Based on a work by Odilon Redon in the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg that is dedicated to Charles Baudelaire’s famous collection of poems Les Fleurs du mal (1857), this exhibition sets out on a foray through modern art, progressing all the way through to contemporary works, in order to shed light on the aesthetics of decadence in their various aspects.
Image gallery
This includes themes such as the birth of beauty from decay, the relation between artifice and nature, or the idea of the surrogate, all the way through to the concept of kitsch, a popular point of reference for the artists of Surrealism.
As well as this, it offers historical perspectives on phenomena that led to these developments (for example, the blue flower of Romanticisim) and perspectives on the aesthetic and political currency of the topic (for example Jenny Holzer’s Black Garden in Nordhorn).
A special exhibition by the Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Additional information
Attention! changed opening hours from April 16, 2024:
The Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection in Charlottenburg is open every Wednesday to Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
