Facing the World. From Rembrandt to Ai Weiwei

The self-portrait is a genuinely European genre of the visual arts and one of the greatest topicality: whether the late medieval likeness in the mirror, proud self-representation in the Baroque or the depiction of the sentient self in Romanticism – one’s own identity in the picture opens up a thematic field that extends as far as the phenomenon of today’s selfie, shared millions of times over on the worldwide web. Exhibition and catalogue were conceived as an international collaboration between the museums in Karlsruhe, Lyon and Edinburgh. A compilation of more than 100 works from their collections (paintings, drawings, prints and videos) demonstrates the manifold forms of human self-interrogation and self-presentation.

Artists: Palma Vecchio, Vincenzo Campi, Simon Vouet, Jacob Marrell, George Jamesone, Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, Jan Lievens, Jacques Stella, Abraham van Beyeren, Gabriel Metsu, Samuel van Hoogstraaten, Hyacinthe Rigaud, Joseph Vivien, Jean-Antoine Watteau, Alexis Grimou, Alan Ramsay, David Martin, Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki, Alexander Runciman, Pierre Révoil, Fleury Richard, Friedrich Mosbrugger, Daniel Fohr, Georg Philipp Schmitt, Marie Ellenrieder, Sir David Wilie, Jean-Marie Jacomin, Antoine Duclaux, Claude Bonnefond, Sir Henry Raeburn, Johann Wilhelm Schirmer, Claude Lavergne, Franz Xaver Winterhalter, Hermann Winterhalter, Guido Philipp Schmitt, Michel Dumas, Louis Janmot, Anselm Feuerbach, Gustave Courbet, David Octavius Hill, Robert Adamson, John Muir Wood, Hippolyte Flandrin, Louis Lamothe, James Nasmyth, Hans Thoma, Jean-Baptiste Frénet, Henri Fantin-Latour, Éva Gonzalès, Eugène Carrière, Auguste Morisot, Jean Carriès, Max Klinger, James Ensor, Edvard Munch, William Strang, Lucien Simon, Stanley Cursiter, Imogen Cunningham, Lovis Corinth, Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell, Henri Matisse, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Ludwig Meidner, Erich Heckel, Paul Klee, Max Beckmann, Duncan Grant, Georg Scholz, Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita, Wilhelm Schnarrenberger, Karl Hubbuch, Cecile Walton, Gino Severini, Alexander Kanoldt, Oskar Kokoschka, Lee Miller, WOLS, Edith Tudor-Hart, Robert Henderson Blyth, Fritz Klemm, Joseph Beuys, Marina Abramović, Ulrike Rosenbach, John Patrick Byrne, Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe, Jan Fabre, Alison Watt, John Bellany, Helen Chadwick, Angela Palmer, Tracey Emin, John Coplans, Douglas Gordon, Bruce Nauman, Max Schoendorff, Sarah Lucas, Annie Lennox, Allan Martin, Ken Currie, Ai Weiwei, Peter Weibel/Matthias Gommel, Bernd Lintermann/Joachim Tesch

Exhibitions:
Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, 31/10/2015–30/1/2016
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, 26/3–26/6/2016
Scottish National Galleries Edinburgh, 16/7–16/10/2016