The Art of Seeing | go toBerlin.de

Seeing the Old Masters with recent eyes.

This particular exhibition brings collectively round 90 worldwide photographic works with chosen masterpieces from the Gemäldegalerie, one of many world’s most vital collections of pre-modern portray.

Works by artists comparable to Thomas Struth, Cindy Sherman, Martin Parr, Jeff Wall, Candida Höfer and Carrie Mae Weems interact with the Old Masters as a tribute, a reinterpretation or a mirrored image, opening up stunning views on acquainted works.

Across six thematic sections, the exhibition explores alternative ways during which modern artists interact with historic photos and interpret them.

The focus is on questions of appropriation, staging and transformation, in addition to on materiality, notion and the circulation of digital photos.

Appropriation, reflection, retelling

For most of the photographers featured, the works of the Old Masters are excess of simply an art-historical legacy. They function a supply of inspiration for brand new creative creations, commentaries on social points and formal-aesthetic experiments.

Jeff Wall, as an example, transforms the contemplative stillness of a portray by Chardin into a up to date artist’s portrait. Cindy Sherman, Catherine Opie and Maud Sulter draw on historic portrait traditions to discover problems with gender, id and cultural belonging. Tom Hunter transposes pictorial compositions from pre-modern portray to Berlin-Friedrichshain, bringing the implications of gentrification into sharp reduction.

Other artists focus their consideration on the fabric qualities of the works: Ola Kolehmainen, for instance, enlarges the craquelure in a portrait of a lady by Petrus Christus to monumental proportions, thereby making the traces of time and ageing a visible motif.

Another key focus is on the museum as a spot in itself. Candida Höfer and Thomas Struth current museums as areas of contemplation and staging, while Louise Lawler questions the mechanisms of institutional meaning-making. Carrie Mae Weems, then again, addresses the problems of entry, illustration and exclusion in her sequence ‘Museums’, highlighting whose views and tales are current within the museum and that are marginalised.

Bettina von Zwehl and Miguel Calderón, in flip, draw consideration to these individuals who work amongst the masterpieces day by day but stay largely invisible.

The Museum within the Digital Age

At the identical time, the exhibition explores the altering situations of viewing within the digital age. Visitors themselves turn out to be a part of the museum’s presentation by way of their smartphones, while social media performs an element in figuring out which artworks acquire visibility. Collections of pre-modern portray are immediately not solely websites of artwork historical past, but in addition visible areas of the current.

‘The Art of Seeing’ brings collectively loans from main worldwide museums, galleries and personal collections.

Educational programme

A complete programme of academic actions for all age teams invitations guests to rediscover their very own perspective on the Old Masters.

Exhibition catalogue

A richly illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition.

Curatorial Team

The exhibition is curated by Katja Kleinert, curator of Seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish portray, and Erik Eising, analysis assistant on the Gemäldegalerie.

• A particular exhibition by the Gemäldegalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin