Things Fall Apart Swiss Art from Böcklin to Vallotton
The Kunstmuseum Bern is showing around 200 works from its collection from the perspective of Sigmund Freud’s text in which he speaks of three major humiliations of the human narcissism in the course of recent history. Alongside masterpieces by Arnold Böcklin, Ferdinand Hodler, Albert Anker, Adolf Wölfli and Félix Vallotton, the extensive exhibition of pieces from the collection also includes works by women artists who have so far received less attention, such as Annie Stebler-Hopf and Clara von Rappard.
The starting point for the exhibition is Sigmund Freud’s 1917 essay about the three humiliations of the human narcissism. According to Freud, three scientific discoveries have fundamentally shaken humanity’s understanding of itself: Copernican cosmology, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and Freud’s own theory of the unconscious. What Freud describes in his essay as a narcissistic humiliation is the discovery that man is not the centre of the universe and rules neither over nature nor even over himself.
The exhibition takes as ist theme the mood of uncertainty, the disenchantment of the world, but also flight from the world and longing for the marvellous. In the works of this time, mirrors, hermaphrodites and innr rooms appear with increasing frequency, objects and symbols of the unsettled ego. Human beings are shown as indefinable, alienated and fleeting, the clear idea of the self breaks down progressively. Idyllic landscape paintings make way for a meancing and monumental picture of nature. The tension between the animate and the inanimate is particularly apparent in Ferdinand Hodler’s ‘Rise and Fall’ (1894). The lack of distance, the monumentality, the impossibiity of giving a context to the scene, as well as the threatenign power of nature are combined here with a feeling of tragedy and triumph. Man becomes the insignifiant factor in view of overwhelming nature. Works such as Gabriel Loppé’s depiction of ‘The Matterhorn’ (1867) show a barren alpine landscape with sharp-edged icy peaks around which the two hikers seem to disappear. Paintings such as Arnold Böcklin’s famous ‘Meeresstille’ (Calm Sea) (1887) create a fabulous alternative to the actual reality of the late 19th century, thus addressing issues of dream and reality. Human figures are not only merely copied and depicted, but direct their gaze inwards. Albert Anker paints unprettiified and psychologically acute portraits of old people or a drinker, and in his famous self-portrait ‘Der Zornige’ (The Angry One) Ferdinand Hodler shows a moment of inner agitation. But the insecure ego does not just struggle with the awareness of not being completely master of ist own inner life. The outside world also becomes increasingly unstable. The fragmentary and often sketchy art works reflect the impossibility of conveying an objective and comprehensive depiction of the (outside) world.
The show in the Kunstmuseum Bern shows Swiss art of the 19th and early 20th century, including major works by Ferdinand Hodler, Arnold Böcklin, Paul Klee, Félix Vallotton, Cuno Amiet and Alexandre Calame. Alongside highlights by the well-known Swiss painter the exhibition also includes works by women artists such as Annie Stebler-Hopf or Clara von Rappard. The exhibition is arranged as a thematic tour which, in around ten stages, sheds light on human insecurity in the face of scientific discoveries. The works show, in exemplary form, artists’ engagements with the experience of the alien within themselves, they show identity crises and vertigo, the experience of overwhelming nature, and present us with creatures that are half human, half animal.
Curator: Marta Dziewańska, Co-Curator: Etienne Wismer
Exhibition design: Renate Salzmann, Philippe Gertsch
