What do the music-making angels, now a favourite all round the world, have to do with modernism? Do they not seem to represent the opposite: the idyllic world of childish naiveté? But is this deliberately “childishly genuine view” not a specific achievement of Modernism? It was taught at the School of the Decorative Arts in Dresden at a time when artists were turning away from historicism, seeking out and finding new approaches. At the apogee of this discourse, two young women, Margarete Wendt and Margarete Kühn, began to study design in the first ladies’ class at the School of the Decorative Arts, which had just undergone a major expansion. There, they laid the foundations for their worldwide success. The exhibition follows their previous lessons under the Kleinhempel sisters, their studies under Margarete Junge, their fellow students and colleagues, and the connections they forged early on to the German Workshops in Hellerau, the German Werkbund craftsmen’s association and

Read More: Exhibition at the Museum of Saxon Folk Art explores 100 Years of Wendt & Kühn

Video installations and electronica are entrancing the heaving dancefloors this weekend in a top Spanish festival fusing music, technology and the visual arts. Barcelona’s Sonar festival, which started on Thursday and runs until Saturday, features a premiere of a new album by British electronica duo The Chemical Brothers. Veterans of the 1980s British New Romantic scene Duran Duran will also take to the stage on Saturday night. But the music is largely upstaged by the accompanying video installations and light shows. In their show ‘The Well’, British producer Koreless laid on a soundtrack to the projections and jets of light conjured by French artist Emmanuel Biard on Thursday. ‘Sonar goes far beyond music,’ said one of its founders, Enric Palau. ‘The visual arts and technology have always played a leading role.’ US artist Jesse Kanda designed a sexy and disturbing

Read More: Art and electro music fuse in Spain’s Sonar festival

They have come from all over Europe, an army of people who have given up their day jobs to fight the Battle of Waterloo once more, two centuries after the original. The nearly 6,000 history enthusiasts taking part in a giant re-enactment of the clash on June 18, 1815, have been camping for days in the fields of Belgium to make the experience seem even more real. The tiniest historical details are all respected, from the gilt-lined uniforms and plumed hats to the marching formations and even the food. Needless to say there is also a smartphone ban. ‘I am a notary assistant in civil life and I love history. Here in the bivouac, I am ‘Corporal La Gaule’, Grenadier Corporal of the 8th line of the infantry regiment,’ says Romain Vadam, from Lille, northern France. The re-enactors playing Napoleon’s army have come from France, Italy, Russia and elsewhere across the

Read More: Army of nearly 6,000 history enthusiasts re-enact the Battle of Waterloo

From 19 June to 4 October 2015, the Kunsthaus Zürich is staging the first exhibition of a private collection that focuses especially on the interrelationship between soul, spirit and the naked human form. The presentation comprises over 150 mainly contemporary photographs, sculptures, paintings and videos by some 60 artists. Its subject is the human body and how it communicates with the world around it. Love, money and power have been humankind’s strongest desires since time immemorial. All of them harbour a potential that is as destructive as it is creative. The exhibition, a contribution to the Festspiele Zürich, examines how far these three vital parameters have changed in recent decades. In the 20th and 21st centuries, human beings have reflected more profoundly on their relationship to their environment than at almost any other time in history. Our

Read More: Kunsthaus Zürich presents ‘Sense Uncertainty. A Private Collection’ featuring over 150 works