calendario eventi  :: 

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9/10/2009

Two exhibitions

SMK National Gallery of Denmark / Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Nature Strikes Back

Curators: Hanne Kolind Poulsen, Henrik Holm

Nature as history
Throughout history, mankind has perceived nature differently at different times. During the Middle Ages, nature was mostly regarded as evil and mankind was prey to its whims, which only God could protect us from. This understanding was replaced by a more positive view of nature in the Renaissance, where man begins to regard nature as a useful resource that can be controlled. This way of thinking became increasingly striking in modern times. Nature came to be regarded as inexhaustible and something to be mastered and completely subjected to human needs. After a good 150 years of exploitation, pollution, and other catastrophes, a new picture evolved at the end of the 20th century, with nature as the weak victim that must be protected. Today we have arrived at the traumatic realization that nature simply reacts to that which we subject it to, and that it strikes back, so to speak, without regard to mankind’s needs.

An artistic journey through the ages’ view of nature
The exhibition "Nature Strikes Back" at the National Gallery of Denmark seeks to place in perspective our present relationship to nature by telling the story of how Western culture has perceived nature in different ways through the ages. With about 110 works from practically all of art history, the exhibition provides a visual story about the varying views of nature from ancient times, to the religious doomsday rhetoric of the Middle Ages, through the baroque period’s staging of nature, to the present day’s necessary attempt to create new ways of relating to nature.

Famous works in new contexts
The exhibition has a broad embrace. Paintings, sculptures, drawings, and graphic works from almost 2,000 years of art history are carefully arranged with a view to bringing out the poetic and symbolic ideas about the relationship between man and nature that are expressed through visual art. Here we find works from some of art history’s major figures, from Mantegna, Dürer, Bruegel the Elder, Titian, and Rubens through Cezanne, Braque, and Asger Jorn, to Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer, Per Kirkeby and Olafur Eliasson. But there is more here than just a parade of art history’s great icons, for the exhibition casts a fresh glance at art that we may have thought we knew . The works are part of an overall theme and are experienced from a particular point of view, i.e. as both unique and coherent statements from history about mankind’s understanding of nature.

Powerfully communicative staging
The exhibition’s many works are arranged in thematic chapters that produce a visual impact based on the most striking change in mankind’s changeable view of nature. The story is an essential and leading element in the exhibition. As something quite new, each theme is introduced by an animated film in which the organizers of the exhibition introduce and discuss the subject at hand, just as they provide analyses of chosen works. The set design of the exhibition aims for a visually tight framework in order to create order among the many different artistic expressions, as well as the themes, techniques, media, and time periods spanned by the exhibition.

Climate debate
The exhibition appears on the occasion of the UN climate conference in Copenhagen later this year. The goal of the National Gallery of Denmark with this exhibition is to seek out the historical background for our view of nature as it can be read in visual art. Rather than supply scientific expert knowledge of the relevant climatic conditions, it is the intention of the exhibition to show how the western world through time has read nature into different world views and dealt with nature on this basis. Precisely by pointing out the variability in mankind’s relation to nature, the exhibition comments on the current climate crisis and puts it into perspective.

Book publication
In connection with the exhibition, the National Gallery of Denmark is publishing the catalogue,
Nature Strikes Back. Man and Nature in Western Art.
Foreword by Karsten Ohrt. Main articles by Hanne Kolind Poulsen and Henrik Holm. Special article by Jacob Wamberg.
164 pages, richly illustrated.
Price: 168 DKK. May be purchased in the museum bookstore.
ISBN: 978-87-92023-37-7

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The Artful Image
The Haarlem Mannerists 1580-1600
10 October 2009 – 17 January 2010

Curator David Burmeister Kaaring

An overlooked but captivating chapter in European art will unfold when The Royal Collection of Prints and Drawings focuses on these very early years in Dutch art. With a rich selection of graphic works by the Haarlem mannerists, the exhibition portrays a generation of artists who preceded what we now tend to consider the golden age of Dutch painters. Refinement, virtuosity and extreme visual effects take centre stage in the exhibition's more than 70 works. They bear witness to artistic production that not only rivalled the excellence of Rembrandt and company, but also proved indispensible to them. At the same time, the exhibition focuses on the Haarlem mannerists’ approach to graphic art’s double role as a means of both reproduction and independent artistic expression in which artists working in an atmosphere of creative competition would often succeed in surpassing both one another and the originals from which they worked, and in doing so also succeeded in bringing entirely new methods to graphic art.

Flourishing Haarlem
After becoming free from Spanish control, Haarlem grew in the 1580s into one of the leading artistic centres in the young Republic of the Netherlands. Central to this blossoming prosperity were artists such as Karel van Mander, Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem, and, not least of all, Hendrick Goltzius. Together they formed a study circle devoted to Haarlem Mannerism, as it became known. Their particular pictorial language was characterised by a strong awareness of style and cultivated elegance, not to mention a pursuit of an expression that prioritised artful ingenuity over naturalism. Their work depicted exaggeratedly brawny musclemen, violent drama, wild fantasy, and a rare richness of detail. Publication of these engravings meant at the same time that the Haarlem mannerists’ works quickly became accessible to many, and at a low price, and so their distinguishing trademarks were also passed down to subsequent generations of Dutch artists. The dissemination of graphic works also went hand in hand with the dawning theorisation of art that characterised the 16th century.

Original and copy
The exhibition at the National Gallery of Denmark makes copper engraver and publisher Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617) its natural focal point. It was in his workshop that the Haarlem artists developed their unique engraving style, and it was his publishing house that published the majority of prints at the highpoint of Haarlem mannerism. Together with colleagues and students, Goltzius personally reproduced a long series of artworks by international masters, especially Italians. But, as the exhibition shows, reproduction engraving by the Haarlem mannerists rapidly turned into a special and independent art form, in which the graphic artist was judged on his degree of technical inventiveness and ability to interpret the original whilst adding in his own artistic expertise and creativity to the work. The engravers competed amongst one another and their prints soon attained a paradoxical degree of independence underpinned by the fact that many contemporaneous painters used them as models for their own works. When looking at Danish ecclesiastical art from 1580-1700, one again sees Haarlem-inspired imagery occurring in the form of carved or painted figures in numerous altarpieces, pulpits and epitaphs.

From the collection of Christian IV
The exhibition in the National Gallery of Denmark shows a total of 72 works, a selection of the sought-after collection of Dutch graphic art in the Royal Collection of Prints and Drawings, supplemented with individual works from the museum’s painting and sculpture collection. The museum’s collection of Dutch mannerism was established under Christian IV, who, in keeping with the international fashion at royal courts of the time, had his castle decorated with mannerist art obtained almost exclusively from the Netherlands.

Book release
In conjunction with the exhibition, the National Gallery of Denmark is releasing a richly illustrated catalogue that provides an extensive overview of the Haarlem mannerists.
The Artful Image. Haarlem-Mannerists 1580-1600
Foreword by Karsten Ohrt, main article by David Burmeister Kaaring.
56 pages. Danish with English version.
Price: 58 DKK. Available for purchase in the museum bookstore.
ISBN: 978-87-92023-39-1

The Royal Collection of Prints and Drawings
With the exhibition "The Artful Image. The Haarlem Mannerists 1580-1600," the National Gallery of Denmark continues its series of exhibitions and publications focusing on the artistic fields represented in the Royal Collection of Prints and Drawings. With two annual retrospective exhibitions and accompanying catalogues, it is the museum’s ambition to further highlight the multifaceted nature of art on paper. The exhibitions and the catalogues will all be based on the museum’s research and the rich collection of more than 240,000 drawings, graphic works and photographs currently included in the Royal Collection of Prints and Drawings. In other words, the exhibitions trace an impressive streak of artworks spanning 700 years, which in several of the exhibitions will be put into perspective with important loans from other institutions both in Denmark and abroad. The revitalisation of The Royal Collection of Prints and Drawings was initiated last spring with Jakob S. Boeskov’s exhibition "Siggimund", and next year the museum will be following up with exhibitions of Danish and international photography, along with drawings and graphics by Picasso.

This exhibition is supported by the Beckett Fund


Image: Christian Schmidt-Rasmussen, Kill Nature, Nature Kills 1997

The exhibition is supported by
Bikubenfonden
and
The Ministry of Culture's shares of the Pools Fund and lotto funds

Double press meeting Tuesday 6 October, starting at 11:00 am.

For more information:
Head of Press
Jakob Fibiger Andreasen T +45 3374 8474 M +45 2961 6949 E jakob.fibiger@smk.dk

National Gallery of Denmark
Statens Museum for Kunst Sølvgade 48-50 1307 Copenhagen K
Hours:
Tuesdays-Sundays 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
Wednesdays 10 a.m.-8 p.m.
Mondays closed

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