What if Gogh and Schiele go had been neo -Gothic? The Albertina Museum raises the Middle Ages as inspiration of the darkest modernism | Culture | EUROtoday

The route of Gothic Modernthe exhibition that the Albertina Museum of Vienna opened this Friday, begins by becoming a member of THE KNIGHT, THE DEATH AND THE DEVILan engraving that Durero made in 1513 and that’s a part of his everlasting assortment, with the interpretation that Alberto Giacometti did simply 4 centuries later. Copying outdated lecturers has nothing particular. It is a timeless means to enhance creative method. And extra if the insurmountable precision of the German painter is taken as a reference.

This first confrontation is only a declaration of intentions. What the Viennese present defends till January 11, 2026 is that the least luminous of the artists of modernism, these from northern Europe and, subsequently, extra influenced by the advanced Berlin than by the radiant Paris, they seemed on the Gothic and the Middle Ages.

The exhibition is the third interpretation of the identical creative analysis, that of Professor Judith Simpson who flees the subject of avant -garde outlined solely by gentle and coloration. The first of the variations of Gothic Modern At the start of the yr, the Helsinki Ateneum Museum after which cross by means of the National Museum of Oslo earlier than arriving at Albertina, every of them with its personal have a look at the identical idea.

To land a concrete tutorial thesis to the rooms of three areas open to all audiences, these accountable have sought to “mix the old teachers with modern artists in a dialogue that surprises the visitor, to verify that a 16th -century geni Difference, ”Ralph Gleis tells this newspaper, who held the place of once more director of Albertina since January.

Gleis tells Dix’s obsession with Lucas Cranach the Elder’s method and magnificence in one of many rooms of the museum he leads. It is flanked, on the one hand, by an self -portrait of Egon Schiele, who studied conscientious medieval creation and possessed Gothic sculptures of saints, and on the opposite for the illustration of San Sebastián that Martin Schongauer recorded in Germany of the eighteenth century. Arthur Roessler himself, patron and discoverer of Schiele, outlined the Austrian artist as a neo -Gothic “whose bare bodies take that dramatic, twisted and anti -natural condition of the martyrs,” says Gleis, who additionally acts as a commissioner of this exhibition.

One of the work that the majority surprises with the exhibition is that of a younger Vicent Van Gogh in a bit of recognized side for most people. His ironic Skull of a skeleton with a ignition cigarette He attire us to your scholar instances.

Comparing these two instances of historical past by means of artwork, Gothic Modern It additionally reminds us that social tensions, like every artistic tendency, are cyclical and return repeatedly to our actuality. “We can also find ourselves in these works of art,” defends the director of Albertina.

“If we look back, for example, in 1525, the great seizure of the so -called German peasants war occurred. It was a revolution of the lower classes, which were in the middle of a time of progress and positive development, but without having the opportunity to really participate in it or take advantage of its benefits,” he continues. It occurred once more with the industrialization within the change of the century that coexisted with modernism, between the nineteenth and the twentieth. And it’s not troublesome to match it with what we regularly really feel today relating to the advances of synthetic intelligence.

From darkness to gentle

But this exhibition doesn’t focus solely on darkish themes. His journey goes from analyzing the widespread means that the artists of both facet of this pendulum of time to sensuality had to have a look at loss of life, evaluating the totally different representations of Adam and Eva of antiquity (once more Lucas Cranach el Viejo) and the avant -garde of Max Beckmann.

In each instances there was additionally a particular curiosity in reflecting inner feelings. A instructor in vomiting on the canvas exaltations and restlessness resembling Edvard Munch was clear inheritor to these darker instances. To present his personal have a look at the identical concept, Albertina has constructed new partitions, “something we had not done before in this museum,” Gleis warns, and has painted the partitions in such a means that the customer actually walks from darkness in gentle all through the eight rooms that make up this route.

“When we started with this project, more than an investigation was discussed in different museums than a real exhibition. Thanks to this joint collaboration we assure us that outstanding works of the three places would join to achieve the best possible examples of this artistic theory.” Therefore, along with Munch or Vigeland, important within the National Museum of Oslo, the Finens Helne Schjerfbeck, a relentless within the Helsinki Ateum or a Viennese icon like Schiele, works are added from a number of museums in Berlin, the place Gleis labored as answerable for the Nationalgalerie alte when the thought of Gothic Modern.