The Hamburger Kunsthalle Presents Marc Brandeburg's Drawings

Written by Heidi Hoffstader Thursday, 02 February 2012 20:24

Hamburg, Germany - The Hamburger Kuntshalle is proud to present "Marc Brandeburg: Drawings" on view in the museum until October 9th. Berlin-based artist Marc Brandenburg (born 1965) has recently emerged as one of the best-known draftsmen of his generation. Influenced by the pop and punk culture of the 1960s and 80's, Brandenburg’s graphite drawings document Berlin’s subversive nightlife, portraits of friends or extremely zoomed-in details of banal, ordinary objects. Brandenburg is fascinated by the velocity and movement in the scene images of today, but also the simplicity and beauty of a laconic Christmas ball, for example, or a fairground carousel. He deliberately makes use of these fast images only to freeze them, in black and white, by means of a lengthy, obsessive drawing process. Brandenburg draws from his own photos and images from magazines, which he distorts using a photocopier, converts to negative images with the computer and then traces.

These reversals have a stunning effect: portraits or images distorted to the point of abstraction take on an intensity and sharpness that alienates the subject while lending them a ruthless precision at the same time. Nevertheless, Brandenburg does not believe in the power of the ultimate, singular image – instead he often hangs his drawings close together in a manner that resembles film sequences. According to Brandenburg, it is through this series of images that a dialogue emerges between the individual pictures: “It’s about what cannot be depicted; it’s about the aura, the spaces in between.”

The Hamurger Kunsthalle owes its existence to an initiative by the Kunstverein in Hamburg (Hamburg Art Union), which was founded in 1817 and opened the first "public municipal painting gallery" in the Börsenarkaden in 1850. The collection grew rapidly due to the contribution of gifted works, and it soon became necessary to provide a building in which to house it. In August 1869, financed largely through donations, the Hamburg Kunsthalle was opened.Through the rediscovery and acquisition of works by the great Hamburg painters of the Middle Ages (Master Bertram and Master Franke) and the Romantic Period (Philipp Otto Runge and Caspar David Friedrich), the museum expanded its collection of recent masters up to the present day (Adolph von Menzel, Wilhelm Leibl, Hans Thoma, Max Liebermann and Lovis Corinth), also extending over the German border to include works by Courbet, Manet, Renoir, Bonnard, and Vuillard. A new building was opened in 1919 after the end of the First World War, and featured large exhibition rooms with light from above, flanked by cabinets lit from the side. Pauli used the move into the new building as an opportunity to reorganize the collection. He established a more distinct arrangement of the stock, making it possible to gain insight into the historical developement of painting. The museum's works from the new art movement (Franz Marc, Oscar Kokoschka, Emil Nolde and Pablo Picasso), moved into the Kunsthalle alongside new acquisitions, including Manet's "Nana", which is to this day one of the highlights of the collection. In 1937 the destructive wave which aimed to confiscate "degenerate art" finally struck the Kunsthalle and destroyed the modern department. 74 paintings and arround 1,200 drawings and graphic works were lost.

Carl Georg Heise, who before 1933 had been Director of Museums in Lübeck, reestablished the reputation of the Hamburg Kunsthalle in the very difficult period after 1945. Most importantly, he completely rebuilt the collection of modern art, making it one of the best in Germany. Alfred Hentzen, who succeeded Heise in 1955, was able to follow a path clearly defined by his predecessors. With funds now more readily available, it was possible to acquire works of art from the 19th century (Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Gauguin) and, above all, modern painting and sculpture. As Director of the Kunsthalle from 1969 to 1990, Werner Hofmann gave the Museum fresh impetus. With the continued expansion of the collection, the Hamburg Kunsthalle was able to achieve an important position within the international museums landscape, above all as a result of exhibition such as the cycle "Art around 1800" (with works by C. D. Friedrich, Philipp Otto Runge, Francisco Goya amongst others) which attracted worldwide attention. At the beginning of 1991 Uwe M. Schneede was appointed Director of the Kunsthalle, which has recently entered a period of change. The galleries have been renovated, and paintings by the old and recent masters as well as the modern art collection have been rearranged into an attractive new hanging. An extension building offering 6.000 m of exhibition space has opened in February 1997, and houses the new collection of contemporary art - "New Modernist" art from 1960 onwards. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.hamburger-kunsthalle.de

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