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Past Exhibitions
Max Klinger's Prints: Dream Sequences Drawn from the Stylus

Max Klinger's Prints: Dream Sequences Drawn from the Stylus

image: 《A Glove: Action》
Max Klinger
《A Glove: Action》
1881 etching G.1982-0023

Dates
Saturday 3 November 2012 - Sunday 27 January 2013
Hours
9:30 am – 5:30 pm
Friday 9:30 am – 8:00 pm
(Admission ends 30 mins. before closing time)
Closed on
Mondays and 28 December to 1 January 2013 (Open on 24 December and 14 January and closed 25 December and 15 January)
Organized by
The National Museum of Western Art
Admission Fees
Adults 420 yen (210 yen), College students 130 yen (70 yen)
Numbers in parentheses indicate discount fees for groups of 20 or more
Tickets for Permanent Collection Galleries provide access to this exhibition.
Visitors aged 18 and under or 65 and older are admitted free of charge. Please show your ID upon entrance to confirm your age.
Disabled visitors admitted free of charge, with one attendant. Please present your disability identification upon arrival.

Max Klinger (1857–1920) was a major German artist active at the turn of the century, from the late 19th century through the beginning of the 20th century. Known to have participated in both the Viennese and Berlin Secessionist movements, he also continued the concept of "Gesamtkunstwerk (total artwork)" espoused by Richard Wagner, as he aimed to progress beyond traditional divisions in the arts and fuse such diverse art forms as painting and sculpture, architecture and music.
In addition to this synergistic approach, Klinger was an artist deeply interested in the graphic arts, particularly printmaking. Over the course of his life Klinger created approximately 450 prints, most of which were developed and exhibited as print series. Klinger's treatise entitled Malerei und Zeichnung (Painting and Drawing) was published in 1891, and in that work he created the term Griffelkunst, literally stylus art in English, as an expression of the entirety of graphic arts, including prints and drawing, and discussed the expressive potential of such arts.
In his essay Klinger noted that compared to paintings or sculpture, the stylus arts including prints were able to achieve an imaginative power freed from the restraints of the actual world. Further, he spoke of how the sequence of prints displayed in a series also had the poetical power to strongly draw the viewer into their realm. In fact, Klinger's print series depict a fantastical world with the boundaries blurred between reality and fiction, the conscious and unconscious. They interweave in dream-like fashion, drawing the viewer into their abrupt associations and narrative flights.
This small exhibition presents three print series by Klinger in the NMWA collection, his Rescue of Ovidian Victims, A Glove, and On Death, II, as an exploration of just part of his "stylus art."

image: 《Rescue of Ovidian Victims: APOLLO and DAPHNE II》
Max Klinger
《Rescue of Ovidian Victims: APOLLO and DAPHNE II》
1879 etching and aquatint G.1982-0011

image: 《On Death, II: Philosopher》
Max Klinger
《On Death, II: Philosopher》
1898-1910 etching and aquatint G.1982-0069

Exhibition checklist (PDF File, about 169KB)PDF