|  HUMLEBÆK, DENMARK
Cindy Sherman – 30 Years of Staged Photography
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, until 20 May, 2007 www.louisiana.dk
US artist Cindy Sherman (above) pushes self-dramatisation to its limits. In her photographic self-portraits, she manipulates her own body through makeup, clothes and artificial body parts to appear in different guises ranging from the amusing to the provocative and violent.
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STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN
William Kentridge
Moderna Museet, until 15 April, 2007 www.modernamuseet.se Famous for his melancholic drawings, William Kentridge presents some of his most recent and largest works: Black Box/Chambre Noire (2005), 7 Fragments for Georges Méliès (2003) and Journey to the Moon (2003).
______________________________ LONDON, ENGLAND
Renoir Landscapes 1865–1883
National Gallery, until 20 May, 2007 www.nationalgallery.org.uk This first exhibition to explore the pivotal first two decades of Renoir’s landscapes promises to be one of the great shows of 2007. Of particular interest are the 1880s paintings of North Africa and the Mediterranean, which demonstrate the profound influence of strong sunlight and colour on Renoir’s work.
______________________________ PARIS, FRANCE
Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848–1884)
Musée d’Orsay, until 13 May, 2007 www.musee-orsay.fr The Musée d’Orsay hosts a moving exhibition on a significant contributor to naturalist painting, famously described by Émile Zola as “the grandson of Courbet and Millet”. From the 1870s, Bastien-Lepage brought together the realism of peasant life and grand tradition while also using lighter colours and dynamic compositions in the style of the new impressionism.
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MUNICH, GERMANY
Gijs Bakker – Jewellery
Pinakothek der Moderne, until 20 May, 2007 www.pinakothek.de While Dutch designer Gijs Bakker first gained fame as co-founder of Droog Design, he is also a master designer of art jewellery. This retrospective includes his ironic “I Don’t Wear Jewels, I Drive Them” series of brooches as well as his revolutionary 1970s experiments in materials and geometric designs.
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Dealing With Darwin: How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of Their Evolution
Geoffrey A Moore Capstone, €22.75 ISBN 1841127175
Ten Faces of Innovation: Strategies Designed for Heightening Creativity Tom Kelley Profile Books, €16.75 ISBN 1861978065
Both these books successfully illustrate just how important the innovation process is in business, but each takes a different approach. Moore’s Darwinian-themed thesis argues that companies should be programmed to work to live, while Kelley’s grassroots proactivism suggests that stimulated workers who live to work will better reward their employers. Indeed, Kelley’s book builds on The Art of Innovation, which celebrated the work culture engendered at his award-winning product and services design consultancy IDEO. This book – a sort of “everything we’ve learned so far” – examines 10 different types of employee and considers the creativity of team-building. Certainly an enjoyable read, Ten Faces is breezy and well-written, if annoyingly self-promotional. Moore’s tone is less folksy and more “how-to” as he plots a course through product and market innovation at every spoke in the business cycle, dropping high-profile examples along the way. He does resort to jargon a little too often, and his examples are US-skewed – there’s only so much you can read about Cisco Systems – but this is a terrific manual to dip in and out of. BF Frankincense: Oman’s Gift to the World
Juliet Highet Prestel, €50 ISBN 3791336959 Never mind the sacred aspect of the fragrant white smoke and its gum resin base drawn from scrubby little trees in southern Arabia and north Africa, nor even its current and highly marketable revival in the perfumery trade; this unusual and beautiful book retraces the story of frankincense, the original bull-market commodity – the one everyone forgot with the advent of Gulf oil. Against the past two years of gang-busting price rises in everything from coffee to platinum, the story of frankincense reminds us that nothing is new in the world. Better still, it leaves you wanting to get your hands on some. RL
 Mastering Automotive Challenges
Bernd Gottschalk and Ralf Kalmbach Kogan Page, €90 ISBN 0749445750
Shop online for this otherwise expensive volume, which is nevertheless worth its price. An extremely cogent overview of the current state of the German car industry and globalisation, the book falls into two halves; the first is a series of excellent summary chapters by assorted Roland Berger strategy consultants, the second a collection of case studies by industry bosses. The first half is stronger for being more objective; the biggest name in the whole book is Carl-Peter Forster (head of General Motors Europe), but his transparent attempt to plug GM products undermines his purpose and does the book no favours. The introductory chapter by the president of the German Association of the Automotive Industry, Bernd Gottschalk, argues that Germany’s industry has responded quite well to globalisation thus far. Germany’s car makers accounted last year for €235bn of Germany’s €1.3tn in manufacturing exports. Behind this success lies restructuring of labour relations, Germany’s benefiting from the low costs of doing business in CEE states and its leadership of automotive technology, diesel technology and the ever-booming luxury segment. The future is bewilderingly complex and hard to call, however. Above all, compounded annual growth rates for car sales are in the double digits in most of the non-Western world but negative in Europe. This would be fine, except that the cheapest VW (the Brazilian-made Fox) still costs €7,000 when it goes on sale in China, compared to less than €3,000 for a local competitor. The obvious response is not to compete into the dirt but to abandon the cheapie sector altogether and focus on the resoundingly successful luxury market. Globally, German premium brands account for 40% of the market; in the luxury sector, they account for an eye-popping 80%. It is these luxury cars that consume the most oil and pump out the most carbon dioxide, however, so the question arises as to whether, as in the aluminium sector, the EU’s attempts to drive CO2 emissions down will simply lead the BMW to sell its gas guzzlers to the new elites of India and China, forgetting the European market altogether. It’s an irony that nonetheless shares the logic of Europe’s luxury goods industry, where expensive handbags get designed in Europe but made in Egypt. So maybe German car makers haven’t yet faced the full consequences of globalisation; most certainly, they haven’t reconciled their love affair with big cars with the EU’s fixation on carbon emissions. RL
 The J Curve
Ian Bremmer Simon & Schuster, €30 ISBN 0743274717
It’s hard to recall a time when the world faced so many challenges – Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Russia’s retreat to authoritarianism, how to push China towards democracy, the Middle East crisis and of course, Islamic terrorism – yet had such a dearth of leadership. With the US mired in the Iraq debacle, dragged there by a foolish president whose administration has made more mistakes than his enemies dared hope, the new world order that seemed nigh when communism collapsed has evaporated. With new thinking desperately needed, Ian Bremmer’s highly readable account of why nations succeed and fail is an impressive contribution. Bremmer’s core thesis is that all nations are positioned along the “J curve” on a graph, with “stability” on the vertical axis and “openness” on the horizontal. Repressive, authoritarian nations – Burma, North Korea, Zimbabwe – are to the left of the dip on the J curve, and free, democratic ones – the US, most European nations – to the right, with more extreme cases of each positioned higher up their respective sides of the curve. Bremmer’s key point is that although there is frequent movement on each side of the curve, “for a country that is 'stable because it’s closed’ to become a country that is 'stable because it’s open,’ it must first go through a transitional period of dangerous instability. Some states, like South Africa, survive that journey. Others, like Yugoslavia, collapse.” Bremmer stresses that leaders of countries to the left of the curve wanting to get to the right must prepare their people for the bumpy ride, spending political capital carefully so they are not thrown off altogether. He argues that we should encourage closed, authoritarian countries to make the shift by facilitating trade, communication and membership of international organisations. For example, he asserts that China, the only country with any leverage in Pyongyang, should embrace North Korea to “help manage [North Korea’s] descent down the J curve towards chaos,” and that as soon as the door is open a crack, awe of Kim Jong-Il will fade, leading to a loss of fear and the beginning of the regime’s end. There are some mistakes here – Ceausescu ruled for 25 years, not 40 – and some questionable assertions, notably that Turkey’s failure to join the EU would lead to a slide down from the right of the curve towards the dip and that the US should engage Turkey firmly to prevent this (more US involvement would be the kiss of death for any government in Ankara). These are mere quibbles, though: this is an intelligent and thoughtful book that should be read by the people that matter. JK |