The invention of the foreign in art

Presented by the Kurpfälzisches Museum in Heidelberg (DE)

The online event will take place on Tuesday, November 12, 2024 at 5 p.m. and is free of charge. The presentation will be held in German.

The event will be recorded

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Content

Europe's encounters with foreign cultures are diverse and characterized by ambivalent interests. Art has an important role to play here. It reflects and shapes the idea of the foreign, reflects its own cultural identity by differentiating itself from the other and constantly renegotiates these positions.

With over eighty important works, the exhibition at the Kurpfälzisches Museum sheds light on the construction and representation of foreignness in European art. It spans an arc from the late Middle Ages to the present day. How did Europe look at America around 1500? How much fiction is there in the depictions of the Orient? What role does non-European art play for the Expressionists and what significance does skin color have in art?

The exhibition uses top-class works by Dürer, Rembrandt, Liotard, Ingres and Kirchner, among others, to question familiar pictorial traditions and perspectives. In dialog with paintings, photography and video art by contemporary artists, the current view of the subject is revealed.