Burlington Contemporary is the Burlington Magazine’s free online platform for reviews and research on international contemporary art.
Burlington Contemporary is the Burlington Magazine’s free online platform for reviews and research on international contemporary art.
Although the literal meaning of the word that Thomas More invented as the title for his celebrated book, published in 1516, is ‘no-place’, that has never stopped people searching for utopia. For one thing, ‘utopia’ is not the same as ‘heaven’, since it represents a better way of living on earth – for all that More conceived of his utopia as a place that did not exist he also located it in the newly discovered Americas.
The title given to the exhibition in its iteration at the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, Aachen,(1) where it was seen by this author, was Dürer was Here: A Journey becomes Legend. The ‘was here’ recalled the ‘fuit hic’ in Van Eyck’s signature on the Arnolfini Portrait (1434; National Gallery, London).
