EXHIBITIONS

Double Lives
Visual Artists Making Music

23 June to 18 October 2020

Taking its starting point in the sizable number of important artists who are as dedicated to musicmaking as they are to their visual practice, the exhibition focuses on the presentation of music. Large-screen projections of videos of concert and studio performances conjure a sense of being present at the live event and showcase different approaches to staging performance situations.
The exhibition spans the period from the early twentieth century to the present. Beginning with Duchamp and the Futurists, Yves Klein and the Fluxus artists Nam June Paik and Yoko Ono, it moves on to the key figures of the 1960s and 70s such as A. R. Penck, Gerhard Rühm or Hermann Nitsch. The protagonists of Proto-Punk like Captain Beefheart and Alan Vega usher in the numerous artists’ bands of the 1980s that numbered artists like Albert Oehlen or Pipilotti Rist among their members.
The stylistically more heterogenous scene since the 1990s is represented by Carsten Nicolai, Emily Sundblad et al.

An exhibition organised by mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien in cooperation with Bundeskunsthalle

Julius von Bismarck
Fire with Fire

4 September 2020 to 24 January 2021

‘I draw inspiration from science and work creatively,’ says Julius von Bismarck about his strategy. Always on the lookout for different forms of perception, he investigates man, nature and technology with the means of art. In his work Egocentric System, he subjected himself to centrifugal forces by spending extended periods of time in a shallow, fast-spinning concrete bowl to explore and manipulate his own perceptions and those of the viewer. In Punishment, he flogged the sea in Rio de Janeiro, the Statue of Liberty in New York and the mountains in the Alps. He chased hurricanes in the US and tamed lightning bolts in Venezuela to explore the aesthetic aspects of the forces of nature.
Von Bismarck processes these artistic expeditions into fascinating works. However mighty and devastating the elemental forces may be, in his work we become aware of the infinite beauty inherent in catastrophic events. The exhibition visualises von Bismarck’s creative engagement with forest fires in a multimedia installation, sound and sculptures. The exhibition taps into our subconscious and presents a striking ‘psychoanalysis of fire.’

Max Klinger
and the Artwork of the Future

16 October 2020 to 31 January 2021

Max Klinger (1857–1920), a pioneer of German Symbolism, was one of the most prominent and controversial artists in the international art world around 1900. His work comprises paintings, sculptures and a large and varied body of prints. Inspired by Wagner’s idea of the gesamtkunstwerk, Klinger sought to overcome the division of the creative disciplines and to fuse painting, sculpture, architecture and even music into a single harmonious whole.
His ‘singular fantasticism’ and his vividly imagined, technically brilliant prints earned him great admiration early on in his career. In his paintings and sculptures, he turned away from the stale academicism and idealisation that governed figuration at the time and embraced a daring naturalism in the depiction of the naked human body that shocked his contemporaries. His novel approach played an important role in the modern conceptualisation of the human figure.
At the heart of the exhibition, which presents some 200 works from all areas of Klinger’s practice, is the monumental Beethoven sculpture of 1902. This extraordinary work is widely regarded as the epitome of the late romantic veneration of the composer and forms a spectacular visual highlight to mark the close of the Beethoven anniversary year of 2020.

In cooperation with the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig

Please note

The exhibition Jerusalem. Longing for the Holy City unfortunately has to be removed from our program. The ongoing effects of the Covid 19 pandemic in numerous countries do not allow further planning of this exhibition, which is based on important international loans.
For the same reason, the exhibition Dress Code. Are you playing fashion? has been postponed from the end of October 2020 to the end of March 2021 (26 March – 18 July 2021). The Bundeskunsthalle is working on alternatives for the 2020/21 winter program.

Dress Code
Are you playing fashion?

26 March to 18 July 2021

How did you choose the clothes you are wearing today? Designer dress or jeans, suit or sweatpants, pullover or uniform – every culture, society and group has its own dress codes. They set the framework, but they leave us room to come up with our individual take on the rules. Sometimes, we make our choices depending on how we feel. At others, the decision is based on the occasion for which we dress – or the person we want to meet. Moreover, we want our clothing style to give expression to our personality. After all, fashion is not just the act of wearing clothes, it is also the act of seeing and being seen – nowadays preferably by a vast audience on social networks.
Dress Code – the hugely successful exhibition from Japan – shines a light on fashion as a reflection of society and the zeitgeist, all the way to today’s stylistic plurality. It presents a global overview of present-day fashion, especially streetwear, by celebrated designers such as Giorgio Armani, Chanel, COMME des GARÇONS, Issey Miyake, Burberry and Louis Vuitton, set in a dialogue with contemporary art. And it examines different and opposing attitudes to fashion – those of participants and spectators, individualists and conformists. Fashion becomes a communicative game that can lead us to a new understanding of the way we deal with fashion.

An exhibition by the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, and the Kyoto Costume Institute in cooperation with the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn