DOI issue:
Nr. 3-4
DOI article:Kilian, Joanna; Kilian, Adam: A Stage Design for Caravaggio
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18945#0258
an exhibition is always a special event, since the space in a museum’s exhibition
halls is after all quite different from a theatre stage.
The spectator in the theatre views the entire staged scene from a single
place. The actor and the sets create continual movement for the action of the
drama in space and time. The script and the music are embodied in a kind of
moving picture. In a museum exhibition things are different. Works of art, such
as paintings and sculptures, are only superficially immobile, since we the
viewers move and shift position, changing our viewpoint, approaching and
retreating. We ourselves choose to view either a fragment or the entirety of the
work, “framing” the space. It would seem that we direct ourselves as
participants in an encounter with the work. An exhibited item such as
a sculpture changes its spatiality when the direction of focus changes. The
phenomenon of illusory movement occurs, as it does in outer space with
relation to the moon, the sun, and the stars. Perhaps Ptolemy was right after all.
The differences between a theatre and a museum are obvious; perhaps that
is why it is worth trying to change the rules, to attempt to bring certain theatre
techniques to the art of exhibition design. The viewer can be led imperceptibly
down a particular path, space can be created, walls can be narrowed or
expanded, obstructions created (in order that they be avoided), rooms can be
darkened or illuminated. A particular mood can be created, the surrounding
environment can be changed, we can be transported to another epoch, even leave
the ordinary world and enter the realm of the sacred. Works of art in a museum
are like beautiful butterflies pinned to walls. In our design we strove to create
an allusion to the original places for which the works were intended. These
masterpieces were created for particular settings, church chapels, the palaces of
aristocrats, or bourgeois houses. Museums are their second home, created in
order to contain works of art collected by connoisseurs or brought together out
of the necessity of enabling the public to view them in a single place.
The central point and the inspirational heart of the. exhibition in the
National Museum in Warsaw was one of the most outstanding religious works
in the history of European painting, a work of unusually dramatic power, in
which a most expressive light brings out the contrasts of intense blues, reds,
ochre’s and greens. This is a painting whose artistic language is inseparable
from the mysticism of Caravaggio’s era, the era of the Council of Trent and the
post-Tridentine Counter Reformation.
The facade of the National Museum was draped with a huge expanse of
material (10 x 8 meters). Visible from afar in the depths of the museum
courtyard, the purple fabric trimmed with gold velvet and decorated with the
Vatican coat-of-arms announced the visit of an extraordinary guest,
a masterpiece. It summoned the Italian tradition of festivals, triumphs, parades,
and religious processions, during which the facades of palaces, houses and
churches were decorated with ornate textiles, the damask and velvet material
contributing splendour to the events.
“Caravaggio’s Déposition - Masterpiece of the Vatican Pinacoteca and
Various Aspects of Caravaggism”, the title of the exhibition, appeared on
248
halls is after all quite different from a theatre stage.
The spectator in the theatre views the entire staged scene from a single
place. The actor and the sets create continual movement for the action of the
drama in space and time. The script and the music are embodied in a kind of
moving picture. In a museum exhibition things are different. Works of art, such
as paintings and sculptures, are only superficially immobile, since we the
viewers move and shift position, changing our viewpoint, approaching and
retreating. We ourselves choose to view either a fragment or the entirety of the
work, “framing” the space. It would seem that we direct ourselves as
participants in an encounter with the work. An exhibited item such as
a sculpture changes its spatiality when the direction of focus changes. The
phenomenon of illusory movement occurs, as it does in outer space with
relation to the moon, the sun, and the stars. Perhaps Ptolemy was right after all.
The differences between a theatre and a museum are obvious; perhaps that
is why it is worth trying to change the rules, to attempt to bring certain theatre
techniques to the art of exhibition design. The viewer can be led imperceptibly
down a particular path, space can be created, walls can be narrowed or
expanded, obstructions created (in order that they be avoided), rooms can be
darkened or illuminated. A particular mood can be created, the surrounding
environment can be changed, we can be transported to another epoch, even leave
the ordinary world and enter the realm of the sacred. Works of art in a museum
are like beautiful butterflies pinned to walls. In our design we strove to create
an allusion to the original places for which the works were intended. These
masterpieces were created for particular settings, church chapels, the palaces of
aristocrats, or bourgeois houses. Museums are their second home, created in
order to contain works of art collected by connoisseurs or brought together out
of the necessity of enabling the public to view them in a single place.
The central point and the inspirational heart of the. exhibition in the
National Museum in Warsaw was one of the most outstanding religious works
in the history of European painting, a work of unusually dramatic power, in
which a most expressive light brings out the contrasts of intense blues, reds,
ochre’s and greens. This is a painting whose artistic language is inseparable
from the mysticism of Caravaggio’s era, the era of the Council of Trent and the
post-Tridentine Counter Reformation.
The facade of the National Museum was draped with a huge expanse of
material (10 x 8 meters). Visible from afar in the depths of the museum
courtyard, the purple fabric trimmed with gold velvet and decorated with the
Vatican coat-of-arms announced the visit of an extraordinary guest,
a masterpiece. It summoned the Italian tradition of festivals, triumphs, parades,
and religious processions, during which the facades of palaces, houses and
churches were decorated with ornate textiles, the damask and velvet material
contributing splendour to the events.
“Caravaggio’s Déposition - Masterpiece of the Vatican Pinacoteca and
Various Aspects of Caravaggism”, the title of the exhibition, appeared on
248