Exhibition
Alice in the Wonderland of Art
Hamburger Kunsthalle, Mixed-media, Hamburg, Germany
Friday June 22, 2012 - Sunday September 30, 2012 - Event ended.
For almost 150 years, one of the greatest literary inventions has fascinated children and adults alike: Lewis Carroll's tale of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Soon after it was first published, the story of the little girl's journey down a rabbit hole and – in the sequel – through a mysterious looking glass, quickly captured the imagination of a wide circle of readers that included Queen Victoria and Oscar Wilde. Carroll's stories continue to captivate an audience of millions.
Now, for the first time, an exhibition is being dedicated to Alice and the many different ways in which she has inspired and influenced visual artists. Alice in the Wonderland of Art at the Hamburger Kunsthalle brings together around 200 works from 150 years of art history, including paintings, sculptures, book illustrations, photographs, drawings, films and installations. The broad range of media on show demonstrates the variety of approaches to this subject matter and transforms the exhibition itself into a striking visual wonderland.
The exhibition opens with works created by Lewis Carroll himself. The author, whose real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–1898), was also a mathematics professor, a photographer and an art collector. The presentation continues with groundbreaking illustrations and documents relating to theatrical adaptations and films of the Alice books. While the display of independent visual artworks begins with examples from the late 19th century, the exhibition has a strong focus on surrealism, as artists such as Max Ernst, René Magritte or Salvador Dalí were among those who drew particular inspiration from the Alice novels as they ventured into the realm of the fantastic. The show continues with artists of the 1960s and 70s whose interest in forms of consciousness expansion and new understanding of the interrelation of language and image can be related to Lewis Carroll. Finally, the works on show by contemporary artists such as Stephan Huber, Anna Gaskell, Kiki Smith or Pipilotti Rist demonstrate the enduring fascination of his novels and the characters he created.
Alice in Wonderland is frequently interpreted as a story about coming of age, told from theperspective of a young girl seeking to find her place in a world whose laws andcustoms are unfamiliar to her. In order to correctly play the role expected ofher, Alice needs to learn these unfamiliar codes. One hundred and fifty yearslater, the conventions may have changed, but they still dictate the transitionfrom girlhood into womanhood. This aspect of the story remains as topical asever and is reflected in contemporary works – especially by younger womenartists – with Alice as an identification figure.
In a number of photographic works,for example, key scenes from the novels are re-enacted in a contemporarycontext, while in some of the sculptural pieces, Alice's body and thechallenges it faces have been brought together in different combinations,similar to how the letters of her name are rearranged to create the works'titles, turning Alice into Lacie, Elica... Carroll's Alice has an enduring fascination and will surely continue toinspire future creations in the Wonderland of art.
The Hamburger Kunsthalle is presenting its own, considerably modified version of the exhibition Alice in Wonderland that was recently shown at Tate Liverpool. The new display features works drawn from our own collection and loans from major international museums and private collections. These include large-scale installations by artists such as Stephan Huber and Pipilotti Rist.
Curators in Hamburg: Annabelle Görgen-Lammers, Hubertus Gaßner and Christoph Benjamin Schulz. Assistant: Jonas Beyer.
event venue
Editor choice (SD)