The theme of the transhistorical exhibition “History Tales. Fact and Fiction in History Painting” has, rather unexpectedly, become highly topical, even frighteningly so, at this historical time of the much-cited “turning point.” Indeed, a geopolitical and economic equilibrium of values and forces appears to be out of step—also triggered by the war in Ukraine—and a global shift of immeasurable proportions seems to be set in motion.
The Art Collections exhibition will explore the representation of history and its narratives in terms of identity and nation. How is the rise and fall of civilisations depicted in history? How has the hubris of humankind been allegorised in history paintings since the 17th century? And what sort of media transformations has the invention of photography and film brought about on the representations of myths, heroes, heroines, rulers and sovereigns as well as on pivotal historical events since the 19th century right through to the present day?
The aim is to question and challenge the understanding of history in representational depictions and their counter-images while analysing how certain origin myths and key historical events are always subject to interpretations shaped by the age in which they are “revisited.” “History Tales” tells the story of these revisionary movements in the interpretation of “history paintings,” through which images of the past can become encapsulated commentaries on the present.
History painting at the transition to modernity
The history painting has been in vogue time and again ever since the Renaissance proclaimed it was the pictorial genre of the highest order. Under the Sun King Louis XIV in particular, the French Academy underscored the superior value of the doctrine of virtue conveyed by the history painting through the example of great events, heroes and heroines, rulers and sovereigns while substantiating the history painting as a propaganda machine with an underpinning of art theory. The genre really came into its own at the beginning of the 19th century, after which its particular merits gradually gave way to conventional bourgeois taste and the fast pace of popular illustrations, press graphics and the new medium of photography.
Industrialisation, social unrest, social upheavals and the impact of the French Revolution on the political structure of Europe in particular and the self-perception of an emergent bourgeoisie as well as the impoverishment of large sections of the population proved to be the catalysts of an eventful transformation process. These bourgeois tastes were reflected more in the salons as a showcase for the self-representation of the gentry than in the academies and the moralising history painting taught there. Nonetheless, history painting throughout the 19th century had the special merit of focusing attention on historicity even as the age of a “headless” (i.e. monarch-less) modernity was dawning. People’s interest in specific historical events gradually gave way to a particular interest in history as a model reflecting the philosophy of history. The exhibition “History Tales. Fact and Fiction in History Paintings” sets out to explore the complex reasons behind this transformation as part of an outlined itinerary.
Itinerary through the centuries to the present day
“History Tales” takes up the contemporary process of reassessment of the current position at a time when the talk everywhere is of a ‘turning point’ in world history, with new nationalist tendencies and wars threatening to rip apart the political fabric, both in Europe and globally. Familiar tropes such as “The Golden Age” and the “Iron Age” are invoked, i.e. times of political and social prosperity and equilibrium and, by contrast, times of decline, downfall and natural cataclysms.
Indeed, the idea of the rise and fall of civilisations is the starting point of the new exhibition in the Paintings Gallery. It then continues via mythological depictions to narratives of nation-building, of heroes, heroines, rules and sovereigns, offset against anti-heroes and parodies as well as harsh social criticism in the still relatively young mass medium of newspapers. Last but not least, the exhibition focuses on the French Revolution and its aftermath as well as the Vienna Academy and its exponents Füger and successors, who revived heroic history paintings in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions (Pompeii) and their reception in the late 18th century are not excluded from the “accounts” rendered by travellers on their grand tours. The impact of the discovery of Pompeii in 1748 on entire generations—their fashion, architecture and the idealisation of a post-Hellenistic polis—are also touched upon.
The role of battle depictions and their more fictional than factual “event painting,” mostly genre-like in their execution, from the 16th to the 21st century are also addressed, as is the literary, cross-media approach to the Holocaust, the Second World War and 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 19th century’s new medium for depicting reality. Finally, the Hansen Gallery leads into the inferno of the Bosch Room with its depictions of the Last Judgement, Dante’s Divine Comedy and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
The exhibition examines history painting as well as works by contemporary artists.
Curated by:
Sabine Folie
at Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
until May 26, 2024