EXHIBITIONS 2016 Belvedere and Winterpalais Upper and Lower Belvedere INSPIRATION PHOTOGRAPHY From Makart to Klimt Orangery 17 June to 30 October 2016 Franz Joseph The Emperor and the Belvedere Upper Belvedere 1 July to 11 December 2016 SIN AND SECESSION Franz von Stuck in Vienna Lower Belvedere 1 July to 9 October 2016 Is that Biedermeier? Amerling, Waldmüller, and More Lower Belvedere 21 October 2016 to 12 February 2017 Hubert Scheibl Orangery 9 November 2016 to 5 March 2017 Masterpieces in Focus Tina Blau Upper Belvedere 16 December 2016 to 9 April 2017 Winter Palace Sterling Ruby 8 July to 16 October 2016 Heavenly! The Baroque Sculptor Johann Georg Pinsel 28 October 2016 to 12 February 2017 Upper and Lower Belvedere INSPIRATION PHOTOGRAPHY From Makart to Klimt Orangery 17 June to 30 October 2016 The invention of photography in 1839 was both fascinating and horrifying to artists. While portraitists had good reason to fear a drastic shrink in their market, others soon discovered the multiple possibilities of the new medium. They used it to disseminate their works in cheap reproductions and also to find out about international trends in art. Photographs soon became indispensable to artists as memory aids or even as a direct source. Many artists learned to use a camera themselves or engaged professional photographers who thus found a new niche in the market. Artists avidly took photographs while travelling, in the studio, and as part of art tuition – seriously or for the fun of it – and the images they produced strayed far from conventions. This exhibition addresses a subject that touches on a taboo. Although it was widely known among contemporaries that painters from Hans Makart to Gustav Klimt and the Künstler-Compagnie had a great liking for photography, that it was practised and collected at the Vienna academy, after 1900 this was no longer openly discussed. The playful and creative approach to the medium that had been usual was lost precisely at a time when the Vienna Secession exhibited photographs as artworks in their own right. Discovering painters as photographers and collectors of photographs offers a glimpse of a hitherto unimagined world of images. Franz Joseph The Emperor and the Belvedere Upper Belvedere 1 July to 11 December 2016 In 1848, Archduke Franz Joseph, having just come of age, ascended the Austrian imperial throne, which he would hold for almost seventy years, until his death in 1916. His reign encompassed the periods of Late Biedermeier, Historicism, the Vienna Secession, and, finally, Early Modernism at the beginning of the twentieth century. This great stylistic diversity is not only reflected by a dozen of portraits of the emperor and his wife, Empress Elisabeth (Sisi), which the Belvedere will be presenting from its own holdings on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Franz Joseph’s death, but also by the collection as such. Works acquired during his government – but not necessarily at his behest – will be marked accordingly. A special charm lies in this ‘imperial’ perspective, which visitors will come across during their tour time and again. In this way, the epoch is experienced in its own light and in ever-new, surprising inflections as if through a kaleidoscope. SIN AND SECESSION Franz von Stuck in Vienna Lower Belvedere 1 July to 9 October 2016 Franz von Stuck’s scandalously erotic paintings, first and foremost The Sin, were both popular and controversial during his day. But his renown did not arise from his subject matter alone. Stuck also set new standards through his pictorial compositions and his compelling designs for the Munich Secession (founded 1892). The Vienna Secession emulated the latter when it was established in 1897. Stuck’s many contacts with Vienna have been explored in only a few essays, mainly in relation to the one year younger Gustav Klimt. This is surprising as Stuck’s first major monographic exhibition was staged in Vienna at the Künstlerhaus as early as 1892. Stuck was a shooting star in his day and became well known in Vienna through his work on the portfolios Allegories and Emblems (from 1882) and Cards & Vignettes (1886), commissioned by the publisher Gerlach. The exhibition presents an opportunity to consider Franz von Stuck’s work in graphic art, painting, sculpture, and photography, both interrelated and as a whole, and to examine his wide impact on Viennese art. It fills a gap and sheds fresh light on fin- de-siècle Vienna and its productive links with Munich’s “painter prince” Franz von Stuck. Is that Biedermeier? Amerling, Waldmüller, and More Lower Belvedere 21 October 2016 to 12 February 2017 The exhibition looks at painting between 1830 and 1860, a time frame starting in the Biedermeier period but extending far beyond this era. These were superlative decades in the development of painting, as the exhibition will demonstrate in a selection of representative works. At the same time, visitors will be able to appreciate how art evolved independently and cannot be pigeonholed within an historical epoch like the Biedermeier period. The exhibition starts with works from the 1830s that reflect the high standard of painting in Austria, or more specifically Vienna. Art evolved to reach new heights in the 1850s. In this decade, all the innovations in painterly style and composition were consolidated resulting in a new heyday in painting. Most depictions from this time resemble a last creative surge on the cusp of a new stylistic epoch and have tremendous expressive force as a result. The exhibition focuses on “profane” painting comprising subjects that reflect everyday life: portraits, landscapes, and genre scenes in the widest sense. It concentrates on Vienna, paying particular tribute to the work of Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller. Waldmüller is often erroneously regarded as a “Biedermeier painter”, ignoring the fact that many of his most famous works post-date 1848. A selection of his late works will take centre stage in this exhibition. These will be complemented by artworks from other European art metropolises that shed light on parallels and influences. A further focus will be interior design, especially furniture manufacture, which underwent a tremendous development during these years. A range of furnishings reflect the shift in style from Biedermeier to the “Second Rococo” and comparisons can be drawn between the objects in the exhibition and those illustrated in paintings. Hubert Scheibl Orangery 9 November 2016 to 5 March 2017 This exhibition will focus on the most recent artistic practice of one of the foremost Austrian painters, Hubert Scheibl. He studied under Max Weiler and Arnulf Rainer at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna from 1976 to 1981 and started exhibiting internationally in the mid-1980s, when his work was acknowledged as a significant reaction to the then popular style of neo-expressionism. Scheibl is one of the most significant representatives of abstract-sensitive, gesture-intense painting amongst mid-generation Austrian artists, as well as being an assiduous draughtsman and photographer. The show juxtaposes large paintings with a compact environment, thereby transforming the architecture of the Orangery into a mysterious and evolving labyrinth of rooms and images. This stark contrast in scale results in the vast abstract canvases - so characteristic of Scheibl's work - disrupting the spatial structure, leading visitors on a journey through the artworks and hence transforming their awareness and experience of the picture plane. The overwhelming sensual and gestural nature of his work confronts the viewer with a different perception of the space that surrounds both the work and the viewer him-/herself, giving rise to an alteration and transfiguration of the traditional relationship between exhibition space and spectator. Masterpieces in Focus Tina Blau Upper Belvedere 16 December 2016 to 9 April 2017 One hundred years after her death, the Belvedere is paying tribute to the painter Tina Blau in an exhibition from the series Masterpieces in Focus. The show features major works from every stage in Tina Blau’s career as well as previously unknown paintings that came to light during the research for the new catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work. Born in Vienna in 1845 as the da ughter of a Jewish doctor, Tina Blau became one of the most successful landscapists in her day. She started taking private tuition at the age of fifteen and went on her first study trip to Transylvania at sixteen. After studying in Vienna and Munich, from 1870 she made a vital contribution to developing a style of Austrian landscape painting known as “Stimmungsimpressionismus” (literally mood or atmospheric impressionism). Periods in Hungary, Holland, Italy, Germany, France, and Switzerland not only provided insights into the latest developments in European painting but also an abundance of subject matter for her to hone her skills. An image of a remarkably modern painter emerges, a woman who co -founded and taught at Vienna’s art school for women and girls and, as a courageous and independent personality, exerted a tremendous influence on the next generation of young female artists. Exhibitions in the series Masterpieces in Focus are made possible through the generous support of the Dorotheum. MASTERPIECES IN FOCUS Exhibition series In line with the central responsibilities and strengths of a museum – preserving, presenting, and expanding its collection as well as conveying information about it – the Belvedere has been presenting its exhibition series Masterpieces in Focus since 2009. Twice a year, it highlights special aspects of Austrian art history, thereby concentrating on certain themes, individual artists, or exceptional masterpieces from the collection. Integrated into the permanent collection of the Upper Belvedere, yet set apart from it through the exhibition architecture, these presentations focus on the significance of selected works of art in the context of both the collection as such and the art and culture of the time when they were created.