[artinfo] SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT: EXHIBITION PROGRAM 2006

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   SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT EXHIBITION PROGRAM 2006

   JAMES ENSOR
   UNTIL 19 MARCH 2006
   There is surely no artist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
   century whose oeuvre is as bizarre, ironic, profound, and as open to
   as many interpretations as that of the Belgian painter James Ensor.
   His paintings populated with masks, skeletons, and imaginary figures
   and his theatrically staged still lifes have become an unmistakable
   symbol for the absurdity of existence, influencing the German
   Expressionists just as much as the French Surrealists. Particularly
   when seen in terms of new trends in painting like the return to the
   figurative and narrative or manifestations of the grotesque and comic,
   Ensor’s creative work seems current once again. Approximately eighty
   thematically arranged masterpieces on canvas and an equal number of
   works on paper from various countries’ museums and private
   collections represent key works from all phases of his production. The
   exhibition is the first comprehensive retrospective of Ensor’s work
   to be shown in Germany since 1972. Curator: Ingrid Pfeiffer, Schirn
   MAX BECKMANN
   THE WATERCOLORS AND PASTELS
   3 MARCH – 28 MAY 2006
   Max Beckmann’s outstanding artistic production has been illuminated
   in numerous important exhibitions in recent decades. It is therefore
   all the more astonishing that Beckmann has yet to be assessed as a
   “painter on paper.” The SCHIRN presents more than a hundred
   watercolors and pastels, some of which are large formats, that offer
   the first opportunity to view together essential aspects of works that
   have been dispersed throughout the world. This major overview, for
   which the SCHIRN will publish the first catalogue raisonné of
   Beckmann’s watercolors, will make it evident how important these
   works in a technique often described as ephemeral were for the artist.
   In contrast to the paintings, in which the problems of history and
   human existence are condensed, his watercolors show humor, legerity,
   and charming spontaneity, revealing a facet of this great master of
   modernism that has been little appreciated. Curator: Mayen Beckmann
   (Berlin) and Siegfried Gohr (Cologne)
   THE YOUTH OF TODAY
   7 APRIL – 25 JUNE 2006
   A growing emphasis on the media, individuality, and commercialism is
   producing a constantly increasing diversity of youth scenes. Girlies,
   greasers, hooligans, rappers, ravers, streetballers, train surfers,
   and wakeboarders are just some of these disparate “artificial
   tribes” to which young people today feel they belong. Whereas during
   the cold war of youth cultures one still had to decide between clear
   alternatives like punk or pop, young people today, as a rule, pass
   through a whole series of scenes. This exhibition shows how
   contemporary art confronts the various life worlds of teens, twens,
   and postadolescent thirtysomethings whose experience of youth culture
   often continues into their family lives and careers. This presentation
   of the works of sixty international artists such as the Young British
   Artist Tracey Emin, the newcomer Sue de Beer, or the American
   photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia will outline the influences of
   youth culture on the society’s aesthetic and poli tical realms.
   Curator: Matthias Ulrich, Schirn
   CONQUERING THE STREETS
   15 JUNE – 3 SEPT. 2006
   Through the interplay of capitalist economy, growing urban
   populations, and the transformation of social structures, modern urban
   life emerged during the nineteenth century. In three chapters –
   Urbanism, Commerce, and Politics – the exhibition will treat, using
   the examples of Paris and Berlin, the connection between urban
   development and the transformation of individuals determined by it and
   relate the political concept of populism to modern urban development.
   Whereas French Impressionist painters like Maximilien Luce and Camille
   Pissarro owed their typical urban motifs to the “Haussmannization”
   of Paris streetscapes, in which boulevards and arcades provided
   frameworks for the movement of the crowds, German Expressionists like
   Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and George Grosz focused on the feeling of angst
   and fascination in the face of the city’s monopolizing character.
   Concurrently with the SCHIRN exhibition, the Haus der Kunst in Munich
   and the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg will be pre senting shows on the
   common topic of art and democracy. Curator: Matthias Ulrich, Schirn,
   and Karin Sagner (Munich)

   NOTHING
   12 JULY – 1 OCTOBER 2006
   Stillness, emptiness, silence – the pause, the gap, the omission are
   increasingly significant in today’s society of images. Avant-garde
   artists of the 1960s and 1970s like John Baldessari and the Art &
   Language movement reacted with growing skepticism and evasive
   strategies to the possibility of depicting a reality whose complexity
   was becoming ever more difficult to grasp. Art is responding to the
   daily quantities of visual information by emptying the image. Today,
   Postminimalists and Neoconceptualists like Joëlle Tuerlinckx, Tom
   Friedman, and Martin Creed are transforming the experience of the
   void in ways that range from the poetic to the ironic in
   installations, paintings, and sculptures. Reduced effects and
   sensations result in a particular attention to things and phenomena
   that are not visible at first glance. The gaze into the void thus
   unveils the peripheral. The ephemeral and the latent unfold. What
   remains is a diverse, shimmering nothing. This exhibition will be fi
   lled with it. Curator: Martina Weinhart, Schirn
   I LIKE AMERICA
   28 SEPTEMBER 2006 – 7 JANUARY 2007
   In the 1820s a wave of enthusiasm for the American Wild West and its
   clichés of good and evil swept over Germany. It was fueled initially
   by James Fenimore Cooper’s “Leatherstocking Tales”, then by Karl
   May’s “Winnetou” novels, and finally by Buffalo Bill’s Wild
   West shows. This exhibition explores for the first time the
   motivations behind the German enthusiasm for the American West,
   including the extent to which the German understanding of images of
   cowboys and Indians was influenced by American visual culture. “I
   Like America” will present more than 150 paintings, films,
   photographs, and documentary material, including works by American and
   German artists such as George Catlin, Charles Wimar, Alfred Bierstadt,
   August Macke, and George Grosz in examining the vagaries of Wild West
   fiction vis-à-vis the facts. Curator: Pamela Kort (Berlin)
   ANONYMOUS
   2 NOVEMBER 2006 – 14 JANUARY 2007
   What happens in an exhibition when the artists remain unnamed? When
   the curator remains anonymous as well? When the artworks themselves
   raise the question of authorship, completely reject it, or liberate
   themselves from it? The initiators of the exhibition have declared:
   “Anonymous exhibitions are necessary so that art may take up the
   path paved by dematerialist predecessors, that idea will take
   precedence over form. Critical thinking is a prerequisite here
”
   Anonymous art encompasses infinite possibilities. It yearns for a walk
   in the park in the dark. You can wear a golf hat and motorcycle boots
   at the same time. No one will be famous in the future. Whoever claims
   authorship is not the author. Curator: Anonymous
   PICASSO AND THE THEATER
   20 OCTOBER 2006 – 21 JANUARY 2007
   Even in his early work, Picasso found a source of inspiration for his
   art in the theater. Of his many motifs from the world of traveling and
   popular theater, the figures of the commedia dell’arte like the
   harlequin and Pierrot played a key role. These sad jokers become
   emotionally laden figures of identification for the modern artist.
   Picasso’s fascination with the theater is reflected not only in the
   motifs of countless paintings and drawings. With the ballet
   “Parade” in 1917, he began an intense period of collaboration with
   Diaghilev’s “Ballets Russes”, for which Picasso designed his
   famous stage sets and costumes. Artistic engagement with the stage
   proved to be an extraordinarily fruitful field of experimentation for
   the universal artist Picasso, and it found expression in both his
   paintings and his sculptures. The exhibition shows more than eighty
   works from 1900 to 1930 that demonstrate how passionately Picasso was
   attached to the theater. Curator: Olivier Berggruen (New York)

   ODILON REDON
   26 JANUARY – 29 APRIL 2007
   Odilon Redon was one of the central figures of French Symbolist art.
   In his charcoal drawings and lithographs from the age of the
   Impressionists, Redon devoted himself to the human subconscious, with
   its fears and nightmares, and produced an urgent and almost eerie body
   of work. In pastels and paintings around the end of the nineteenth
   century Redon developed his characteristically intense palette. His
   figures and objects taken from the worlds of antiquity and
   Christianity or from nature are usually veiled in iridescent clouds of
   color, and their effect is enigmatic and mystical. With more than 150
   works, the exhibition attempts to underline Redon’s central
   importance for an emergent modernism. Much admired by Cézanne,
   Degas, and Matisse, he influenced artists as different as Duchamp, the
   Surrealists, and even Jasper Johns. Curator: Margret Stuffmann
   (Frankfurt)

   OP ART
   15 FEBRUARY – 20 MAY 2007
   In the early 1960s, visual artists set their sights on vision. Op Art
   and kinetic art produced an art with an intense interest in the
   objective and in scientific experiment. Fascinated by the physical
   laws of light and optics, it was devoted to exploring visual phenomena
   and principles of perception. Probing the possibilities for deceiving
   the eye, artists like Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley, François
   Morellet, Julio Le Parc, and Gianni Colombo deliberately sought visual
   disturbances. In large-format paintings, objects, and environments,
   they nevertheless caused more than the viewer’s eye to move. The
   interaction between the work and the observer – a central topos for
   present-day art – culminated in installations that not only produced
   physical effects in the form of afterimages, color vibrations, or
   flickering light but also had sweeping effects on consciousness as a
   whole. After Op art works have partly been dismissed as simple
   variations on optical phenomena, this exhibiti on will reveal the
   complexity and lasting influence of its protagonists’ works.
   Curator: Martina Weinhart, Schirn

   SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT
   Römerberg
   60311 Frankfurt, Germany
   phone: (+49-69) 29 98 82-0
   fax: (+49-69) 29 98 82-240
   welcome at schirn.de

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References

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