Melancholia: A Sebald variation

Strange but entrancing exhibition at the Inigo  Rooms  at King’s College in Somerset House examining the idea of melancholia and in particular W.G. Sebald's use of the idea to describe post-war Germany.

According to the booklet the show traces a path through Germany from the ruins of 1945 to the present day. I’ll be honest I’m not sure I understood where that was going, but some of the works and sentiments in the show were beautiful. Any show which starts with Durer’s Melancholia print is OK by me.

Sebald had held that there had been a lack of response from German writers and artists to the destruction in the immediate post war years but this shows gives examples of that response for example the drawings of the ruins of Dresden by Wilhelm Rudolph. It also points out that some of the gap was due to the number of writers and artists who had been killed in the war.

The show commissioned two works by Tacita Dean in chalk and paint on antique school slates based on quotes from Shakespeare but removed from their context the words seem to refer to recent European history. It also includes pictures of some of the works by Anselm Kiefer which address post-war Germany.

The best thing though was a wonderful video installation, and it’s not often I say that, by Guido Van der Werve tracing a 1000 mile triathlon between a church in Warsaw where Chopin’s heart is buried and Pere Lachaise in Paris where his body is laid to rest. The video had stunning music and took it’s time to follow the artists journey. It also added in places where Alexander the Great had lived, I’m not too sure why but they were beautiful too. I wish I’d had time to watch the whole thing which was about an hour long.

Closed on 10 December 2017

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