Studio wall (1872)
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| Studio wall |
|---|
| Adolph von Menzel , 1872 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 111 x 79.3 cm |
| Hamburger Kunsthalle |
Atelierwand is a painting by Adolph von Menzel from 1872. It is in the Hamburger Kunsthalle .
Two paintings by Menzel with the title Atelierwand have survived; the older one dates from 1852 and is now in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin . It shows impressions and specimens or models of human limbs and a skull. Twenty years later, Adolph von Menzel dealt with the subject again. This second painting was acquired by Alfred Lichtwark in 1896 and has been one of the most important exhibits in the Hamburger Kunsthalle ever since. Lichtwark was particularly fascinated by the treatment of light and shadow in the painting and saw in it a relationship to the painting Überfall [near Hochkirch] from 1856, which was painted much earlier .
Classifying the picture in common genre definitions presents the viewer with difficulties. Stephanie Hauschild stated: “Although it depicts a wall in a painter's studio , it does not seem to be a real studio picture , such as Velázquez describes it. It brings the inanimate world of things to the fore, but it still doesn't look like a real still life . The fragmentary form and the rapid deep flight do not suit either one or the other. "
description
In the painting, Adolph von Menzel depicted a section of the wall in his studio at Potsdamer Straße 7, which he used from 1871 to 1875. The central motif are various plaster casts illuminated from below and work materials that hang on wooden strips that are attached to a red-painted or wallpapered wall. Of the paintings that apparently also hung on this wall, only small sections and gilded frames at the edge of the portrait-format picture can be seen.
The horizontally attached wooden strips on the painting emphasize the perspective, the vanishing point of which is located very deep left at the bottom. Stephanie Hauschild sees in this, as in other unusual perspectives that Menzel has chosen, an examination of the short artist's visual experiences, but on the other hand it should be considered that this perspective could easily come about by taking advantage of the presumably not very low ceiling height of the studio. In any case, it allows a view of the lower edges of several plaster casts and thus the knowledge that these are hollow.
Two torsos hang in the middle , which, according to Stephanie Hauschild, can possibly be assigned to the Venus de Milo and the Laocoon ; Both representations would then, however, be significantly smaller than the originals. The female torso is roughly in the center of the picture and receives most of the light; it also seems to be made of lighter material than the male torso to the right. It ends just below the navel, while the male torso is cut off smoothly higher up. To the right below the female torso there is a left hand, which is also brightly lit and made of light material, appears to be relatively large and whose right index finger is no longer complete. Hauschild interprets this as an indication of Menzel's left-handedness . On the other side of the female torso, right next to the brightly lit right breast, is the death mask of the art historian Friedrich Eggers, who was a friend of Menzel's . This head is tilted forward, the eyes are closed or at least downcast, the material is grayish-yellow. Next to it is the slightly lighter mask of a bearded man, next to which the shape of a dog's head hangs under an animal skull.
In the lower row, to the right and left of the large hand already mentioned and a bundle of tools, hang another four death masks, two in the lower right corner of the picture, two on the left. According to Stephanie Hauschild, it is Dante and Schiller , an unidentified person and, in the right corner, either Goethe or Wagner .
In the top row there are six portrait heads or masks, two of them of children or putti. Among them is Menzel's self-portrait, according to Hauschild in the form of a death mask, but with a raised gaze, as well as a portrait of Frederick the Great .
reception
On the one hand, the picture attracted attention because of its novel composition: Werner Hofmann, for example, described the painting as an "encrypted manifesto". Menzel, who broke with the pictorial conventions of the 19th century, was one of the painters who discovered the aesthetics of the fragment and made no distinction between the value of the objects depicted. Hofmann sees his assemblages from fragments as harbingers of the surrealist subject combinations of the 20th century.
On the other hand, the biographical reference of the painting was taken into account. The death mask of the art historian Friedrich Eggers, who died in 1872, is placed in the center of the picture and gives the representation the character of a commemorative image.
Finally, the painting can also be seen in general as a realization of the memento mori theme and thus follows on from a long artistic tradition. Death masks, fragments and skulls can be seen as symbols of transience; Scissors and thread are also the sculptor's tools and as such belong to the interior of a studio, but at the same time belong to the attributes of the Parzen , who cut the thread of life.
An anonymous author said: “More generally, the ghostly nature of all these molds is reminiscent of the cannibalized armor that Menzel painted in the winter of 1866-67 shortly after completing a strenuous phase of creative work in the armory of the royal palace. In the studio wall, Menzel does not present any random juxtaposition of objects or an allegorical scheme, but instead conveys the haunting, short-lived nature of fundamental aspects of human existence. In October 1872, the date entered in the corner of this painting, Menzel had already started work on the iron rolling mill (completed in 1875). "
Andrés Castro wrote a poem about the painting entitled Atelierwand (1872) . He did not try to identify the persons depicted, but instead concentrated on the mood of the picture and the effects of the light.
exhibition
In 2008 the painting was shown in the exhibition Adolph Menzel and Lois Renner - Das Künstleratelier in Hamburg together with works by the photographer Lois Renner.
Studio wall (1852)
Raid (1856)
Iron rolling mill (1872–1875)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Still life with votive offerings , on: www.fritzgriebel.de
- ↑ Dr. Sabine Heiser: The fragment as a memory medium , on: www.uni-giessen.de ( Memento of the original from December 19, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b Gisela Hopp, Menzel's »Atelierwand« as a picture carrier of thoughts about war distress and abuse of power , in: Yearbook of the Berlin Museums, 41st vol., Supplement. Adolph Menzel in the labyrinth of perception. Colloquium on the occasion of the Berlin Menzel exhibition 1997 (1999), pp. 131-138, here p. 131
- ^ Stephanie Hauschild, painters / models / patrons. History and symbolism of portrait painting , Ostfildern (Jan Thorbecke Verlag) 2008, ISBN 978-3-7995-0811-7 , p. 114
- ^ So Stephanie Hauschild, painter / models / patrons. History and symbolism of portrait painting , Ostfildern (Jan Thorbecke Verlag) 2008, ISBN 978-3-7995-0811-7 , p. 113, whereas here it is assumed that it is the studio on Ritterstrasse.
- ↑ Hauschild goes into detail on the content of the pictures in her work, Painters / Models / Patrons ; The problem is that the painting is mirrored in her book. Your description, however, obviously refers to the unreflected original.
- ^ Stephanie Hauschild, painters / models / patrons. History and symbolism of portrait painting , Ostfildern (Jan Thorbecke Verlag) 2008, ISBN 978-3-7995-0811-7 , p. 114
- ↑ Andrés Castro interprets the animal as a German Shepherd , cf. his poem .
- ^ Stephanie Hauschild, painters / models / patrons. History and symbolism of portrait painting , Ostfildern (Jan Thorbecke Verlag) 2008, ISBN 978-3-7995-0811-7 , p. 114
- ^ Stephanie Hauschild, painters / models / patrons. History and symbolism of portrait painting , Ostfildern (Jan Thorbecke Verlag) 2008, ISBN 978-3-7995-0811-7 , p. 116
- ↑ a b c d Adolph Menzel and Lois Renner - The artist's studio at www.hamburger-kunsthalle.de ( Memento of the original from June 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Interpretation of the picture on germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org
- ^ Andrés Castro, studio wall (1872)
