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Cosima zu Knyphausen’s second exhibition with Sebastian Gladstone takes its point of departure from a little-known Symbolist painting which makes up for its present-day obscurity in the controversy it caused in its own time. When Hermione von Preuschen submitted Mors Imperator to the Berlin Salon in 1888, it was rejected as an antimonarchist scandal. A crowned skeleton was taken to be a sly attack on the then admittedly ancient Kaiser Wilhelm I. Her Symbolist meditation on a well-trodden vanitas theme, “Death Rules,” became the considerably more provocative Death to the Ruler! Appalled by the accusation, von Preuschen quickly wrote to the emperor to explain herself. He politely replied that he had “no problem with the painting.” It was rejected nonetheless.
The episode poses an awkward question. If neither the artist nor its supposed target understood the painting as anti-monarchist, does that mean it wasn’t? Symbolism was not exactly a movement known for political sharpness. Mallarmé…
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Press Release
Cosima zu Knyphausen’s second exhibition with Sebastian Gladstone takes its point of departure from a little-known Symbolist painting which makes up for its present-day obscurity in the controversy it caused in its own time. When Hermione von Preuschen submitted Mors Imperator to the Berlin Salon in 1888, it was rejected as an antimonarchist scandal. A crowned skeleton was taken to be a sly attack on the then admittedly ancient Kaiser Wilhelm I. Her Symbolist meditation on a well-trodden vanitas theme, “Death Rules,” became the considerably more provocative Death to the Ruler! Appalled by the accusation, von Preuschen quickly wrote to the emperor to explain herself. He politely replied that he had “no problem with the painting.” It was rejected nonetheless.
The episode poses an awkward question. If neither the artist nor its supposed target understood the painting as anti-monarchist, does that mean it wasn’t? Symbolism was not exactly a movement known for political sharpness. Mallarmé…
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More Exhibitions at Sebastian Gladstone
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