Birou Notarial8

New works by Japanese artist Foujita found

TOKYO | Wed Aug 31, 2011 5:44am EDT

TOKYO (Reuters) - Nearly 40 previously unknown works by Japanese artist Leonard Foujita, who made a name for himself in pre-World War Two Paris and was an acquaintance of Picasso and Matisse, have been discovered by a Japanese museum.

Combining Japanese ink techniques with Western-style painting, Foujita -- a noted cat lover -- became especially known for his paintings of naked women and cats.

The Pola Museum of Art in Hakone, a mountain resort town just west of Tokyo, said the 37 pieces were part of a gift from a private collector within Japan but declined to name their nationality.

"These were completely unknown before, so we were quite surprised by the gift," said Yurika Hirata, a museum spokeswoman.

"It was previously thought that Paris was the main site of Foujita's work in his later years, but notes on the back mention that some were painted in other countries. It tells us new things about what he did."

The pieces are oil paintings on thick paper mounted on fibreboard and painted between 1956 to 1958.

Some appear to have religious themes, while others show children doing various kinds of work such as house cleaning or frying eggs and may be related to Foujita's "Little Artisans" series of paintings.

Foujita, born Tsuguharu Fujita in 1886, graduated from what is now the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music at the age of 24 and moved to Paris three years later.

Taking a studio in Montparnasse, he met artists such as Modigliani and is said to have studied dance with Isadora Duncan. His paintings, which initially sold well, drew comment for the milk white color of the skin of the women he portrayed.

After a stint working and traveling in South America, Foujita returned to Japan in the 1930s, where he produced propaganda art for the military. He eventually returned to France, where he converted to Catholicism and died in 1968.

The new pieces will go on display from Sept 6.

(Reporting by Elaine Lies, editing by Paul Casciato)

Free drama of popular protest rocks London stage

(This story contains graphic language)

By Barbara Lewis

LONDON (Reuters) - The spirit of the Arab Spring has found theatrical expression, with the help of one of Britain's celebrated iconoclasts, at a venue next door to the capital's mayor.

Mark Ravenhill, made famous by his 1990s debut play "Shopping and Fucking," has written a modernized version of German playwright Bertolt Brecht's "The Mother," which examines an early 20th-century protest that has taken on contemporary force.

In keeping with Brecht's popularism, there is no entry charge and by the end of the season on September 4, this fable of uprising against oppressive authority will have been performed to more than a quarter of a million people for free.

"There is renewed interest in what happens when people protest and demonstrate," Ravenhill told Reuters of his decision to revive the play.

Ravenhill's first play Shopping and Fucking stirred controversy because of its sexually violent content, but was hailed for its expose of rampant consumerism and as a prime example of the British "in-yer-face-theater" of the 1990s.

Since then, he has worked on a range of projects, including sell-out performances at this summer's Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland, and he is writing a libretto for an opera to be staged in Oslo.

For Ravenhill, Brecht has particularly wide resonance and could speak to the Middle Eastern and North African countries that have protested against their governments, beginning with uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt at the start of this year.

"Brecht's plays really travel. They have a fable-like quality," said Ravenhill. "You can really imagine an Arab audience understanding The Mother."

In addition to providing the text, Ravenhill will act one of the play's characters for the final performances of the season.

UNCONVENTIONAL CONTEXT

For him, The Scoop open-air theater next to London Mayor Boris Johnson's City Hall headquarters on the south bank of the River Thames was a particularly appropriate venue.

"It was written to be taken outside the conventional context," said Ravenhill of The Mother, in which a mother, initially politically neutral, becomes a forthright champion of the socialist cause.

"The idea it is totally free creates a really special atmosphere. You get a different audience and you get a different attitude."

The London-based Steam Industry Free Theater Limited, producer of the performances, said the audience has included many who have never before been to the theater, which can be a middle-class bastion.

Provided it can continue to drum up funding in a climate of deep cuts, especially to the arts, the Steam Industry will next year celebrate its 10th season of delivering critically acclaimed free theater at The Scoop.

"There's not a penny available yet there's the expectation we will pull something impressive out of the bag," said Phil Willmott, artistic director of the project.

So far, he said pockets of sponsorship and public donations had been enough for the free theater to keep going "by the skin of its teeth."

Next August's plan to stage the "Oresteia" trilogy, written by Aeschylus, to a non-paying audience many of whom will probably know little about classical Greek drama, could be the most ambitious project yet.

It will again be highly topical as it will coincide with London's 2012 hosting of the Olympic Games, another pillar of classical Greek culture.

The trilogy celebrates "the ethos from which the games were born with the epic Greek drama cycle of the people," said Willmott.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

Mehta: Arab Spring may be upbeat for Israel Philharmonic

International orchestral and operatic conductor Zubin Mehta speaks before receiving his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Hollywood, California March 1, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Fred Prouser

By Michael Roddy

LONDON | Thu Sep 1, 2011 11:27am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Indian-born conductor Zubin Mehta is touring the world with the Israel Philharmonic celebrating its 75th anniversary and his 50th with them, but what he'd like to do is add more Arab capitals to the repertoire.

Mehta, who is the same age as the orchestra which gave its first concert in 1936, said as he prepared to conduct a concert at the BBC Proms in London on Thursday night that the Arab Spring has thrown up new challenges, and new opportunities, for Israel and his Philharmonic.

"One wonderful thing is nobody is blaming Israel for anything that is happening in those Arab countries -- usually it is always Israel's fault," Mehta told Reuters in a telephone interview from Israel a few days before the Proms concert.

"I hope Israel takes advantage of the new regimes to come close to them and that the new regimes will also try to make a detente with Israel."

And does that possibly include a role for the Israel Philharmonic, as a musical ambassador of the Jewish state?

"We have scaled so many artistic heights but also on the political spectrum we went to India and China 15 years ago when diplomatic relations were resumed...we went to the south of Lebanon and played in 1982," Mehta said.

"This orchestra has done things that other great orchestras don't have to do, thank God, but because we find ourselves in this corner here we have to take part in the ebb and flow of the life of the country. Hopefully we will play music very soon in Amman."

Or Tripoli? "Who knows? ...yes."

Here's what else he had to say about what it's like working with an orchestra for half a century, his thoughts on having been involved in starry projects like "The Three Tenors," and why his band is still the best at bringing out "the Jewishness" in Mahler.

Q: What is it like, working with an orchestra for half a century?

A: "I have given more than 3,000 concerts with this orchestra. it would be an understatement to say I feel at home with them. The orchestra is now 100 percent chosen by me...the group that plays now has been handpicked by me. I am very, very happy and comfortable with them and it is nice to come to London after a few years now."

Q: What are you looking for when you fashion the Israel Philharmonic to your needs?

A: "The priority is flexibility, flexibility in the sense that they play music that encompasses about 400 years. I can't ask from the orchestra that they play everything with the same sound, or with the same sense of style. When we play Mozart we have one style and one sound, when we play Debussy it is a certain kind of sound and style. When we play Mahler it is obviously the same thing. The flexibility within the orchestra is so incredible that I can put any style in front of them and after of course rehearsing -- you can't get away from rehearsals -- the result is quite astonishing."

Q: Speaking of Mahler, the late Leonard Bernstein, who was a guest conductor of the Israel Philharmonic and recorded some Mahler symphonies with them, said of the orchestra that it was able to bring out the "Jewishness" of Mahler's music unlike any other. How come?

A: "Although Mahler was converted (to Christianity), especially in his early works the 'Jewishness' was huge, it came out of his pen...And the orchestra does that naturally. Every bar of Mahler they make it sound Jewish -- that which is Jewishness in Mahler, the folk songs, the folk tunes he uses from his youth, of course we play with the understanding of that Central European pathos."

Q: You've been involved in some very high profile musical events over the years, including a long stint as music director of the New York Philharmonic, conducting concerts by The Three Tenors, the New Year's concert in Vienna. What gives you a kick these days?

A: "Yes...but we have a great many new recordings with the Israel Philharmonic that one can get over the Internet or our website. We record those at concerts so they are live recordings as we are very proud of those new recordings."

(Zubin Mehta conducts the Israel Philharmonic with Gil Shaham as soloist in the Bruch Violin Concerto at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Thursday night)

(Writing by Michael Roddy, editing by Paul Casciato)

Sweden's fictional murder capital a peaceful place

Swedish author Henning Mankell attends a news conference in Berlin June 3, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Tobias Schwarz

By Robert Evans

YSTAD, Sweden | Thu Sep 1, 2011 11:23am EDT

YSTAD, Sweden (Reuters) - "This is a very peaceful place," says police inspector Charlotte Lindh as families head flock past toward an open-air flea market on a bright Saturday morning. "I am happy I can bring up my children up in Ystad."

At the other end of Stora Ostergatan, the main street through the southern Swedish port and market town, milling shoppers halt on the main square to applaud parading military bands and Scottish pipers, in town for an annual festival.

The bookshop just off the square, Stortorget, is crowded as are the cafe terraces around it with waiters threading through the tables balancing trays with coffees and pre-lunch drinks.

Just like any small provincial European town in the seasonal sunshine on the first day of a warm weekend?

Perhaps, but Ystad, with its 17,000-odd regular inhabitants, is different. For millions of thriller fans around the world, the medieval idyll of brightly painted thatched cottages and "olde worlde" -- but with all mod cons -- hotels is the murder-and-mayhem capital of Scandinavia.

Around its narrow cobblestone streets, the thoroughfares of the modern suburbs and the port, stalk the shades of the police heroes and heroines -- as well as the villains -- of the 11 "Wallander" novels of 63-year-old Swedish writer Henning Mankel.

Three series of Swedish television films, eagerly snatched up by broadcasters across the globe, have added many more mystery stories to the canon -- all with plots approved by the author if not written by him.

And Irish-born international star actor Kenneth Branagh has played the key role in British television versions -- also popular in Sweden -- of three of the novels, with more being shot around the town this autumn.

First launched into the world by Mankel in 1991, the gruff, introspective Inspector Kurt Wallander of the Ystad police has tracked killers and other assorted villains through the town and the picture postcard countryside beyond.

The death rate in each novel runs at an average of four.

Right there on Stortorget (Old Square), the unathletic, fast-food addict inspector has a fight to the death to stop a criminal master-mind wrecking the world economy in an intricate international operation to be sparked from an ATM machine.

In one of the films, a suicide bomber seizes the minister of defense on the square and in another a hostage-taker blows himself up there when he is cornered by Wallander and his team of male and female detectives.

In leisure moments, the inspector frequents the bookshop and the cafes. But a street away he finds the murdered body of a police colleague and just outside the square the crooked local member of parliament is shot dead despite a heavy police guard.

"One could say it is a pity that our quiet town has to become known for all this fictional violence," says hotelier Peter Schonstrom, whose "Anno 1793 Sekel Garden," built into a medieval tannery, features in two Wallander books.

"But I am not complaining. It certainly brings in business."

His hotel offers, without fanfare, a Wallander suite.

Tourist officials say thousands of visitors are drawn to the town -- at the center of the largely rural Skane region where locals are said to speak Swedish with a Danish accent -- every year, mostly because of Wallander.

Germans and Poles come on the regular ferry services across the Baltic. Others from further afield -- and Japanese Mankel fans are among the most enthusiastic -- fly to Copenhagen and cross by train across the Kattegat sea arm to nearby Malmo.

"Our beaches are great" -- and indeed they are -- "but I think only the Norwegians come for them," says a town guide. There are nearby pre-historic sites and Scandinavia's oldest medieval fortress, which also figure in Mankel's novels.

Are the locals bothered by the town's criminal reputation? "Not at all," says Andreas, an assistant in the bookshop -- which stocks, but discreetly, most of the Wallander novels in German and English, as well as Swedish.

"It gives a bit of spice to life around here."

The Ystad police, in their familiar -- to Wallander film fans -- dark blue uniforms and folding caps, are happy with their fame, posing willingly for snap-happy tourists.

"We love Wallander," says Ewa-Gun Westford, spokesperson for the 120-strong local force. "In fact, we named our canteen the Cafe Wallander. But of course life here is nothing like the books," she adds.

"Since 2009, there have been two murders -- one in a family row and another when some card players got into a fight. Most of what we have to handle are everyday things like burglary and theft, and we do have a bit of drugs too."

Mankel, who has a house outside town but lives mostly in Mozambique where he runs a theater company, placed Wallander's home in the early novels at Mariagatan 10, a two-floor ochre-painted apartment bloc in an eastern suburb.

As a visitor stops to take a photograph of the building which featured in many of the Swedish films, a police car appears and the driver, with a grin, slows down so he can be in the picture. Then, waving, he moves off.

Despite the worldwide fame of Ystad, there is little sign of any local effort to cash in on the Wallander name -- not a Wallander t-shirt, tea-towel or baseball cap in sight, nor, beyond the police station, a Wallander cafe or bar.

But "to meet demand from our visitors," the tourist office issues a detailed small guide to the Wallander sites and runs an hour-long tour twice a week on an ancient red fire engine.

"Making money out of Inspector Kurt?" sniffs a shopkeeper. "That would be cheap."

(Reporting by Robert Evans, editing by Paul Casciato)

Greece says recovers stolen Rubens painting

n">(Reuters) - Greece said on Thursday it recovered a painting by Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens stolen from a museum in Belgium in 2001 and arrested two Greeks who tried to sell it to undercover police for one 1 million euros ($1.4 million).

The culture ministry would not identify the artwork, dated 1618. A Rubens painting called "The Caledonian Boar Hunt" was stolen 10 years ago from the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, Belgium, one museum official told Reuters.

"It's a huge success that we have recovered this valuable painting," said a police official who requested anonymity. "Culture Ministry experts who have examined it confirm its authenticity."

Greek authorities would give no further details and said they would present the artwork at a later date. ($1 = 0.702 Euros)

(Reporting By Dina Kyriakidou and Renee Maltezou, editing by Paul Casciato)

Mehta: Arab Spring may be upbeat for Israel Phil

By Michael Roddy

LONDON | Thu Sep 1, 2011 5:31am EDT

"I hope Israel takes advantage of the new regimes to come close to them and that the new regimes will also try to make a detente with Israel."

And does that possibly include a role for the Israel Philharmonic, as a musical ambassador of the Jewish state?

Or Tripoli? "Who knows? ...yes."

Q: What is it like, working with an orchestra for half a century?

Q: What are you looking for when you fashion the Israel Philharmonic to your needs?

(Zubin Mehta conducts the Israel Philharmonic with Gil Shaham as soloist in the Bruch Violin Concerto at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Thursday night)

(Writing by Michael Roddy, editing by Paul Casciato)