Considering the Collection & King Vulture An Insert by Willem de Rooij

Considering the Collection

The first presentation of Considering the Collection shows master pieces from the collection of the Paintings Gallery in a new constellation focusing on works from the Italian, French and Spanish schools. This focus was prompted by the publication of a comprehensive inventory catalogue devoted to these fields and composed by Martina Fleischer, which will be presented in the course of the year with the title Italienische, französische und spanische Gemälde. Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien.

Works by Willem van Aelst, Agostino Beltrano, known as Agostinello, Francesco d’Antonio, Jan Asselijn, Hendrik van Balen, Herri met de Bles, Peeter Boel, Hieronymus Bosch, Jan Both, Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi, known as Botticelli, Sébastien Bourdon, Dieric Bouts, Adriaen Brouwer, Galeazzo Campi, Juan Carreño de Miranda, Joos van Cleve, Gustave Courbet, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Gaspard de Crayer, Joseph Dorffmeister, Karel Dujardin, Anthony van Dyck, Antonio da Fabriano, Barent Fabritius, Gregorio de Ferrari, Francesco Raibolini, known as Francia, Jan Fyt, Corrado Giaquinto, Luca Giordano, Hans Baldung Grien, Dirck Hals, Jan Davidsz. de Heem, Jan van der Heyden, Ambrosius Holbein, Jacob Jordaens, Bernardo Keilhau, known as Monsù Bernardo, Johann Baptist von Lampi the Younger, Johannes Lingelbach, Jan Liss, Andrea Locatelli, Claude Gelée, known as Lorrain, Nicola Malinconico, Girolamo Mirola, Joos de Momper the younger, Jan de Momper, Marco Palmezzano, Cornelis van Poelenburch, Mattia Preti, Francesco de Rosa, Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob van Ruisdael, Isaack van Ruysdael, Johann Martin Schmidt, known as Kremser Schmidt, Pierre Subleyras, Jan Cornelisz. Vermeyen, Cornelis de Vos, Jan Wildens, et al.

Curated by Claudia Koch


King Vulture
An Insert by Willem de Rooij

In recent years, following his large-scale research on Melchior d’Hondecoeter for his 2010 exhibition Intolerance at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Willem de Rooij has turned his attention to d’Hondecoeters’ cousin Jan Weenix and to the relations they had with their pupil Dirk Valkenburg. De Rooij’s researches always look at historical phenomena from a post-colonial perspective and at classism-related information that is transmitted through images. Likewise significant are allegorical allusions, formal techniques and practices, and parameters on the basis of which we look at and interpret works against the background of present-day discourse: the issues discussed include the original, the copy, certain ‘formulas’ and iteration techniques, and the conditions governing the exhibiting and loaning/travelling of artworks /commodities and living ‘material’ in a globalized world. In the installation King Vulture of 2022, de Rooij took up several of these elements. One was the decision, prompted by certain conditions resulting from the operation of the museum, to have the photographic reproductions of the paintings, marked with visible colour cards, copied by Yaohui Zhu and the team of the Yunxi Art Studio, Dafen (China). At the Paintings Gallery, this thread is picked up in the artist’s selection of works by Jan Weenix, Melchior d’Hondecoeter and Dirk Valkenburg from the Academy holdings and other Viennese collections, which he puts into a specific spatial constellation.

Curated by Sabine Folie