Living Legend
“The Guggenheim Collection” in a Guest
Appearance in Bonn
Never before has the collection of
the Guggenheim Foundation been presented in such a thorough, high-end way.
From Monet to Warhol, from Beckmann to Barney – this lavish selection of
nearly 200 masterpieces tracing the fascinating developments in 20th and
21st-century art is making its only guest appearance worldwide in Bonn.
Achim Drucks introduces the exhibition highlight of the German summer of
art; it could very well surpass the success story of The MoMA in
Berlin.
Frank
Lloyd Wrights building for the
Guggenheim
Collection at Fifth Avenue in New York,
Photo:
David Heald, © The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York
"The
Guggenheim is the agent of popular culture," or "The Guggenheim is not a
place" read resplendent from the large posters in front of the Art
and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn. The
messages, meant to lure the public to The
Guggenheim Collection, have turned out to be somewhat cryptic.
Moreover, the large-scale banners have provoked controversy. Instead of
appreciating the opportunity to see masterpieces from the collection of
New York’s Guggenheim Foundation
without having to cross the Atlantic, Bonn’s inhabitants prefer to bicker
over whether the posters are disfiguring the museum’s plaza.
Franz
Marc, Gelbe Kuh, 1911,
©The
Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York
Roy
Lichtenstein, Grrrrrrrrrrr!!, 1965,
©VG
Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2006
Yet Thomas
Krens, long-time director of the Guggenheim Foundation, is right with
his dictum. In any case, the Guggenheim is certainly more than just a
place. It also embodies a vision turned reality that’s continued to
develop ever since. A worldwide art institution has grown out of the
temple for non-objective art that the copper king Solomon
R. Guggenheim and his advisor Hilla
von Rebay commissioned Frank
Lloyd Wright to design – with branches in New
York, Bilbao, Venice,
Las Vegas, and Berlin.
And for six months, Bonn will now become part of the global Guggenheim
complex as well.
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Visiting Bauhaus in Dessau: Irene
Guggenheim, Wassily Kandinsky,
Hilla
Rebay and Solomon R. Guggenheim, Summer of 1930
Photo:
Courtesy The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
©The
Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York
Famous
museums have often made guest appearances at the Art and Exhibition Hall.
But regardless of whether it’s been the Prado
or the Vatican
Museums presenting their collections in Bonn, the large Guggenheim
show is the most ambitious to date. Never before has an exhibition taken
up the entire building – and continued into the adjacent Kunstmuseum
as well. On the ground floor are the foundation’s latest acquisitions,
which include works commissioned for the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin,
while the Kunsthalle is presenting the classics ranging from Monet
to Serra.
A
gift by Justin K. Thannhauser:
Edouard
Manet, In Front of the Miror, 1876,
©The
Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York
Here,
visitors can get a feel for the impulses and movements of modern painting.
Monet’s Impressionist Before the Mirror flickers in pastel
hues of blue and white, while Vincent
van Gogh records the Mountains at Saint Rémy in strong,
expressive brush strokes. In Kandinsky’s
early abstract Painting with White Border from 1913, lines and
forms race wildly around the canvas. Ten years later, his Composition 8
with its straight lines, triangles, and circles floating before a placid
background shows just how much his style later changed.
A
gift by Solomon R. Guggenheim:
Wassily
Kandinsky, Bild mit weißem Rand, Mai 1913,
©VG
Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2006
From
the Solomon R. Guggenheim Collection:
Wassily
Kandinsky, Composition, July 8, 1923,
©VG
Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2006
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