Nudes, Antiquity, Anatomy

Drawing as a technique for discovering the world is the focus of a cross-institutional project being developed by the Hamburger Kunsthalle (Department of Prints and Drawings) in cooperation with the University of Hamburg (Art History Department) and the Hamburg State and University Library.
Two concurrent exhibitions will look at drawing as taught at the academies and in artists’ studios in contrast with amateur drawing practised in private. The exhibition in the Harzen Cabinet at the Hamburger Kunsthalle will feature drawings from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries that demonstrate the potential of artistic-scientific drawing as an instrument for conveying knowledge and gaining new insights. Also on display will be selected depictions of classes held in studios and at academies. On view at the Hamburg State and University Library will be a compendium of late-seventeenth-century drawings by an aristocratic dilettante that have yet to be thoroughly researched. They include drawings from various fields of knowledge such as anatomy, antiquity and natural history. These works will be juxtaposed with prints and historical pattern books in order to illustrate common motifs and imagery.

This cooperative project sheds light on the pictorial research at the heart of the discipline of art history as well as the relevance of indexing, documenting and consolidating knowledge through drawing – a practice that has fallen into neglect with today’s predominance of digital media.

The exhibition will be developed in the course of several seminars and will be accompanied by a catalogue with texts by students and the curators. An online exhibition is also in planning in order to highlight in a universally comprehensible way the potential of historical scholarship and artistic exploration of the world.