From the 23rd of November 2012 until the 17th of February 2013, the Ludwig Museum, Budapest´s contemporary art museum, will hold the exhibition The Freedom of Sound. John Cage behind the Iron Curtain.

John Cage was undoubtedly one of the most influential composers of the past century. To put him simply as a great musical artist would be a far cry from the achievements this unique American artist got.

To be able to summarise John Cage´s CV, we could say that he was a pioneer in the art world. In many fields he is known as the father of electronic music. He experimented with rhythms, with musical structure and with the instruments themselves. He had a huge influence inside the movement known as aleatoric music. He was a revolutionary in each of his controversial works. This skill meant that he had a huge number of detractors, although they were overwhelmingly beaten in numbers by his supporters and admirers. Cage was influential to more than one generation of composers and artists. Modern dance wouldn´t exist as such as we know it today had it not been for the collaboration of John Cage and Merce Cunningham.

He also participated in the field of visual art of the 20th century. Chance was the essence in which he based his works. he also innovated in the use of materials to carry out his works. Foam, stones, cotton wool or even fire were used by Cage for the making of some of his most famous works.

He even produced a film, also based on the aleatoric phenomenons of One, although he never saw it on the big screen since he passed away before the film premiered.

John Cage is also catalogued as a philosopher and writer. His dense bibliography is made up by a large variety of books, essays and articles.

Without doubt, he was one of the most influential figures of the post-war avant-garde. His light illuminated even the composers of Eastern Europe, as he was invited to numerous events and conferences in the main capitals of these countries.

This exhibition pays a deserved tribute to the mark left by this 20th century genius in the countries behind the iron curtain. During that time, Cage collaborated often with the Ludwig Museum in Budapest.

For two months, the second floor of this museum will exhibit writings, documents, works of art and visual and sound files by both John Cage and many artists influenced by him. Also, many lectures will be carried out, documentaries will be screened and colloquia will be organized. This is a great chance to present this fantastic figure of the 20th century to the new generation.

The museum will offer guided visits in order not to miss a single bit of the exhibited material. You can book your tickets in advance from the official museum website for 5 euros each.

Hungary is a beautiful country and its capital, Budapest, has all the ingredients to leave the visitor satisfied: culture, leisure, history and hidden places with a lot of charm to get lost in for hours on end.

Salermico

To visit the Pearl of the Danube, we recommend that you rent Budapest accommodation apartments . There are many apartments to stay in when spending a few days visiting a city. There´s no need anymore to go to a hotel to feel at home when you´re travelling. If you´ve not tried it yet, I highly recommend it.

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Until February 5, Budapest Museum of Fine Arts in presents an interesting exposition “The Way of the Tree” by the Hungarian painter Sándor Hollán, The exhibition is a tribute to the work of the artist who uses nature to express the existential complexities through painting and graphic design.

Along with about 100 works by artists, including those of great masters , the museum takes a journey into the work of Sándor Hollán to show the influences and changes that the artist has had in the course of his work. It is a quest to discover his history through this exhibition that shows an interesting approach to Hungarian art.

Sándor Hollán was born in Budapest in 1933. He began to paint self-taught as a teenager. In 1955 he obtained his master degree in painting in a Hungary that began to be shaken in search of changes after Stalin�s death and the weakening of the pro-Soviet regime. In 1956 there is a large student demonstration that ends in repression and tighter restrictions on freedom, a motive that puts his family in the list of unreliable citizens to the authorities. In this situation, about 200 thousand people go into exile, Hollán moved to Paris to study painting at the Paris Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, and then he studied graphic arts at l�École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs.

Hollán, like great painters and artists, has used nature to accommodate the complex existential senses, just as Van Gogh, Paul Cezanne and others did and through it bared their inner world. It is nature that gives strength to his work. You can see the changes it is experiencing, in a game where color and shading are going deep into the passages of his emotional world.

His interesting exploration of artists from different times forges his own way, turns him into a studious character and a perfectionist who is always in search of an aesthetic expression, which leads to achieving the ideal of perfect work, as nature is , where the colors, textures and shapes achieve a unique harmony.

The ongoing quest for new experiences and stimuli that came from a different perspective of art led him to buy a small publishing company in 1984 in southern France, where he spent his summers. This publishing company has been transformed into  the space where  illustrations can be created from words, challenging them from abstraction, such as those made for  books by the poet and philosopher Yves Bonnefoy.

No doubt that the work of Hollán is a delight to the senses and an encounter with an aesthetic challenge that grabs the viewer.

For more information: http://www.szepmuveszeti.hu/web/guest/articleview?mi_layout_id=29.30&mi_article_id=993

Nancy Guzman

To know more about this interesting artist one only has to rent apartments in Budapest after attending the exhibition go out to enjoy thousands of stimuli that this city has to offer you.

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Translated by: Marc
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Until the  13th of December the Műcsarnok Museum exhibits a  cycle of the best Hungarian cinema form the 80s. Projections at the museum are held every Tuesday seeking to revive an era where a rupture with the classic look of films -matched to socialist realism- is abandoned even if it is present as a burden of  films that emerged from the avant-garde  Russian movies where each image is a work of art.

The history of Hungary has been plagued by tragic events, that film has recreated with ability, thus, the historical film legacy is huge. Just taking a look at these films is to understand that Hungarian culture has been forged in adversity, which has not stopped them from having great artists, musicians and a little known rich film collection

Since the seventies, Hungarian movies are divided into two tendencies, one which focuses on formalism and another one that assumes the reality as the object of their stories. In both cases the strength of Russian films based on the perfection of the picture continues to dominate, that is, the look of film as art.

One of the authors included in the list is the director of the film Ecstasy. András Kovács ,a film director and writer who directed about 30 films between 1961 and 1996. He was a guest and jury at the Cannes Film Festival of 1976. Kovács takes the theory of great Russian cinema, by looking through the existential conflicts of the individual and observing the conflicts of the world around him.

Another of the great directors whose films are in this cycle is János Xantus, with his 1988 film Rocktérítő. Xantus has been enshrined in the international cinema circuit with his film Mephisto in 1981, which won an Oscar, 8 prizes, plus a nomination. The story is set in the early 30 �in Germany, where an actor, who lives without taking into account the political situation focuses only on his art. When the Nazi power grows, he sees the chance to work with propaganda for the Reich. He  soon becomes the most popular German actor, but he sees his friends disappear and does nothing about it, opting to only satisfy his ego.

Filmmaker and journalist Victor Kubiszyn and his 1989 film Árnyékszázad are part of this cylce, drama being one of his favorite themes that speak of personal conflicts facing contradictory worlds where reality and unreality are one-jointed.

In addition to these films you can also see  Time by Andras Monroy, Me Babe from 1993, by Peter Reich and The Self Control of Laszlo Fe Lugossy from1988.

For more information

http://www.mucsarnok.hu/new_site/index.php?lang=en&t=597&curmenu=109

Nancy Guzman

The Danube, the wide avenues and bucolic setting is a great incentive to live during this fall in apartments in Budapest and enjoy the hot springs, presentations like this film cycle , in addition to their top quality restaurants.

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Translated by: Marc
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Until January 15, 2012 the Budapest Ludwig Museum exhibits East of Eden. Photorealism a version of reality, which presents the enormous range of jobs and techniques developed by artists of the photo-realistic paintings movement of the 60�s  and 70�s , which dominated the art scene in Europe and the United States.

The exhibition explores a movement while little known and often devalued by art historians, is undoubtedly part of the development of Western art, which from its earliest forms to the neoclassic movement of the late nineteenth century can be seen as an improvement in techniques that would eventually lead to photorealism.

The development of photography, enlargement and projection of images was surpassed in the 60�s and 70�s, facilitating the creation of new painting techniques including the use of photography in painting.

The exhibition includes works by many major artists, as well as others who have been forgotten and some that are unknown. Among them you can see the the work of Robert Bechtl, an  American painter, considered one of the founders of photo-realistism along  with Richard Estes, Ralph Goings and Chuck Close. His involvement in photorealism comes from his own photographs and the reality of San Francisco. His work can be found  in the NYC Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art , at the Guggenheim Museum, the Smithsonian Institute, and  Museum of San Francisco among others.

William Beckman is one of the exponents of photorealism that is part of the exhibition. Beckman specialized in painting pictures of high emotional content with a slight Freudian sexual overtone using a method that made him famous, he painted portraits, then sctaches the surface with a razor, then repaints and polishes the fabric creating brilliant images. His  work is part of numerous public collections and can be found  in the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Kunst  Museum of Modern Art in Vienna among others.

Bočkay Milan, a Czech painter deconstructs and achieves photorealistic images dealing with his fascination with surrealism. During the 70�s he achieved recognition with his oil paintings that presented enlargements of details of the human body and everyday objects.

John Clem Clarke is one of the most famous American pop artist of the 60�s . He was known for reworking old masters and then going the flea markets searching for old photographs or old images for his paintings. He was very prolific and inventive in creating photorealistic techniques, and is  considered a master of contemporary American art for imposing icons that identify an era with his paintings.

In addition to the works of these great exponents of photorealism, there are  more than 20 artists who use photo-realism as a method of artistic expression in their works.

For more information

http://ludwigmuseum.hu/site.php?inc=kiallitas&kiallitasId=762&menuId=44

Nancy Guzman

If you don�t know how photography was used to perform great works of art and are curious about this technique, this is a great chance to explore it if you are on holidays in apartments in Budapest during this autumn.

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Translated by: Marc
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Metalfest is the most anticipated metal music festival for the lovers of music�s most explosive genre, and which will take place in Budapest from the 3rd to the 5th of June of 2011  in the Youth Camp Leisure Centre. This festival known as the “Liberty Party” is celebrated outdoors attracts thousands of European Metal and specially Eastern European metal band fans, and is conceived as a open air event committed to the gathering of global metal tribes of the most intense metal bands

Heavy Metal or Metal Music was born in the early seventies and the term “heavy metal” is said to have been invented by William S. Burroughs in his novel “The Soft Machine” whose character Uranian Wally is nicked named  The Heavy Metal kid due to his addiction to hardcore drugs. There are others that situate the origin of this word after hearing some remarks about the quality of Jimi Hendricks music, qualifying it as heavy metal falling from the skies, even though the most assertive point out that heavy metal is related with deep decadence  and is an expression that gathers the social effects of the Vietnam war and the reflective crisis of ethic values in the industrial societies developing their dark and somber dressing code of black leather, piercings, studs and bullet belts.

Heavy Metal music originates from the North American blues and  British rock movements, specially with the performances of bands like Cream or The who, who would use distortion and feedback to end their shows creating a brutal aural experience. This sound transformation process generated an interest for new bands, that definitely saw in rocks shallow melodic music bands of the time as an unqualified representation of the general youth feeling where dark heavy sounds were more appropriate,

Metal is a movement that is born in the London underground and expands throughout the world as an counter-cultural expression. Amongst the very first metal bands, Judas Priest is one of the most well known and became a worldwide famous band with a legion of hundreds of thousands of followers.

Since that moment, Heavy Metal became a landmark of the outsiders,  feared for its dark aesthetical dressing code, intense antisocial lyrics and the brutal guitar volume, many considered it a music genre that came from the devil. Fearful countries like china or middle eastern ones banned heavy metal concerts considering them dangerous for the youth, luckily that has changed and metal concerts are no longer seen as a threat in the vast majority of countries

Since the seventies, heavy metal has created a whole array of sub categories such as Speed Metal, Death Metal, White Metal, Doom Metal, Metalcore among many others. This festival will unite bands of many different metal styles, such as the band Piranha from Latin America ,Metal 4 Bremen from Germany or Metalflirt from Denmark

This year�s Metalfest will be a huge party where festival goers will only have to bring their tents to spend a couple of incredible fun days seeing their favorite metal groups along with escapades to all kinds of shopping booths in the festival�s premises  to buy merchandise of their favorite bands. If you want to enjoy a new and intense experience, don�t miss th

More info:  http://www.hu.metalfest.eu/

Nancy Guzman

If you plan to stay a few days in apartments in Budapest you should  attend this free music festival.

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Translated by: Marc
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