BERLIN.- The “Böse Blumen” (“Wicked Flowers”) exhibition at the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg in Berlin-Charlottenburg, which opened on December 12, 2024, invites visitors to immerse themselves in a world where art and literature converge in provocative dialogue. Organized by the Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, this show takes its starting point from Odilon Redon’s charcoal drawing Fleur du mal (Flower of Evil) (1880), part of the Scharf-Gerstenberg collection, and explores how Charles Baudelaire’s landmark poetry collection Les Fleurs du mal continues to inspire artists across generations.
The exhibition, running through May 4, 2025, is located at Schloßstraße 70 and is open Wednesday to Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. More than 120 works—paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, film excerpts, digital media, objects, and installations—are on display. Together, they create a narrative that spans from early modern art to contemporary expressions, all reflecting the darkly poetic spirit that Baudelaire introduced to the world.
“Böse Blumen” focuses on art made in direct response to or inspired by Les Fleurs du mal. Visitors can see pieces such as Hannah Höch’s painting Les Fleurs du mal (1922/1924) and Albert Birkle’s Die kleinen Alten (1923), both of which openly dialogue with Baudelaire’s verses. In addition, Belgian symbolist Eugène Laermans’s Fleurs du mal reveals the poet’s admiration for older women, while Moritz Wehrmann’s photographic series (“Fleurs du mal,” 2012), shot at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, renders artificial flower arrangements as ghostly apparitions in a realm where life, death, and artifice collide.
Baudelaire’s 1857 poetry volume shattered conventional notions of beauty, merging the sublime with the grotesque, the sacred with the profane. This tension paved the way for the modern imagination, forging new aesthetic paths that continue to fascinate today. The exhibition’s thematic sections delve into the interplay of eroticism and intoxication, the glamorization of illness and decay, the friction between artificiality and nature, and the concept of surrogates—where kitsch and imitation stand in for genuine experience.
Some of the most striking works include photographs by Gundula Schulze Eldowy, where mummies exude a strange vitality, and Schuldt’s images, in which mannequin hands reach skyward like flaming blossoms. These unsettling yet captivating visions compel viewers to question the boundaries between the living and the lifeless, between high culture and consumerist triviality.
The show reaches its climax in a monumental installation by the Zero artist Otto Piene (1928–2014). Every hour on the hour, 13 oversized black artificial silk flowers “bloom” in the darkness of the Sahurê-Saal, illuminated by strobe lights and accompanied by thunderous sound, encapsulating the exhibition’s core concept of morphing beauty into something troubling and intense.
An accompanying catalog is available from Sandstein Verlag (museum price: €29; retail: €38), featuring texts by Benjamin Loy, Thomas Röske, Hans von Trotha, and others. Curated by Kyllikki Zacharias, Director of the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg, “Böse Blumen” now stands ready to enchant, disturb, and challenge Berlin’s art lovers, providing a rare glimpse into a creative legacy that continues to bloom beyond conventional notions of taste.
