"I judge not or inquire, but only feel."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Iphigenia in Tauris

How are rationality and emotionality reflected in art? Since the Renaissance, giving form by the use of colour alone in painting, as opposed to painting with the aid of an exact preliminary sketch, has stood for the expression of the artist's emotional state during the act of painting.

The Italian architect and artist biographer Giorgio Vasari wrote of a painting by his contemporary Jacopo Tintoretto: "He painted as the mood took him and without design, almost as if to say that art is a joke, (...) so that one sees brushstrokes drawn more by chance and boldness than by design." Little has changed with this interpretation, whereby gestic painting is an expression of the artist's condition: in 20th Century, nevertheless, the artistic production process is increasingly coming to the fore as an expressive act of creation, being inscribed in the work, becoming the "motif", ever present to the beholder. Reason can also, however, become the subject of the work itself by means of a new concept of art. The composition is no longer indebted to the artist's genius, but may rather be founded on mathematical rules, structural requirements, conceptual approaches, and so forth: the contribution of a rational process, the intellectual dimension, gained importance with the realignment of the arts and a completely innovative conception of art, particularly since the latter half of the 20th century.

In addition to the artist, however, the viewer has always been at the centre of attention, too; in so far as he was emotionally particularly touched by a picture. In addition to the subject of the picture, if existing, it is above all new devices such as light, haptic surfaces, or, for example, audible elements, which create a specific atmosphere for him.

The collection presentation rational – emotional sets out to examine this – seemingly conflicting – conception of rationality and emotionality. The viewer sees an exhibition in which works shaped purely by means of gestic interventions are contrasted with conceptual approaches, works which can be experienced using the senses, with constructed compositions.

More pictures to this exhibition

  • rational – emotional
    Exhibition view Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Photo: Stefan Altenburger © Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein
  • rational – emotional
    Exhibition view Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Photo: Stefan Altenburger © Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein
  • rational – emotional
    Exhibition view Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Photo: Stefan Altenburger © Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein
  • rational – emotional
    Exhibition view Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Photo: Stefan Altenburger © Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein
  • rational – emotional
    Exhibition view Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Photo: Stefan Altenburger © Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein