Home - Introduction
Development of the Project
The exhibition cooperation between the three major German collective museum institutions in Berlin, Dresden and Munich and the National Museum of China in Beijing constitutes the remarkable highlight of the German-Chinese cultural exchange programme initiated in 2005. This programme serves to promote the mutual appreciation between the two countries and to further develop their cultural relations. A first agreement for the long-term presentation of works of art was officially sealed by contract on 25 May 2007 in the presence of the President of the People's Republic of China, Hu Jintao, and the former President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Horst Köhler, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. On 29 January 2009, the cooperation to host an exhibition on the Art of the Age of Enlightenment was concluded by contract in the presence of the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Angela Merkel, and the Chinese Premier of the People's Republic of China, Wen Jiabao, at the German Chancellery in Berlin.
Both the concept and organisation of the exhibition are the result of joint efforts on part of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden and the Bayerische Staatsgem.ldesammlungen Mnchen in cooperation with the National Museum of China in Beijing. The team of curators formed by colleagues from all three museum institutions is being supported by renowned researchers from various specialist fields. The aim is to introduction on the highest academic level The Art of the Enlightenment to non-European audiences.
For Berlin, Dresden and Munich, The Art of the Enlightenment is the consequent continuation of their joint engagement with China, which commenced in 2005 with the photographic exhibition “Humanism in China” shown at various locations in Germany and which was carried forward in 2008 with the exhibitions Living Landscapes: A Journey through German Art and Gerhard Richter at the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC).
The exhibition is substantially funded by the German Foreign Office and takes place under the joint patronage of the President of the People's Republic of China, Hu Jintao, and the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Christian Wulf.
Introduction
With The Art of the Enlightenment exhibition, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden and Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen Munich have joined forces with the National Museum of China to celebrate its official opening in spring 2011.The around 600 loans from the three German museum institutions,among them masterpieces by Chodowiecki, Friedrich, Fuseli, Gainsborough, Goya, Graff, Greuze, Hogarth, Houdon,Kauffmann, Piranesi, Raeburn, Schick, Tischbein, Vernet and Watteau.the exhibition presents the entire artistic spectrum of the arts of the Enlightenment – from painting, sculpture, drawings and prints, through to crafts and fashion and even exquisite scientific instruments. A total of nine sections focus the visitor's gaze on the core themes of eighteenth-century art.
Nine Sections
1. Court Life in the Age of Enlightenment
Life in eighteenth-century Europe was characterised by competing noble dynasties. Rulership centred around the court, which constituted the political, social and cultural heart of each principality. Court culture focused on symbolising princely power through representation. Seats of royal power such as Berlin, Dresden and Munich were distinguished by the grandeur with which they held court, boasting sumptuous palaces and gardens, festivities with music and fireworks, state portraits and luxurious clothes. Though the rulers differed in their receptiveness to the ideas of the Enlightenment, some did participate in the Enlightenment project by founding public museums C as in Dresden and Munich C or establishing tolerance as a state principle C as in Berlin.
2. Perspectives of Knowledge
In the eighteenth century the popularisation of science reached new heights. Knowledge, which had already been gathered in many fields, now found a wider audience through the constant growth of publishing with its new media. For the first time, research and teaching took place not only in a religious context or in institutions of the court. Scientific phenomena were no longer presented solely at universities but also in academies, salons and even at fairgrounds to instruct and entertain. People celebrated their scientists and discoveries, which were for the benefit of all humanity und aimed at controlling the world. The eighteenth century with its undying belief in progress laid the foundations for the developments of the nineteenth century in the leadup to the Industrial Revolution.
3. The Birth of History
From the Renaissance (fourteenth to sixteenth century) onwards, classical antiquity, the epoch of ancient Greece and Rome (around 800 BC to 600 AD), was not only regarded as the origin of European art and culture, science and politics but also revered and copied. The “Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns”, which began in the late seventeenth century, unleashed a debate about the ideal embodied by antiquity. The scientific findings of the eighteenth century were compared with those of the ancient world and viewed by advocates of the “Modern” as a superior stage of human evolution. This gave rise to a new understanding of history that focused on progress. There developed a historical consciousness based on the notion that people could determine their own fate. Ancient art and culture were now judged more critically and received more creatively.
4. Far and Near
Curiosity about faraway places was a driving force in enlightened Europe. New knowledge of foreign peoples, animals and plants was gathered from the numerous voyages undertaken by explorers and documented by the artists and scientists who accompanied them. People in Europe were particularly fascinated by the culture of distant China. In philosophy and literature the exotic land was stylised as the ideal of the enlightened state. In eighteenth-century art, too, it became fashionable to choose chinoise motifs and figures as decorative elements. However, people were also curious to find out more about life much closer to home C in their own region. This encouraged an awareness of their roots, history and homeland culture.
5. Love and Sensibility
In the course of the eighteenth century the middle classes gained economic, cultural and social influence. This gave rise to completely new perceptions of men and women, marriage and family, childhood and friendship. Marriages motivated by love replaced marriages of convenience, parental love gained increasing recognition as a desirable virtue, childhood and child rearing attained enormous social importance, and friendship developed into a veritable cult. Sentiment was accorded equal value as the enlightening postulate of reason. The description of feelings in literature and the fine arts was an invitation to share experiences and created a sense of community and commitment to responsible moral behaviour.
6. Back to Nature
In the eighteenth century nature became the ideal and source of morals, enlightenment and the pursuit of happiness. Culminating in the call “Back to Nature” are the teachings of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose aim was to correct urban society’s alienation from nature. Now people went walking in the countryside. For the first time mountains were discovered as destinations for travel and exploration. In the fine arts the cult of nature found expression in landscape painting. In seeking recourse to classical antiquity it celebrated humanity’s close communion with an ideal nature and sought to depict the unrestrained power of natural forces. Mountains, storms and waterfalls evoked both pleasure and fear and could be experienced as manifestations of the sublime. In portrait painting, too, landscape played a role. People receptive to these ideas displayed their naturalness by having themselves portrayed in the open air.
7. The Dark Sides
In the eighteenth century people experienced not only the sublime of external nature as terrifyingly beautiful. They recognised that human nature, too, the psyche, harboured deep-seated fears and abysms. The rational and progressive view of the world alone failed to satisfy peoples longing for the inexplicable. Shadowed from the light of the Enlightenment, the dark sides of humanity and society became the subject of art and literature. Superstition, nightmares and the absurd as well as terror and violence stimulated creative forces as a dark vision. Unbridled imagination assumed importance alongside reason. And thus doubt, criticism and irony developed alongside the demand for acknowledgement of individual artistic freedom as foundations of modern European art.
8. Emancipation and the Public Sphere
The Enlightenment was the epoch that saw the emergence of the public sphere. Along with parts of the nobility the bourgeoisie now formed the influential educated class. Emancipated men and women founded social clubs based on the principles of liberalism and equal rights. The central medium of the Enlightenment was initially the word and new channels of discussion and criticism emerged in publishing and the theatre. However, the image also gained greater social relevance. Printed art developed into a mass medium: it made knowledge available to wide audiences and became an instrument of political influence. Exhibitions and public museums enabled everyone to access education. Artistic freedom and social commitment became the fundamental claims of the Modern Age.
9. The Revolution of Art
Here a bridge is formed between the eighteenth century and the present in order to demonstrate how strongly the ideas of the Enlightenment continue to define the development of art today. In the cult of the genius that emerged in the eighteenth century one can identify paradigms of modern art which, to this day have shaped the image of the artist as the chosen medium of a superior world, as creator, prophet and genius. It was the Enlightenment that first defined art as enlightenment and thus paved the way for the great artistic revolutions of the twentieth century. A selection of contemporary masterpieces presented here is examined in terms of the socio-critical stimuli of their imagery C as a way of illustrating the Enlightenments legacy of ideas for twentieth-century art.