The Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection presents Evil Flowers from December 12, 2024 to May 4, 2025. Based on Odilon Redon’s charcoal drawing “Fleur du mal (Flower of Evil)” (1880) from the Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection, the exhibition takes a journey through early modern art to contemporary works and sheds light on the influence of Charles Baudelaire’s famous book of poetry of the same name on art.
Image above: Moritz Wehrmann (* 1980) Les Fleurs du Mal (I), 2012, 60 × 90 cm, Digital C-Print, Privatbesitz, Berlin © Moritz Wehrmann
In addition to a selection of works that were created in direct connection with the poems, such as the painting “Les Fleurs du mal” (1922/1924) by Hannah Höch or “Die kleinen Alten” (1923) by Albert Birkle, the exhibition also explores individual themes such as beauty and decay or artificiality and nature.
The volume of poetry “Les fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil)” by Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) is one of the milestones of world literature. First published in Paris in 1857, it caused a scandal that brought Baudelaire to court. In literature as well as in art, the poems laid the foundation for a new aesthetic that exploded the classical idea of a unity of the beautiful and the good. The idea of the excessive, the rampant and the wildly flourishing plays an important role here. For it is often only through exaggeration that goodness begins to tip over into evil. The themes of the exhibition include eroticism and intoxication, the aestheticization of illness and decay, the relationship between artificiality and nature or the idea of the surrogate, right through to kitsch.
The exhibition presents around 120 works. In addition to paintings, drawings and prints, photographs, film clips and digital media are also on display, as well as objects and installations. These include Otto Piene’s (1928-2014) expansive “Fleurs du mal” from 1969: 13 huge flowers made of black artificial silk, which bloom on the hour in the darkness of the Sahurê Hall, accompanied by stroboscopic lightning storms and deafening noise.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog published by Sandstein-Verlag, with texts by Benjamin Loy, Thomas Röske, Hans von Trotha and others.
Curated by Kyllikki Zacharias, Head of the Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection.
WHEN?
Opening: Wednesday, December 11, 2024, 7 pm
Exhibition dates: Thursday, December 12, 2024 – Sunday, May 4, 2025
Opening hours: Wednesday – Sunday, 11 am – 6 pm
WHERE?
Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg
Schloßstraße 70
14059 Berlin-Charlottenburg
