From fall 2023, the art collections' exhibition History Tales. Fact and Fiction in History Paintings explores the representation of history and its narratives in relation to identity and nation. How are the rise and fall of civilizations depicted, how is human hubris allegorized? And what media transformations have the representations of myths, heroes/rulers and decisive historical events undergone from the 19th century to the present day with the invention of photography and film?
The history painting is examined in the exhibition with a view to the Academy's historical collections - the Picture Gallery, the Print Room and the Glyptothek - as well as prominent loans from museums on the one hand and works by contemporary artists on the other. The ability of this pictorial genre and its mass media variations to oscillate between fact and fiction and to turn historicity itself into a pictorial object will be examined from today's perspective. The exhibition is designed as a tour through the centuries and takes as its starting point the idea of the Golden and Iron Ages. It leads from mythical depictions of the figure of the Virgin in the service of nation-building to heroes and rulers, who are juxtaposed with anti-heroes and parodies in the medium of 19th century press graphics. The French Revolution and its aftermath are examined alongside the Vienna Academy with its exponents Füger and Nachfolge, who revived the heroic image of history around 1800. But natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions and their reception at the end of the 18th century are also part of history. The genre of battle depiction and its more fictional than factual "event painting" from the 16th to the 21st century is also addressed, as is the literary, intermedia treatment of the Holocaust, the Second World War or the wars in Lebanon and Afghanistan. This raises the question of the factuality and authenticity of photography as well as the aesthetic and ideological demands placed on the new medium of depicting reality in the 19th century. Finally, the exhibition culminates in the "Inferno" of the Bosch Room with its depictions of the Last Judgement, Dante's Divine Comedy and the Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.
"When there is talk everywhere of a "turning point" and new nationalisms and wars threaten to tear apart a European and international political fabric, it is important to question and scrutinize the understanding of history in images and at the same time to analyse how myths and historical events are always subject to interpretations that are determined by the time in which they are "re-visited". History Tales tells of these movements of revision in the interpretation of historical images, through which images of the past can become disguised commentaries on the present," says the curator of the exhibition and Director of the Art Collections of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Sabine Folie.
Johann Peter Krafft, David with the head of Goliath, 1852 © Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien
Artists / Writers / Filmmakers / Researchers / Illustrators:
Josef Abel, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Hieronymus Bosch, Jacques Callot, Daniel Chodowiecki, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Luca Giordano, Jakob Philipp Hackert, Sir William Hamilton, Theophil von Hansen, Joseph Anton Koch, Johann Peter Krafft, Heinrich Friedrich Füger, Hans Makart, Édouard Manet, Adolph Menzel, Hubert Robert, Salvator Rosa, Peter Paul Rubens, Francesco Solimena, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Paul Troger, Charles André Vanloo, Tiziano Vecellio, Jacques Antoine Volaire, Michael Wutky as well as contemporary positions, including Eleanor Antin, John Berger, Marcel Broodthaers, Danica Dakić, Harun Farocki, Omer Fast, John Murphy, W. G. Sebald, Ana Torfs, Akram Zaatari.
September 27, 2023 to May 26, 2024
www.kunstsammlungenakademie.at
Eleanor Antin, Constructing Helen from "Helen's Odyssey", 2007 Courtesy Richard Saltoun Gallery, London and Rome
