Shortcuts

Shortcuts bridge gaps, offering alternative approaches and new means of access; this presentation from the collections plays with those ideas.

Due to our building measures, the Lambrecht-Schadeberg Collection can only be found in a reduced form at present. But the diversity of the Lambrecht-Schadeberg Collection is reflected, with works by all 14 Rubens Prize winners – and the presentation also highlights some surprising connections and comparisons.

Works by the 14 Rubens Prize winners are accompanied by a group of “Half-timbered houses in the Siegerland Industrial Region” (1959–1978) by Bernd and Hilla Becher. The dialogue between photography and painting accentuates universal artistic questions of image composition, line work, repetition and seriality. Like the Lambrecht-Schadeberg Collection, the artist couple’s works were a mainstay at the MGKSiegen’s foundation.

The exhibition also includes works on loan from the Siegerlandmuseum in the Oberes Schloss (Upper Castle). Inspired by the city’s 800th anniversary and the interface between Rubens and the Rubens Prize, “Shortcuts” brings together historical and contemporary art, creating a kind of shortcut between the epochs as well as a bridge between the two Siegen museums. With the painting by Baroque painter and Rubens pupil Anthonis van Dyck (1599–1641), “Portrait of the Landscape Painter Jan Wildens”, the MGKSiegen succeeds in expanding the perspective on modern portrait painting by several centuries. Van Dyck’s sensitive Baroque portrait of a fellow artist encounters papal portraits with art historical references by Francis Bacon, unsparing realistic portraits by Lucian Freud, or the self-portraits by Maria Lassnig expressing hidden physical conditions. Visitors can even join these works by viewing themselves as living self-portraits in the baroque mirror from the Siegerlandmuseum; their own bodies, also in comparison or contrast to the bodies painted by Miriam Cahn or Lucian Freud, enable direct access to contemplation and to questions about the emergence and nature of identity. In turn, street views by Wilhelm Scheiner (1852–1922) provide a further point of reference to Siegen. However, they also enter into dialogue with Bernd and Hilla Becher's photographs or even with the Italian landscapes painted by Giorgio Morandi. Landscape, like portraiture, has been a genre of art throughout the ages and is equally diverse in its expressive forms.

The intention of “Shortcuts” is to enable new approaches to viewing, so perhaps bridging the gap for visitors between works, collections, eras and people. The more often a shortcut is used, the quicker a path is established for everyone.

Curated by Ines Rüttinger

The exhibition is supported by the Peter Paul Rubens-Foundation.