18.10.2024

Gauguin unexpected at the Kunstforum Wien

Building design

An exhibition in Vienna brings together works by Paul Gauguin from various creative phases.
Paul Gauguin: Hay Sheaves in Brittany, 1890 © National Gallery of Art, Washington Gift of the W. Averell Harriman Foundation in memory of Marie N. Harriman

The Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien is currently showing a comprehensive retrospective on Paul Gauguin until January 2025 – an exhibition that is being shown in Austria for the first time since the 1960s. Under the title “Gauguin – unexpected”, the multifaceted oeuvre of one of the most influential artists of modernism is presented. The show comprises over 80 works, including paintings, prints, woodcuts and sculptures, and follows Gauguin from his early post-impressionist beginnings to his significant influence on modernism. […]

Gauguin unexpected – 3.10.-19.1.25 at the Kunstforum Wien: An ambivalence between genius and colonial reality

What is particularly surprising in this context is that the exhibition has been realized at all. Planning for it began in the years before the pandemic and had to be postponed several times. The war in Ukraine also made it difficult to obtain relevant loans, particularly from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. In today’s international art landscape, many museums are increasingly refraining from showing Gauguin in large-scale solo exhibitions, as his years in the French South Sea colonies and his controversial lifestyle can no longer be shown completely out of context. These aspects are difficult to harmonize with the critical perspectives that the post-colonial discourse brings to the art world.

However, Paul Gauguin’s significance for art history is undisputed. His innovative use of color, form and symbolism paved the way for movements such as Fauvism and Expressionism. But his works are far more than just aesthetic masterpieces. They also reflect a profound engagement with the societies he traveled to and the inner conflicts that shaped his artistic work. His travels to Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands in particular inspired him to create what are probably his best-known works – colourful and fascinating scenes that simultaneously bear witness to a romanticized and problematic depiction of “foreign” cultures.

However, while the exhibition focuses on Gauguin’s visual brilliance, critical aspects of his problematic relationship with colonial conditions and his controversial lifestyle remain largely in the background. Gauguin’s time in the French South Sea colonies is only marginally addressed in the exhibition, although it represents a central part of his later works and his personal mythology. This raises the question of whether the exhibition sheds sufficient light on the artist’s historical and social context. There is no comprehensive historical overview of the colonial system, and the actual examination of this topic has been relegated to the accompanying program.

Gauguin, a French artist of the late 19th century, began his career as a stockbroker in Paris before turning to art. His early creative phase was strongly influenced by Impressionism, but over time he developed a unique pictorial language characterized by bold colors and highly abstracted forms. His travels to Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands in particular inspired Gauguin to create his most famous works – colorful and extraordinary paintings of “foreign” women and landscapes that, from today’s perspective, are characterized by a highly problematic colonial perspective.

The exhibition “Gauguin – unexpected” highlights lesser-known facets of his work, including woodcuts and sculptures, which often served as preparatory works for his paintings. These works open up new insights into Gauguin’s creative process and focus on aspects that are often neglected in the usual retrospectives. However, despite these exciting additions, the “unexpected” in the exhibition remains rather subtle, as many of the controversial aspects of his life and work are barely addressed. More courage could have been shown here to venture a deeper, more critical examination of Gauguin’s connection to colonial reality.

The decision of the curators, Evelyn Benesch and Ingried Brugger, not to focus on Gauguin’s controversial legacy may seem disappointing at first glance. From an artistic perspective, the exhibition offers an impressive compilation of his works, which illustrate the artist’s profound influence on modernism. His powerful color surfaces and reduced forms influenced generations of artists and paved the way for later movements such as abstraction and expressionism.

Even if the exhibition treats Gauguin’s problematic relationships and personal transgressions rather discreetly, the value of his artistic innovations remains visible to the viewer. The retrospective presents a comprehensive overview of his entire oeuvre and shows the development of his artistic expression, ranging from the gloomy landscapes of his early years to the colorful, almost surreal scenes of the South Seas. His works from Tahiti in particular, which depict the life and landscape of the islands in rich colors, are among the highlights of the exhibition. But these works also raise the most pressing questions once again: How does one deal today with an artist who was so deeply involved in the colonial structures of his time?

Ultimately, Gauguin remains an ambivalent figure – on the one hand, a pioneer of modern art, on the other, deeply entangled in the paternalistic romanticism of the colonial era. The exhibition at the Kunstforum Wien invites visitors to explore these contradictions for themselves and to view Gauguin’s works in a new way.

The exhibition can be seen at the Kunstforum Wien until January 19, 2025.

25.12.2024

Exhibitions

For a differentiated approach to the portfolio

Building design

General

Architects usually try to create finished houses, i.e. coherent works of architectural art for eternity. But does this claim stand up to reality? Should that even be the claim? Inspired by references from architectural history, art and anthropology, the young Stuttgart-based studio Kaiser Shen has developed various theses and tested them on the basis of its own projects. From […]

21.11.2024

Tens of millions for the unloved barn

Building design

General

The Museum der Moderne will be expensive. Very expensive. But what is scandalous is not that the budget was approved. But how it was approved. Here is the opinion of architecture critic Falk Jaeger.

Herzog & de Meuron’s Museum der Moderne has been criticized from all sides for years: it is far too expensive, the design is not appealing and the visual axis between the National Gallery and the Philharmonie is being obstructed. Now the budget committee of the German Bundestag has approved the cost plan for the project. How can it be that politicians are ignoring all the facts and public objections and approving the exorbitant cost plan for a new museum, while the other buildings of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation have long been in need of renovation?

Visualizations: Herzog & de Meuron

Rarely has a public building project in Germany provoked so much headwind as the Museum der Moderne. A shitstorm, you could almost say, if the contributions to the discussion were not of a serious nature. “The most expensive crusty bread in the world”, was the headline in the FAZ, referring to a metaphor used by jury chairman Arno Lederer. “This barn is a scandal” was the headline of another FAZ article, a scathing all-round attack that scandalized the location, architecture, size, environmental aspects and costs in equal measure.

Some points of criticism even overshoot the mark. The castigation of the sacrilegious proposal to block the line of sight from Mies van der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie to Scharoun’s Philharmonie (nicely illustrated by Stefan Braunfels in another polemic) is an all too superficial, silly stop-the-thief argument. Of course, a new building in this location would interrupt the view, but Scharoun had already planned it that way in terms of urban development, and Mies had to assume this in his planning.

Why would the view be so indispensable? If you want to see the Philharmonie, you can just step outside the door. In the beginning, when the Tiergarten was still free of trees due to the war, you could even see the Brandenburg Gate from the Neue Nationalgalerie, so what the heck.

The Tagesspiegel described the situation as “eyes closed and through”, and was right: the budget committee of the German Bundestag approved another hefty gulp from the taxpayers’ purse for the Museum der Moderne, thereby imposing a voluntary commitment for future increases in building costs from 364.2 million to a forecast 450 million euros. It certainly won’t stay at that, it’s more likely to be 600 million. But then the project will be under construction and there will be no turning back.

Dependence on private donors

The real scandal is how the Minister of State for Culture, Monika Grütters (CDU), has pushed through her personal “Grand Projet” against the most diverse reservations in the backrooms of politics. The political caste is making up its own mind about the project. Facts, pragmatic considerations and public opinion play no role. Perhaps the highly controversial architecture of the Museum der Moderne (“barn”, “ALDI discount store” etc.) would not have been a sufficient reason for a rejection, after all it was the result of a competition with a prominent jury. However, the urban planning problems, the reduction in the floor plan with the consequence of the expensive, difficult-to-calculate lowering into the extremely problematic Berlin building ground, should have given the housekeepers food for thought.

It is also annoying to see the submissive dependence on some private donors who had threatened to move their collections elsewhere. This is due to the fact that the foundation can hardly organize its own major projects, internationally attractive exhibitions, and is dependent on partners who are willing to pay.

Too many building sites

The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation is constantly being “gifted” new, magnificent museums by the federal government, which then have to be used and maintained. However, there are already decades of renovation backlogs at the existing houses. In addition, there is inadequate funding for qualified specialist staff and a pitiful acquisition budget of 1.6 million for all museums. None of this fits together.

The Foundation should finally be consolidating. Instead, the Humboldt Forum in the palace replica is to be brought back on track in 2020, the general renovations of the Pergamon Museum, the New National Gallery and Scharoun’s State Library are devouring huge sums of money and so on…

It’s no wonder that Berlin looks longingly at the popular major exhibition events in Paris, London, Amsterdam and New York. We want to play in that league too, we want to have something like that here again.