Skip to main content
0
Info
Theme world

(Hi)stories

Using pictures to tell a story? This technique has a long tradition in art history! Contemporary artists also tell stories in their works. Which historical or fictional events, myths, literary texts, or indeed personal stories are processed in artworks? And can materials also reveal or conceal stories?

Do you sometimes wish for a different ending?

There are countless ways to tell the same story using different images. Historical events, myths, fairy tales, cultural history—they all accompany us throughout our lives. They tell stories and history, often in different ways. Can you think of an historical event that you believe was crucial to your life today? Would you dare to illustrate it? What would you put in the foreground? Does your imagination sometimes continue your favorite stories, or even alter them?

Artwork Factory

Artwork Cy Twombly, Lepanto Cycle, 2001

The “Lepanto” cycle is one of Cy Twombly’s major works and consists of twelve paintings that are exhibited permanently in a separate room at Museum Brandhorst. Vibrant hues in a broad palette of yellows, reds, turquoise and aquamarine define the drama of the monumental paintings. The action on the canvases intensifies, all the artist’s painting tools and painterly gestures are used expressively.

Artist Factory

Artist Nicole Eisenman

was born in Verdun, France, in 1965. They live and work in Brooklyn.

Artwork Factory

Artwork Lucy McKenzie, Rebecca, 2019

A painted mannequin is at the center of this picture. She is placed in an interior full of specially-designed objects. Marble, wooden and silky materials. A book about the dramatic staging of fashion. And a map of Glasgow, Lucy McKenzie’s birthplace, which is hung as wallpaper.

Which stories remain particularly vivid?

When someone tells a story, it doesn’t necessarily need to be important for many people, or remembered for a long time. Personal stories based on one’s own experiences, or pretending to be, often have greater effectiveness or reach. They touch us more, arouse more empathy and compassion in us. Sometimes we can identify with them. Some open our eyes to social structures and inequalities, to the perspectives of others.

Artwork Factory

Artwork Wolfgang Tillmans, Buchholz & Buchholz Installation 1993, 1993

This room represents an exact replica of the Buchholz & Buchholz Gallery, where Wolfgang Tillmans exhibited his photographs in 1993. Here the artist tested a form of presentation in which photographs, photocopies, and reproductions of magazine pages stand side by side on an equal footing and are distributed throughout the room.

Artist Factory

Artist Arthur Jafa

was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, USA, in 1960.

Artwork Factory

Artwork Arthur Jafa, Monster, 1988/2019

Arthur Jafa points the camera directly at his mirror image. He stares at us with his penetrating gaze. The artist developed the photo at human scale, thus confronting the self-portrait even more directly with the person viewing it. What is notable for his photography is his work on developing sensitive techniques for representing black and dark tones on film. Throughout the image, black and white flow into one another.

Who is telling what to whom? And how?

When stories are told about others, storytellers have a lot of power. As storytellers, we influence the perception of the listeners or viewers. Some artworks from the Brandhorst Collection deal with the way history and stories are told in the media. Do they belong there? Have you noticed the kind of languages and images that keep popping up in the news or on social media?

Artwork Factory

Artwork Cady Noland, Tanya as a Bandit, 1989

Almost life-size, the artist Cady Noland transfers a photo of a young woman onto an aluminum display by means of silkscreen. Holding a machine gun in her hands, the figure stands in our way. The photo comes from a newspaper, the caption becomes a pedestal.

Artwork Factory

Artwork Lucy McKenzie, Rebecca, 2019

A painted mannequin is at the center of this picture. She is placed in an interior full of specially-designed objects. Marble, wooden and silky materials. A book about the dramatic staging of fashion. And a map of Glasgow, Lucy McKenzie’s birthplace, which is hung as wallpaper.

Artwork Factory

Artwork Andy Warhol, Triple Elvis, 1963

The photo of the singer Elvis Presley in the role of a gangster is the basis for this work. Andy Warhol repeated the same motif three times on a silver canvas. This repetition was made possible by the silkscreen technique, in which Andy Warhol saw many advantages for his artistic work. The pale figure of Elvis stands out against the metallic background as if in an old film or fog.

Does history tell us more about past events or about ourselves?

Historiography wants to record the past as accurately as possible. But history can also tell or contain made-up things. Therefore, there is often no such thing as one, single history. It is not uncommon for fantasies and actual events to be mixed. There are often large gaps in our knowledge about past times and the history changes with this knowledge. Or even depending on who is examining and narrating it, and what goals that person has. That is even more the case with social or personal events. Is it possible, therefore, to speak of a true story or history, or does it necessarily depend on the voice that tells it? What artistic techniques do artists use to tell a story?

Artist Factory

Artist Andy Warhol

was born in Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, USA in 1928 and died in New York in 1987.

Artwork Factory

Artwork Cy Twombly, Nini’s Painting, 1971

In this work, Cy Twombly’s “doodles” with chalk, crayon, and pencil almost look like writing. We even believe we can read individual letters and words from the lines—for example the names Cy and Nini. But the curved lines do not reveal any message.

Artwork Factory

Artwork Atelier E.B (Lucy McKenzie und Beca Lipscombe), Faux Shop, 2018

“Faux Shop” is a sculptural installation and at the same time a shop window for a fashion collection. The shop window mimics a women's clothing store. Lucy McKenzie painted the marbled parts of the installation herself in an illusionistic manner. Like moving ghosts, the clothes were either pinned to the walls, placed in the display, or suspended dynamically from wires. The clothes are from Atelier E.B, a collaborative fashion label and research studio that Lucy McKenzie runs with designer Beca Lipscombe.