calendario eventi  :: 

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28/4/2009

Two exhibitions

Museum Kunstpalast, Dusseldorf

On Paper
Our finest handdrawings
From Raffael to Beuys, from Rembrandt to Trockel
29.04.2009 – 02.08.2009

Within the context of the current North Rhine-Westphalian year of graphic art, museum kunst palast will be presenting 365 selected drawings by over 300 artists of the 15th to 20th century from the collections of the museum and the Düsseldorf Academy of Art. The exhibition draws attention to the corpus of Italian drawings of international acclaim held by the Düsseldorf museum. Further, the exhibition comprises works on paper by artists of the Düsseldorf School of Painting, Expressionist works and those by the group “Junges Rheinland”, as well as contemporary works from the art metropolis Düsseldorf. Amongst others, the show includes drawings by Andreas Achenbach, Max Beckmann, Joseph Beuys, Lorenzo di Credi, Gustave Klimt, Käthe Kollwitz, Raffael and Rosemarie Trockel.

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Change of Sides
New perspectives on our collection
29.04.2009 - 23.08.2009

The particular profile of museum kunst palast is characterised by the immense diversity of its collection. The museum is one of only few museums in the Rhineland which unites under one roof important holdings of paintings, prints and drawings, sculptures, glass art, arts and crafts and new media from the Middle Ages to the present. However, due to space restrictions the vast majority of these treasures remain concealed from the public, being kept ‘underground’. It is therefore one of the museum’s most important tasks to bring these treasures to light from time to time, and to present them in new, unusual constellations. Due to measures to improve fire prevention arrangements on the premises of the permanent collection, requiring a partial closure, the museum now tests entirely new groupings under the motto ‘CHANGE OF SIDES’: in the ‘Palace’ wing important current exhibits and selected treasures from the depots are grouped in new dialogical situations.

For the first time in a considerable period, the collections of Islamic decorative art and goldwork are presented within a broader overview. The art of goldsmithing presents itself in a wealth of intricately designed goblets, tumblers and beakers. These objects remained part of a splendidly celebrated dining culture until well into the 19th century and were on occasion presented as official gifts. The collections of ‘oriental’ arts and crafts objects newly initiated by 19th-century museums of decorative art reflect a longing for the exotic, for the orient as an imaginary refuge from ‘narrow-minded prudery’ and civilization fatigue.

Further, museum kunst palast possesses one of the most significant collections of mediaeval sculpture in the Rhineland. It includes a considerable number of statues of the Virgin Mary dating from different art epochs reflecting the transformation of the image of Mary from Queen of Heaven, endowed with sceptre and crown, to the graceful, so-called ‘beautiful Madonnas’ and Mary as the caring Mother of God. Owing to an intensification of the cult of the Virgin Mary in the 12th and 13th century, the Mother of God is among the most frequently represented figures of Christian salvation history. Separated from their original religious context, these sculptures enter a ‘new dialogue’ with photographic works by Candida Höfer, among them the depiction of a monastery in the Brazilian state of Bahia with its collection of statues of saints. Time and again the artist succeeds in unveiling the narrative potential of objects and spaces: Similarly, this photograph seems to be charged with the belief of those who pray to the statues of saints.
e Menschen immer wieder
Images on the subjects of death and transitoriness are recurring motifs in occidental art from the Middle Ages onwards and form a further thematic focus of ‘Change of Sides’. The Baroque period developed a particular preference for allegorical representations admonishing against sensual pleasures, vanity and against striving for ephemeral worldly goods. The vanitas still life with its typical symbols such as a book and skull remained the preferred, albeit increasingly hollow medium exploring the subject of transitoriness. In the photographic work of Martin Klimas the vanitas motif is invested with a contemporary dimension.

‘Catastrophe’ paraphrases a thematic dramaturgy which encompasses works ranging from the Düsseldorf School of Painting, which features particularly prominently in the collection, through to the black pictures of Modernism. Among the museum’s latest acquisitions is the ‘Landscape from the Thirty-Years’ War’ by Carl Friedrich Lessing, whose works stand for the dissolution of traditional genre boundaries between history and landscape painting; a result of the formerly imperative demand made by the Düsseldorf Academy to attribute a greater significance to emotion as a carrier of meaning, in order to facilitate a situational, emphatic insight into history. The colour equivalent to the catastrophe is black – symbol of mighty darkness, of evil, but also of the sublime. At the outset of Modernism the colour black in painting marks an ‘end time’ feel and also an apparent end of painting, for black questions the concepts of space and colour, the two cornerstones of visual perception. At the same time, however, the colour black facilitated a new focus on the core of painting.

‘The Iron Age’ by Auguste Rodin, the artist’s first full-figure sculpture, which was scandalised in the Paris and Brussels Salons due to its striking realism, opens up a tension-filled dialogue between figuration and abstraction, the two poles between which modern art develops. museum kunst palast has extensive holdings of contemporary art created after 1945. A prominent focus of its collection is on so-called Colour Field painting, in which the return to the essence of painting bound up in black pictures finds its continuation. This concept is about painting as subject matter of painting, about exploring the relationships of ground, colour and colour application, about painting as a consequence of painting. Ultimately, these pictures are cognition-oriented proposals of perception addressed to the viewer, an invitation to see.

Press contact:
Marina Schuster M.A.
Leiterin Kommunikation / Pressesprecherin, Tel: +49 (0) 211-89 962 11, email: marina.schuster@museum-kunst-palast.de
Christina Bolius
Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit / Internet, Tel.: +49 (0) 211-89 962 50, email: Christina.Bolius@museum-kunst-palast.de

Image: Rosemarie Trockel, Woman, 1983

Opening 29th April 2009, h 6:30 pm

Museum Kunst Palast
Ehrenhof 4-5 / 40479 Düsseldorf
Tuesday – Sunday 11 am – 6 pm
Entrance fees: from Euro 6,50

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