Chapters

The prologue, entitled Court Life in the Age of the Enlightenment, invites visitors to explore the world of Baroque palaces and the enlightened nobility and presents court art from the 18th century. The palaces of Berlin, Dresden and Munich, whose collections went on to form the basis of the three museum bodies participating in the show, are presented as examples for the court art of Europe as a whole.

The development of the steam engine or the first hot air balloon reflect the technological advances of the age. The Perspectives of Knowledge chapter tells of the birth of modern sciences and the immense influence on artistic creation they were to have.

The chapter entitled The Birth of History highlights the new historical consciousness in the 18th century. Enthusiasm for Antiquity was reflected in classicism or the romanticism of ruins, while the history of one’s own people was also discovered as a worthy subject for art.

Under the heading Far and Near, our focus turns to the attraction of distant epochs and cultures and their aesthetic impact on European art. China was one of the exotic idealized worlds that inspired many artists, writers and philosophers to perceive as the projection of an enlightened state and a counterpoint to Europe.

Meanwhile, Love and Sensibility illustrates how the virtue of feeling complemented the socially critical and emancipatory tendencies of the age. The way marriage and family were perceived increasingly became defined by the concept of love as the base for relationships. This new image of the family was propagated in paintings, drawings and craft objects.

Arcadian landscapes, idylls and flights of imagination in sculpted gardens bring to life the dream of a new society in the chapter entitled Back to Nature. Rousseau’s famous postulation applied to humankind’s nature and had an impact on the educational ideals and moral perceptions of the time.

Shadows lifts the veil on the Enlightenment’s interest in the human psyche and its emotional depths. The dark, irrational side to our being is depicted here in numerous drawings and prints and appears as the reverse to the enlightened, intelligible world guided by reason.

The chapter on Emancipation and the Public Sphere depicts the Enlightenment as the epoch that spawned a kind of public sphere in which the individual was actively involved. The principal medium in the Enlightenment was initially the word. However, the image also underwent a change in function and developed into a visual mass medium that served the fervent dissemination of knowledge in the form of pamphlets, caricatures and popular literature.

The exhibition’s epilogue, entitled The Revolution of Art, throws the spotlight on the art of the present day and investigates the legacy of Enlightenment ideas in art today.