Piranesi and the Modern
The exhibition "Piranesi and the Modern" explores the importance of the 18th century artist and architect Giovanni Battista Piranesis (1720–1778) right through to the present.
The exhibition also extends to the National Museum – Architecture's vault
The Italian artist Piranesi is best known for his etchings depicting Rome, fantastical buildings, vertiginous staircases, and crumbling ruins. His architectural visions helped to define ideas of modernity in various artistic disciplines in the 20th century and are still influential today.
Innovations such as abstraction in painting, montage in film, and strong contrasts in photography are all indebted to Piranesi’s art. They make him fundamentally modern, just as they make modernity “Piranesian”.
Especially significant are Piranesi’s Imaginary Prisons (1761) and his map of the Field of Mars in Rome, Campo Marzio (1762). Artists, architects, filmmakers, and writers have found inspiration in Piranese’s labyrinthine passages and endless spaces, which seem to reach into both the outer world and our inner selves.
...the Prisons are remarkable as being the nearest eighteenth-century approach to abstract art
Aldous Huxley, Prisons, 1949
The exhibition shows the connections between Piranese’s etchings and photography, painting, architecture, and film from the early 20th century to the present. Piranesi is shown alongside works by Pablo Picasso, Robert Delaunay, Ragnhild Keyser, Alvin Coburn, Sergei Eisenstein, Le Corbusier, Rem Koolhaas, Julie Mehretu, and others.
Utstillingen viser forbindelsene mellom Piranesis etsninger og fotografi, maleri, arkitektur og film fra 1900-tallets begynnelse til i dag. Piranesi vises side om side med verk av kunstnere som Pablo Picasso, Robert Delaunay og Julie Mehretu, arkitektene Le Corbusier og Rem Koolhaas, og banebrytende fotografer og filmskapere som Alvin Langdon Coburn og Sergej Eisenstein.
Explore in 3d
Presseomtale
– Bredspektret, lærerik mønstring i tråd med det samlede Nasjonalmuseets oppdrag
– En av de beste arkitekturutstillinger jeg har sett
– En usedvanlig bra utstilling
– Piranesi er verdt strevet
– En triumf
– Assosiasjonene går – antagelig somintendert – i retning av en hel rekke filmer hvor arkitekturen brer seg utover med kraftig sublimerende effekt: Star Wars(1977), Blade Runner (1982), Akira (1988) og så videre.
– Piranesi come Jules Verne
