the exhibition, to lecture at a public conference in the Moderna Museet. The main objective of the conference was to publicly discuss how Hilma af Klint and her art should be positioned in her time, between the other pioneers of abstract art, and how her art can be understood. The debate intended also to point towards the future. Where does Hilma advance from here? Where should her position be within art history? All of the proceedings and the interviews circling around these basic questions are now on the Axess website. In this blog I want to add a little more to the discussion.