Max Klinger

The paper offers a brief panorama on Max Klinger's painting "Sirene (Triton und Nereide)" (1895). The context of its genesis and possible influences are reflected upon. Furthermore the iconography of the painting is explored, its provenance and fortune as "icon" of the German artists' residence Villa Romana in Florence and as exhibit in several expositions all over Europe.

Es ist eine Arbeit, die die Lyzeums-Schülerin Edith Borgemeister aus Duisburg während des I. Weltkriegs für eine Aktion der Cecilienhilfe anfertigte. Eher unfreiwillig erstellte sie damit eine umfangreiche Dokumentation zur Helden- und Durchhaltekunst in der damaligen Kriegszeit.

Si è guardato a lungo a Klee come a un "classico del moderno", ricercato inventore di modelli compositivi definitivamente validi, di soluzioni tecniche o stilistiche da accogliere entro un determinato canone occidentale della forma e della composizione. In breve: come a un elusivo e impeccabile esploratore di limiti linguistici. In realtà il suo catalogo appare oggi ben poco "classico" o normativo: ci imbattiamo infatti in un ininterrotto susseguirsi o alternarsi di congetture, collaudi e verifiche; di convenzioni accolte con riserva, a titolo di prova; di lanci di dadi figurativi. Tradizioni esotiche e filologia contemporanea offrono a Klee semplici materiali di accumulo, repertori desueti o "macerie", come lui stesso scrive; gli uni e le altre sono poi verificati nelle loro possibilità; mimate o portate in scena a mo' di trovarobato storico, senza eccessivo credito né possibilità di una ripetizione che non sia pastiche.

nb.: l'apparato illustrativo è qui interamente falsato, perché l'editor, per motivi a me ignoti, ha fatto cadere talune immagini creando associazioni testo|immagine o immagine|immagine del tutto diverse da quelle mie originarie.

Begleitheft zur Ausstellung an der Staatlichen Graphischen Sammlung München. 13.10. - 10.05.2020

Max Klinger (1857 – 1920), der unter seinen Zeitgenossen als der „deutsche Michelangelo“ galt, war nicht nur für seine Skulpturen und Gemälde berühmt, sondern vor allem für seine Druckgraphiken. Seine Neuerungen auf diesem Gebiet wurden mit niemand geringerem als Albrecht Dürer verglichen. Zahlreiche Künstler des 20. Jahrhunderts beriefen sich auf das Werk Max Klingers, so unter anderem Max Beckmann, Käthe Kollwitz und Max Ernst.

Konzeption der Ausstellung und der Broschüre: Andreas Strobl mit Nino Nanobashvili

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Accompanying booklet for the exhibition at the Staatlichen Graphischen Sammlung München. 13.10. - 10.05.2020

Max Klinger (1857–1920), considered the ‘German Michelangelo’ by his contemporaries, was not only famous for his sculptures and paintings but also for his prints, in particular. His innovations in this field were compared to no one less than Albrecht Dürer. Numerous 20th-century artists, including Max Beckmann, Käthe Kollwitz and Max Ernst, drew on the works of Max Klinger.

Conception of the exhibition and the brochure: Andreas Strobl with Nino Nanobashvili

In the 500 years long story of Ariosto’s immense legacy in modern literatures and arts, a substantial chapter has been always skipped by historians and critics. Re-writings, illustrations, adaptations, and influences have been retraced and commented up until the chivalric enthusiasm of international Romanticism. Then, after World War II, the rise of postmodernity suggested new readings of the Orlando Furioso, which keeps on inspiring writers and film-makers also in the new millennium. But in between Goethe and Ronconi, before Calvino and after Böcklin, a less noticed, yet lively and articulate revival of Ariosto’s myth has secretly crossed the visual, literary, and political culture of modernism and of the so called return to order. This paper aims to reveal how Ariosto’s poetry shaped highly visible movements and trends of the early 20th century such as symbolism, metaphysical painting, magical realism, acmeism, and the second wave of Italian futurism. I will also discuss the ways in which Ariosto’s model was used by intellectuals to oppose totalitarianism, and I will show that fascist propaganda appropriated the Furioso to express local frondism and noncomplying cultural tendencies within the regime.

I argue, with reference to works ranging from an antique pelike with a sphinx motif to Max Klinger's fin-de-siècle retelling of the Apollo and Daphne myth, that a large part of the attraction of the classical comes not from aesthetic rules and exemplary works, but from the gaps in our knowledge of both artworks and their meaning. A more evocative strain of classicism thus becomes visible, together with a critique of art historians' reluctance to admit they are stumped by an artwork.

The sculpture collection of the Hamburger Kunsthalle was founded by the museum's first director, Alfred Lichtwark (1852–1914). For the first time, a collection of contemporary sculpture was assembled by a German museum. Sculpture from France and Germany formed the core of the collection. This book reconstructs for the first time the history of the collection, focussing on its foundation years from 1891 to Lichtwark's death.

Klappentext:
"Hochwertig, international, zeitgenössisch: So charakterisierte der erste Direktor der Hamburger Kunsthalle, Alfred Lichtwark, die Skulpturen, welche er in Museum und Stadtraum vereinen wollte. 1891 konnte er die Sammlung in der Kunsthalle gründen. Seine Initiative war eine Pionierleistung. Andere Museen folgten und übertrafen bald das in Hamburg Erreichte. Denn hier wurde zwar Bemerkenswertes aufgebaut, doch nur ein Bruchstück dessen verwirklicht, was Lichtwark mit Engagement und Sachkenntnis entworfen hatte. Dieses Buch erzählt die Geschichte seiner Skulpturensammlung für Hamburg vor dem Hintergrund der Bildhauerei um 1900 und beleuchtet Lichtwarks unerreichtes Ideal."