Thilo Westermann: Souvenir de Baden-Baden

Writing, dotting, exposing and the montage of time - Thilo Westermann's poetic survey between nature, scientific exploration and history

"Souvenir de Baden-Baden" by Thilo Westermann provides an insight into the letters that the artist and art historian has been writing to Napoleon's adopted daughter and former Grand Duchess of Baden, Stéphanie de Beauharnais (1789-1860), since 2018. As if she were a living art collector, he wrote to her about his work. The handwritten letters go far beyond discussing his own work: they deal with political and social events of recent years and sometimes take the form of cultural studies treatises, for example on the colonial background to the garden at Malmaison Palace near Paris or the consequences of Napoleon's expansionist policies. Westermann's own media are reverse glass paintings and photomontages. With his "Correspondance avec Stéphanie", he now presents a work that is as precise as it is perceptive, critically reflecting on history and the present. Text contributions by renowned scholars such as Markus A. Castor (Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte Paris) introduce Westermann's oeuvre; Dominique de Font-Réaulx (Louvre Paris) examines the interface between painting and photography; Magali Nachtergael (Université Bordeaux-Montaigne) and Anne Reverseau (UCLouvain) investigate the relevance of the written word between visual art and literature; Harriet Zilch (Kunsthalle Nürnberg) concludes by asking what it would mean if we could think of history in a circular rather than a linear way and thus continue to add to our image of the past. Full-page illustrations and reproductions of the handwritten letters emphasise the bibliophile aspect of this project, in which previously unpublished letters by Stéphanie de Beauharnais herself are also published for the first time.

Exhibition: Thilo Westermann et l'art de dessiner sous verre
Vitromusée Romont, Suisse: 6/3 - 25/9/2022