Thursday 23 May 2013

kunstkammer, wunderkammer

This rainy and gloomy afternoon, another one in a series that’s really inverted the calendar all over again, turned into a perfect opportunity to spend some time in the local museum, quite a celebrated institution, and sheltering from the nasty weather in the endless maze of galleries, I really enjoyed myself.
The Wiesbaden collection consists to a large extent of the encyclopedic anthologies of the family of Johann Isaak von Gerning donated to the state, but due to the constraints of time and space, rotates its exhibitions with a hauntingly perfect thematic unity. A little leitmotif, follow the bouncing ball, subtlety tied everything together as I advanced from hall to hall.
One great interest of von Gerning was rejoicing in his native Rhine and the museum composed a very nice display of landscapes, and it was interesting to see a romanticized and sometimes fantastically impossible portrayal of some of the places we’ve seen in the area and places yet to visit—but that’s what art is and for an accurate image, one should settle with a photograph. Numerous guest painters who had also visited the Rhine’s castles and mountains also shared their impressions.
 The landscapes were punctuated with examples of baroque-era taxidermy and entomological collections, which were repeated later in the complimentary exhibits that featured the aesthetics of Nature in several acts, the whole spectrum of colour, range of motion and variations on any given theme. The permanent stores on show were also interspersed with some pretty unique installations of post-modern art that amazingly contributed to the natural progression.