Belvedere presents Night in Twilight. Art from Romanticism to the Present, an exhibition on view from Oct 24, 2012 until Feb 17, 2013.
Theodor von Hormann, Paris by night with Eiffelturm, 1889, © Belvedere, Vienna
Divided into thematic sections, the exhibition Night in Twilight. Art from Romanticism to the Present elucidates, by means of works from the museum’s own holdings and important loans from all over Europe, three major shifts in paradigms. The first part is devoted to the opposition between Romanticism and the Enlightenment. This high point in the history of culture is followed by the “turn to science”, going hand in hand with the electrification of the cities around 1900 and the new role of photography as an artistic and scientific medium. The destruction and dissolution of the night through light smog is juxtaposed with contemporary works that once again embrace the night in order to preserve it, symbolically speaking, for the twenty-first century.
The show also addresses the history of Vienna and such nocturnal allegories as the Queen of the Night in Mozart’s Magic Flute, presenting masterpieces of painting by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Philipp Otto Runge, Caspar David Friedrich, Moritz von Schwind, Anselm Feuerbach, Johann Heinrich Füssli, William Blake, Edvard Munch, Emil Nolde, Paul Delvaux, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Gerhard Richter. Famous photographers like Ansel Adams, Edward Steichen, Bill Brandt and Jürgen Klauke are related to the genre of painting. – www.belvedere.at