The hundredth anniversary of Einstein's discovery of the theory of relativity, the fiftieth anniversary of Einstein's death and the sixtieth anniversary of the dropping of the Hiroshima bomb inspired filmmaker Peter Greenaway and theater director Saskia Boddeke to create a multimedia spectacle that deals with the discovery, development, fears and tyranny of nuclear power. For The Children of Uranium, Greenaway has created an installation based on the 92 elements of the periodic table, a scenography with original music by Andrea Liberovici, for a series of performances dedicated to Isaac Newton, founder of modern science; Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon religion, who was looking for gold and instead found uranium; Madame Curie, victim of the powers of radiation; Einstein, who discovered relativity; Oppenheimer, who developed the atomic bomb; Khrushchev, corroder of Stalin's myth and enemy of Kennedy; Gorbachev, the Communist leader who defused the bomb; and George W. Bush. The book is more than a simple collection of texts and photos. Based on the imagery and the structure of the performance, it is another component of the project as a whole. Designed and conceptualized by Greenaway, it includes biographies of the major characters, the complete libretto and photographs and drawings associated with the performance.

Peter Greenaway: The Children of Uranium

Arts & Photography

Individual Artists

Charta/Change Performing Arts

Since 2006, iconoclastic British filmmaker Peter Greenaway has been engaged in a project to reinvigorate some of the most iconic paintings in the history of art in an attempt to get people to look at them again in a new way. Using audio and projectors, Greenaway barrages the selected paintings with imagery, cinema, poetry and special effects. Of his 2006 intervention with Rembrandt's The Nightwatch (1642), the filmmaker recalls, "We burned it, flooded it and covered it in blood, but if you go there today you will find it completely untouched." This volume is published concurrently with Greenaway's performance of Leonardo's Last Supper (2008) in the Refectory of the Santa Maria delle Grazie friary, where Leonardo da Vinci painted his famous masterpiece. This multi-media event will take place on the occasion of the 2008 Milan Furniture Fair. Da Vinci expert Martin Kemp, Professor of Art History at Oxford University, observes, "Greenaway has a terrific understanding of how painters work, which is not true of every filmmaker. There's no need to be stuffy about these things. If Leonardo had been around he would have been into moving images. You get the sense that he wanted his paintings to move."

Peter Greenaway: Leonardo's Last Supper

Humor & Entertainment

Greenaway, Peter

Movies

How might a dialogue between painting and cinema be conducted? British artist and filmmaker Peter Greenaway has embarked on a series of visual and verbal conversations with European and American paintings housed in national collections around the world. In this book, his focus is Paolo Veronese's sixteenth-century canvas.

Peter Greenaway: Veronese, The Wedding at Cana: Charta / Change Performing Arts

American artist Linda Salerno (born 1950) is best known for paintings that suggest a nineteenth-century sensibility, which also pervades her photographic work. Salerno's photography evokes the wistful grace of Julia Margaret Cameron's portraits in its dialogue between nostalgic past and fraught present. This is the first public presentation of Salerno's photography.

Linda Salerno

HONNEF, KLAUS

KUNZ, MARTIN

Mutti, Roberto

Salerno, Linda

Photography & Video

Women Without Men is renowned visual artist Shirin Neshat's feature-film debut. Its exquisitely crafted view of the artist's native Iran during its tumultuous British and American-backed coup d'état in 1953 won Neshat the Silver Lion at the 2009 Venice International Film Festival. Adapted from the novel by Iranian author Shahrnush Parsipur, the film draws together the initially separate stories of five female characters during those traumatic days. With a camera that floats sedately through the lives of the women and the countryside of Iran, Neshat explores the political and psychological dimensions of her characters as they converge in a metaphorical orchard. This volume unites stills from the series of five video installations that originated the film with photographs and texts by critic Eleanor Heartney, Parsipur and the artist.

Shirin Neshat: Women Without Men

Heartney, Eleanor

Neshat, Shirin

Azari, Shoja

History & Criticism

For her Venice Biennale installation, Ukranian artist Oksana Mas cross-pollinated folk art and contemporary sculpture, constructing a vast wall mosaic composed of painted wooden eggs. Known in the Ukraine as "krashenki," these eggs combine in Mas' installation to tell a tale of folk tradition in mesmerizing geometric patterning. This volume records the project.

Oksana Mas

Oliva, Achille Bonito

Rogotchenko, Oleksiy

Caputo, Gianmatteo

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