Home - Introduction - The Revolution of Art

Theobald Reinhold von O?r (1807-1885) The Weimar Court of the Muses: Schiller reading to the court in Tiefurt 1860 Canvas, 132 x 170.8 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie
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.

Christian Gottlieb Schick (1776C1812), Heinrike Dannecker, 1802;
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, NationalgaleriePhoto: J?rg P. Anders