DIANA AND ACTAEON
The forbidden glimpse of the naked body
October 25, 2008 – February 15, 2009
HEAVENLY STATELY COURTLY
Peter Paul Rubens
Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz
and Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici
until January 11, 2009
museum kunst palast
Ehrenhof 4-5
40479 Duesseldorf
DIANA AND ACTAEON
Diana and Actaeon. The forbidden glimpse of the naked body
October 25, 2008 – February 15, 2009
Around a core of works of art that explicitly relate to the myth of Diana and Actaeon as told by Ovid, this exhibition brings together over 300 works in a scope to be shown as such only in Duesseldorf. On its agenda is that view afforded at all periods of art, upon “The forbidden glimpse of the naked body”. Diana’s fate is also that of Venus, Susanna, Bathsheba, Nyssia, Phryne, Potiphar’s Wife, Baubo, Sheela-na-Gig and a host of unnamed nudes in modes classical and explicit who pass before the visitor’s eye.
They do so now in works by more than 200 artists, as paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs and videos. Together they provide a unique account of a broad field interesting from both an art-historical and cultural-historical angle – of chastity and desire, of seeing and being seen, voyeurism and exhibitionism.
Besides works from Classical Greece and Rome and by the classics of older art history, for example Artemisia Gentileschi, Rembrandt, Peter Paul Rubens and Paolo Veronese, the show presents works by masters such as Pierre Bonnard, Lovis Corinth, Marcel Duchamp, Ferdinand Hodler, Gustav Klimt, Pierre Klossowski, Pablo Picasso, Auguste Rodin, Egon Schiele and, from the realm of contemporary art, standpoints represented by Nobuyoshi Araki, Balthasar Burkhard, Judy Chicago, Marlene Dumas, Noritoshi Hirakawa, Robert Mapplethorpe, Markus Raetz, Arnulf Rainer, Cindy Sherman and others.
HEAVENLY-STATELY-COURTLY
Peter Paul Rubens, Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz and Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici
until January 11, 2009
The main exhibition of the Duesseldorf anniversary of Jan Wellem shows 150 exhibits which were originally from the collection of the Prince Elector and his wife. These works come from international collections, including some splendid paintings, prints, sculptures and precious objects from the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, from the Alte Pinakothek in Munich and from Hamburger Kunsthalle. Over a dozen works from the Uffizi Gallery, the Galleria Palatina and the Museo degli Argenti of the Palazzo Pitti are shown in Duesseldorf for the first time.
They include self-portraits of Duesseldorf court painters and works by the Dutch Leyden School, i.e. Jan Frans van Douven, Adriaen van der Werff and the still life painter Rachel Ruysch, as well as a range of largely unknown portraits and costume paintings of the princely couple.
The starting point of this exhibition is a number of works from the Prince Elector’s gallery that are still available and which form part of the museum’s own inventory. These items include works by Peter Paul Rubens, Johann Friedrich Ardin, Antonio Bellucci, Gabriel Grupello, Gian Antonio Pelligrini, Paul Pontius, Rachel Ruysch, Eglon Hendrik van der Neer, Adriaen van der Werff, Jan Frans van Douven and Frans van Mieris the Elder.
The centrepiece of the exhibition is the newly researched monumental painting by Peter Paul Rubens “The Ascension of St. Mary”. This work is presented in a virtual motion-picture 3D reconstruction, so that visitors feel transported to the original church environment in Brussels.
