Dawn of Humanity Art in Periods of Upheaval

by Kreuzer, Stefanie; Illies, Florian; Berg, Stephan

• ISBN13: 9783969121672
• ISBN10: 3969121671
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2024-03-28
• Publisher: DCV

Summary

The book and exhibition present works from the first two decades of the twentieth century from the Kunstmuseum Bonn’ s collection in dialogue with contemporary creative positions. What the works have in common across the distance of a century is their genesis in, and reflection on, a time of major social and political crisis. Back then, life had been profoundly changed by the industrial revolution; nowadays, climate change, wars, and the rising political power of right-wing ideologies are transforming the life of our communities. The presentation conceives art as a tool that lets us interrogate the world and imparts fresh intellectual impulses, and so also plays an active part in our societies. The title Menschheitsdä mmerung – Dawn of Humanity – is borrowed from the poetry anthology of the same title released by Kurt Pinthus in 1919. Florian Illies, who already wrote an afterword for the 2019 centenary edition of Menschheitsdä mmerung – the bestselling poetry anthology in the history of German literature – contributed the keynote essay in the book.

Author Biography

Stefanie Kreuzer (* 1966 in Ludwigshafen am Rhein) is an art historian and curator of contemporary art. Kreuzer studied German and Romance Studies at the University of Mannheim from 1985 to 1988 and then Art History and Romance Studies at the Terza Università degli Studi di Roma and the Free University of Berlin (FU Berlin). She completed her doctorate at the Free University on "Catastrophe as a transitional mode of cultural systems in the 20th century and the phenomenon of transition in Wolfgang Max Faust". Florian Illies (born 1971) is a German writer and art historian. As a writer, Illies is known for his bestsellers Generation Golf (2000) and 1913: The Year Before the Storm (2012). The latter book has been translated into two dozen languages. Illies' biography about Caspar David Friedrich, Zauber der Stille, was published in 2023. It was written for Friedrich's 250th anniversary in 2024. Stephan Berg, born in Freiburg in 1959, was director of the Kunstverein Freiburg from 1990 to 2000, director of the Kunstverein in Hanover from 2001-08 and director of the Kunstmuseum Bonn since 2008. Berg teaches as an honorary professor at the Braunschweig University of Art and previously held teaching positions for art history in Stuttgart, Freiburg and Hanover. Berg is active in various commissions, including the Acquisition Commission for the Contemporary Art Collection of the Federal Republic of Germany.