VIENNA.- “Alongside the Louvre and the British Museum, the ALBERTINA houses one of the world's largest collections of art on paper: drawings, prints and watercolours. Next year, we will be celebrating our 250th anniversary – an ideal occasion to dedicate a major exhibition to this rich treasure trove spanning 600 years of art history. Fascination with Paper focuses on the collection, which comprises over a million objects, and showcases great art treasures as well as the astonishing diversity of paper as a material: from foldable sundials to drawings and sculptures to artistic playing cards”, says Ralph Gleis, Director General of the ALBERTINA.
With this extraordinary exhibition in the Bastei Hall, the ALBERTINA is dedicating itself to the medium that characterises its collection like no other. Fascination Paper focuses on the material itself for the first time and, with around 140 exhibits, highlights its diverse artistic applications and manifestations.
The visual, haptic and structural properties of paper have always inspired artistic exploration. Invented in China around 2000 years ago, paper is not only a two-dimensional image carrier for drawings and prints, but also opens up a wealth of possibilities for artistic design, as it can be cut, torn, embossed, folded, layered or unfolded in space.
The exhibition draws exclusively from the rich holdings of the ALBERTINA and, in a dialogue spanning different eras and collections, shows paper in all its versatility, diverse qualities and dimensions. Historical and contemporary positions meet across the centuries. Well-known masterpieces are juxtaposed with newly discovered, rarely or never before seen works, opening up new perspectives on the collection. In ten technical and thematic chapters, arranged like a parcours, the exhibition invites visitors to discover this fascinating world of paper.
Cut, Structure, Unfolding
The exhibition begins with the chapter From Cut, featuring a wide variety of objects made from cut paper. A late medieval devotional image depicting the Sacred Heart of Jesus is displayed alongside an equally small work by Lucio Fontana: both are united by the cut in the paper, which physically captures the material and expands it spatially. Japanese katagami, which were used to transfer filigree patterns onto fabrics, are juxtaposed with various paper cut-outs. Birgit Knoechl uses this technique to cut paper into impressive large three-dimensional objects that seem to grow out of the wall.
The chapter Impressive and memorable presents objects in which the paper has been embossed by pressing it against a frosted or perforated metal plate or using tools. Late medieval cut-outs and more recent works by Hans Bischoffshausen, Lucio Fontana, Alena Kučerová, Sol Lewitt, Antoni Starczewski, Rebecca Salter and Günther Uecker illustrate these techniques.
Unfolding in Space brings together oversized and three-dimensional works, including impressive monumental prints composed of several individual sheets, Albrecht Dürer's and Albrecht Altdorfer's Ehrenpforte (Triumphal Arch) and Titian's Untergang des Pharaos im Roten Meer (The Drowning of the Pharaoh in the Red Sea), as well as one of the few surviving original models from Adolf Loos' studio. A sensational new discovery are extremely rare ‘model building sheets’ by Dürer's contemporary Georg Hartmann, who created feather-light templates for astrolabes, pocket sundials and globes out of paper.
Alongside objects by Heimo Zobernig and Tillman Kaiser, a Japanese leporello, which tells the famous Japanese story of Prince Genji in colourful woodcuts, spreads out across 26 metres of the room. Liddy Scheffknecht's pop-up construction Living Room and Angela Glajcar's impressive floating 2014-061 Terforation are among the contemporary works that were specifically acquired to deepen the individual chapters. Peter Sandbichler developed his expansive intervention Ornamentale Verschränkung especially for the exhibition.
World and Cosmos
The chapter The World at a Glance ranges from historical maps such as the Plan de Turgot of Paris or a newly discovered map of Hallstatt to Henriette Leinfellner's artistic appropriation of aeronautical maps. The Distance Up Close opens up a view of space and reflects the centuries-old fascination with the universe. In addition to Albrecht Dürer's impressive star charts, Jean-Dominique Cassini's depiction of the moon, Anselm Kiefer's large-format woodcut Der gestirnte Himmel über mir und das moralische Gesetz in mir (The Starry Sky Above Me and the Moral Law Within Me) and Jochen Höller's galaxy, an apparatus made of cardboard by Wendelin Pressl invites visitors to observe the surface of the moon.
Perception, Identity and Movement
In the chapters Many Parts – One Whole and Different Than It Seems, close observation is required. The alphabet of the master E.S. is composed of many figures, like the lettering of Payer Gabriel, while for the Colombian artist Johanna Calle, it is exactly the opposite: the printed letters form the motif of a tree. Optical illusions such as Peter Flötner's picture puzzles or Thomas Demand's photographs based on paper models of seemingly real rooms test our perception and question its reliability.
The chapter No Day Without a Line focuses on artistic discipline and passion for the line. Claude Mellans' depictions with only one line or Martina Krestas' circles illustrate the temporal moment of artistic creation.
The chapter ‘Me in Paper’ understands the medium as an expression of identity and self-referentiality. Rembrandt created more self-portraits than any other artist, depicting himself in a wide variety of clothing and facial expressions. For the first time, almost all of his etched self-portraits are united on a single wall. Physical and autobiographical traces and signs, such as Yves Klein's ANT 88 or Anna Barriball's Mirror, turn paper into a place of self-experience.
In Paper in Motion, fascinating objects invite visitors to interact with them – from rare moral or anatomical folding pictures to a rotating caricature of the church. Visitors are welcome to try out replicas. Replicas of zoetropes, rotating drums with viewing slits, can be set in motion. In Tone Fink's Achselzuckgewand (Shrug Robe), which was worn for processions, the movement is already implied in the title.
Fascination on 260 pages
Like the exhibition, the accompanying exhibition catalogue is divided into ten chapters. Each chapter is introduced by a short text that explains the perspective on the objects and highlights connecting aspects of the respective groups. The individual works are discussed in depth in short articles by the three curators and other curators and staff members of the ALBERTINA.
The lavishly illustrated publication impresses with many previously unpublished works of art and special effects such as fold-out pages, a turntable, and katagami, whose filigree and haptic quality can be traced in laser-cut reproductions. A video installation is made comprehensible through its presentation on transparent paper in the catalogue, and a model kit of a late medieval paper sundial can be recreated and used for personal enjoyment.
In this way, the catalogue also conveys new perspectives on paper as a material: it helps to broaden the view of the collection and to awaken the fascination of visitors and readers not only for paper as a medium for drawing and printmaking, but also for its qualities as a material that can be used in a variety of artistic ways.
Artists: Albrecht Altdorfer, Ottomar Anschütz, Anna Barriball, Stefano della Bella, Hans Bischoffshausen, Louis Bretez, Johann Theodor de Bry, Johanna Calle, Thomas Demand, Hans Rudolf Manuel Deutsch, Burhan Doğançay, Albrecht Dürer, Anthonis van Dyck, Tone Fink, Peter Flötner, Lucio Fontana, Utagawa Fusatane, Angela Glajcar, Conraad Goltzius, Georg Hartmann, Utagawa Hiroshige, Wenzel Hollar, Jochen Höller, Tillman Kaiser, Avish Khebrehzadeh, Toba Khedoori, Anselm Kiefer, Yves Klein, Birgit Knoechl, Marcus Kraffter, Martina Kresta, Alena Kučerová, Utagawa Kunisada I / Toyokuni III, Utagawa Kunisada II / Toyokuni IV, Utagawa Kuniaki II, Toyohara Kunishika, François Langot, Henriette Leinfellner, Sol Lewitt, Adolf Loos, Israhel van Meckenem, Master E. S., Claude Mellan, Eadweard Muybridge, Jost de Negker, Upper Rhenish Master, Jean Patigny, Payer Gabriel, Otto Piene, Jacob Anton Premblechner, Wendelin Pressl, Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, Ugo Rondinone, Rebecca Salter, Peter Sandbichler, Liddy Scheffknecht, Eva Schlegel, Greta Schödl, Swabian Master, Antoni Starczewski, Günther Uecker, Victor Vasarely, Tiziano Vecellio, Hanns Wallner, Ochiai Yoshiiku, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Heimo Zobernig, Franz von Zülow
