Intimacy! Bathing in art
The Museum of Art at Ahlen has created this discerning exhibition to explore the subject of "Bathing" and find out more about historical developments, connotations of content, and - above all - for artistic reflection.
Water is seen as an element of regeneration and cleansing, refreshing and revitalising. The bathroom is visited as a place of withdrawal and relaxation. At the same time, though, it is also a place where we are particularly vulnerable: we encounter ourselves, naked and exposed, our ideals and desires, our physical transience. For artists, the bathroom is designed as an exciting and especially intimate room that is associated with biblical and mythological stories and which today, in our age of extreme "body awareness", has a unique position in the artistic vision.
This comprehensive exhibition contains 143 works by 92 artists ranging from the late Middle Ages to the present. The artefacts include oil paintings, drawings, print graphics, sculptures, photographs, videos, and complete installation.
They include contributions by Stephan Balkenhol, Max Beckmann, Hans Sebald Beham, Joseph Beuys, Karl Bohrmann, Pierre Bonnard, Fernando Botero, Luise Bourgois, Gustave Caillebotte, William N. Copley, Gregory Crewdson, Edgar Degas, Albrecht Dürer, Eric Fischl, Xenia Hausner, David Hockney, Mary Kelly, In Sook Kim, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Marie-Jo Lafontaine, Wihelm Lehmbruck, Jules Migonney, Alyssa Monks, Bettina Rheims, Saul Steinberg, Norbert Tadeusz, Toyokuni Utagawa, Félix Vallotton, Bill Viola and Qingsong Wang.
The loans have been made by major public collections and important private collections in Germany, Switzerland, France, the UK, Finland and the USA. Important loans include the copper engraved cabinet – State Museums of Berlin, the State Library of Berlin, the Kunsthalle Bremen – copper engraved cabinet , the Kirchner Museum of Davos, the foundation museum kunst palast of Düsseldorf, the Städel Museum of Frankfurt, the Association des Amis du Petit Palais Geneva, the Hamburg Museum of Art and Trade, the Museum Schloss Moyland of Kleve, the British Council Collection London, the Bibliothèque nationale de France Paris, the Centraal Museum of Utrecht, the Musée National des Châteaux des Versailles et de Trianon, and the Belvedere of Vienna as well as numerous other galleries and private collections both in Germany and abroad.
The exhibition is supported by a comprehensive bilingual catalogue (German/English) with contributions on the history of culture and art, excursions into the great bathing cultures of Japan and the Orient; extensive background information on the bathing rituals of the great monotheistic religions, the bathroom as the "scene of the crime" in films, and on today's spa culture.
The exhibition is curated by Dr. Martina Padberg, Bonn.