“The Purloined Masterpiece. Photographs as Time Machines” takes a digressive tour by way of artwork historical past from the fifteenth century to the current day, as mirrored within the artwork collections of the Academy of Nice Arts. Within the course of, it addresses Seventeenth-century theories of pictorial illustration, corresponding to these of Samuel van Hoogstraten, in addition to concerns from present-day media principle which are a consequence of technological transformation and the way this has been mirrored in picture era.

The title of the exhibition comes from a commingling of E.A. Poe’s detective story The Purloined Letter a few stolen letter that goes unnoticed in plain sight and Honoré de Balzac’s novella The Unknown Masterpiece (Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu), which explores the creativeness and the boundaries of representability: “The purpose of artwork is to not copy nature, however to precise it!”  the outdated Grasp Frenhofer proclaims within the novella. Furthermore, the novella options figures corresponding to Peter Paul Rubens, Nicolas Poussin and François Porbus, all of whom are represented within the Work Gallery assortment. Questions of illustration, appropriation, mimesis and (optical) deception play a job in each narratives, though in opposing phrases, together with the query of the right way to outline “mastery” in relation to greedy actuality.

Along with these themes, successive rooms within the exhibition showcase the metaphor of the seascape and its territorial-political illustration—the ship and the ocean. The interval on the cusp of courtly and bourgeois ideas of society, the implications of proto-industrialisation for sophistication relations and dwelling situations play a key function right here together with associated ambiguous figures of exclusion and standing satires. Nudes and depictions of Mary come into play, as do the contrasting poles of the Dionysian and Apollonian or Gothic transcendence.

Typologies, fluid transitions and topic constitutions are displayed and put up for dialogue on a stage replete with stunning correlations and radical juxtapositions in a spirit of viewing artwork by way of the prism of “household resemblances” and correspondences or connections regardless of all of the historic conditioning produced and established over the centuries. On the identical time, the exhibition marks the start of a sequence of makes an attempt to make use of museum presentation to pose questions concerning the duties of mediating between outdated and new artwork in museums and to proceed a debate that has been happening for some years round ideas of the transhistorical, the “metabolic” and the “radical museum.”

Collaborating artists:
Albrecht Altdorfer, Philips Angel van Middelburg, Cornelis Bega, Johann Christian Friedrich, Wilhelm Beyer, Abraham van Beyeren, Quirin Boel, Hieronymus Bosch, Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi referred to as Botticelli, Dieric Bouts, Jacques Callot, Daniel Chodowiecki, Joos van Cleve, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Albrecht Dürer, Anthony van Dyck, Antonio da Fabriano, Barent Fabritius, Florentine Painter, Jan Fyt, Jan van Goyen, Hans Baldung Grien, Joris van der Haagen, Samuel van Hoogstraten, Jan van Huysum, Johann Kupetzky, Johann Baptist von Lampi the Youthful, Claude Gelée, referred to as Lorrain, Grasp of the Austrian Forelands, Grasp of the Von Groote Adoration, Grasp of the Legend of Saint Catherine (Circle), Netherlandish Grasp, Martin van Meytens, Michael van Mierevelt, Jan Miense Molenaer, Monogrammist H. P., Jacobea Maria van Nikkelen, Adriaen van Ostade, Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob van Ruisdael, Rachel Ruysch, Roelant Savery, Jacopo del Sellaio, Laurenz Spenning, attributed, Pierre Subleyras, David Teniers the Youthful, Anna Dorothea Therbusch, Wigerus Vitringa, Simon de Vlieger, Cornelis van der Voort, attributed after Rogier van der Weyden, Franz Zächerle, Reinier Nooms, referred to as Zeeman.
Martin Beck, Anna-Sophie Berger / Teak Ramos, Marcel Broodthaers, Lili Dujourie, VALIE EXPORT, Rodney Graham, Ulrike Grossarth, Albert Paris Gütersloh, Marcello Maloberti, Willem Oorebeek, Jeroen de Rijke / Willem de Rooij, Klaus Scherübel, Allan Sekula, Paul Sietsema, Laurence Sturla.

at A…kademie der bildenden Künste Wien
till January 29, 2023