Sisi in private: Museum Ludwig displays the empress's photo albums
The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Saturday, December 7, 2024


Sisi in private: Museum Ludwig displays the empress's photo albums
Installation view. Photo: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln/Marion Mennicken.



COLOGNE.- Like many upper-class women of her time, Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary, known as Sisi, collected portrait photographs in the 1860s—it was in vogue. The Museum Ludwig holds eighteen of her albums with some 2000 photographs in carte de visite format—photographs mounted on cardboard around six by nine centimeters in size. They show members of the nobility—many of them from Elisabeth’s family—as well as celebrities and artworks. Only in recent years have such albums been rediscovered as creative collages, imaginative spaces for social structures, and a medium for self reflection. Among the empress’s eighteen albums are three “albums of beauties.” “I am creating a beauty album, and am now collecting photographs for it, only of women. Any pretty faces you can muster at Angerer’s or other photographers, I ask you to send me,” she wrote in 1862 from Venice to her brother-in-law Archduke Ludwig Viktor. Shortly thereafter the same request went out via the minister of foreign affairs to the Austrian ambassadors in Constantinople, St. Petersburg, Paris, London, and Berlin.

The three albums of beauties at the Museum Ludwig are precious—with amethysts, brass fittings, gilt edges, and bound in leather—and at first glance their composition appears heterogeneous. How did Elisabeth curate these works in her private gallery of beauties, her counterpart to the gallery of painted portraits of beautiful women at Nymphenburg Palace? And why the focus on women? The answer is: she used these highly staged images to burnish her own image, since she had a keen sense of the interplay between seeing and being seen. The years in which she compiled the albums were those in which she “fled” from Vienna, as her biographer Brigitte Hamann wrote, and lived for months in Venice, Madeira, and Corfu. During this absence from Vienna, while she collected photographs, she matured into a more energetic, self-confident figure whose beauty would become legendary. And she found the models for her self presentation not in the aristocracy, of whom she was critical, but in the stars of the international stages. To her the fine clothes she wore on official occasions felt like a costume: she spoke of being “harnessed.”

Around the age of thirty, Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary decided to no longer have her photograph taken, not even for a medical X-ray. In the 1880s she turned to poetry, writing “To the Gazers,” quite unlike the sweet character of “Sissi” played by Romy Schneider in Ernst Marischka’s films: “„an die Gaffer“, to the gazers: „Es tritt die Galle mir fast aus, / Wenn sie mich so fixieren; / Ich kröch’ gern in ein Schneckenhaus / Und könnt’ vor Wut krepieren.“ (Bile almost overcomes me, when they fixate me such; I’d seek my shell most gladly, could die from anger much.)” The presentation sketches the connections between her almost obsessive collecting of portraits of women, the image that she created of herself and refusal of images in later years.

Curator: Miriam Szwast










Today's News

October 30, 2020

Michelangelo Pistoletto endures. Even COVID couldn't stop him.

After backlash, Philip Guston retrospective to open in 2022

Julius Caesar "assassination coin" sets world record of nearly $4.2 million

KGB Museum closes; Lipstick gun and other spy relics go on sale

At the Queens Museum, home and the world

Artcurial's Old Master & 19th Century Art department will hold its prestigious bi-annual sale on 18 November

Art Gallery of Ontario announces new department of Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora

Sisi in private: Museum Ludwig displays the empress's photo albums

Lost Bob Dylan Archives of blues musician Tony Glover headlines Marvels of Modern Music auction

Bierstadt's majestic Golden Gate panorama leads Bonhams American Art sale

Simon Lee Gallery opens a group exhibition curated by Eric N. Mack

Louis Lozowick leads Old Master Through Modern Prints at Swann

Sanford Biggers opens second solo exhibition with Marianne Boesky Gallery

A not-so-merry mix: Shakespeare, bluegrass and Randy Quaid

Diane di Prima, poet of the Beat era and beyond, dies at 86

Fresh push to save Vienna's Jewish cemetery 'jewel'

Exhibition featuring eight photogravures by Rodrigo Valenzuela opens at Asya Geisberg Gallery

Rachel Jones joins Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

Tang Museum announces opening of 'Energy in All Directions'

'Unfinished Business: The Fight for Women's Rights' opens at the British Library and across the UK

Austria gets virus-themed stamps on toilet paper

As lockdown revives interest in model trains, collection expected to make £10,000 sells for over £33,000

Alexander Berggruen opens an exhibition of work by Hulda Guzmán

French Atmos perpetual time clock from the 1940's chimes on time for CA$6,490 in Miller & Miller auction

How to Prepare for a Divorce in Florida

Amazing Pieces Of Art Found In The Last Places You Expect Them To Be

How to Handle Employee Resistance During Agile Implementation?

Your First Pilates Class What To Bring And What To Wear

Stylish Alternative to Plastic and Silicone Phone Cases

The right pain management during COVID-19

Top 4 essential basic about potency pills that must be in your knowledge

How To Grow Followers For Your Small Business On Tiktok?




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez
Writer: Ofelia Zurbia Betancourt

Attorneys
Truck Accident Attorneys
Accident Attorneys
Houston Dentist
Abogado de accidentes
สล็อต
สล็อตเว็บตรง
Motorcycle Accident Lawyer

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site Parroquia Natividad del Señor
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful