The sunsets can be amazing. The dazzling and fleeting display of changing light and color has always fascinated people. Many have tried to immortalize this show with a camera and with it the emotions it arouses. Only to be disappointed that the colors on screen don’t even remotely match what your eyes saw or because the timing was off and you missed pressing the shutter button at just the right moment. Because the colors during sunset change every second.
That doesn’t stop most people from giving it a try, though, as evidenced by the more than 300 million Instagram posts with the hashtag “sunset.”
Annett Reckert, the curator of the Kunsthalle Bremen, is no different. She too eagerly takes out her smartphone to take some photos at sunset. In her opinion, however, the popularity of the sunset motif as a mass phenomenon in amateur photography has not yet been adequately recognized in museums. That’s why you came up with the concept for a new exhibition that “Sunset. Greetings to the Setting Sun” names. The exhibition explores the allure of sunset in 120 works, from the Romantic period to the present day.
It is important for Reckert to point out that the exhibition does not offer an insight into the history of art. Rather, he wants viewers to ask themselves what the subject is doing to them: why an impressive sunset makes us reach for the camera or smartphone in an attempt to capture what we see; because we find that some images of a sunset fall into the category of art, while others are dismissed as kitsch. And he also asks what these artworks tell us about air pollution and climate change.
A daily reminder of death
Reckert has his own theories as to why we react so strongly to sunsets: “It’s about our mortality. Sunset is a daily memento mori, a reminder of death. You will go too. Another day has passed and perhaps some have a residual fear that the sun may never rise again,” Reckert told DW.
An example of the theme of death in the exhibition is Mourning, a 1902 work by Anna Ancher, in which two figures – a veiled old woman and a naked young woman – kneel before a cross in the open countryside at sunset.
Other works evoke spiritual associations with sunsets, such as “Woman before the Setting Sun,” a small 1818 painting by Caspar David Friedrich, the great German painter of the Romantic era.
A sunset as a religious experience: “Woman before the setting sun” by Caspar David Friedrich (c. 1818)
The image of the woman seen from behind, looking across a landscape at the rays of a setting sun, is often interpreted as a symbol of a religious experience, says Reckert. Friedrich’s works have repeatedly sparked debates about art versus kitsch. The sunset motif is often dismissed as kitsch, both on greeting cards and in cheap hotel decorations. Curator Reckert has deliberately avoided any attempt to classify the artworks on display as high or low art. He says visitors must make this distinction.
It refers to a large 1871 work by Johann Wilhelm Julius Köhnholz showing a sunset in the Bavarian Alps. When it was acquired by the Kunsthalle in 1892, the press lambasted it as kitsch and the picture disappeared into the vaults – until now. It is now on display at the Bremen exhibition among works by well-known artists such as William Turner and overtly more commercial items such as a collection of tourist postcards and works by Andy Warholspecially commissioned for the Marquette Hotel in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Claude Monet and air pollution
Claude Monet: Parliament, Sunset (1904, oil on canvas)
Another famous sunset is Claude Monet’s 1904 “The Houses of Parliament, Sunset.” For curator Reckert, however, the work’s dreamy haze is more a sign of how polluted the London sky was at the time. “The smog in the sky creates intense sunsets, and obviously that’s something very deceptive,” he says, adding that this is also addressed in the exhibition: “There is a whole range of work that deals with the climatic aspect. it is important at this moment, when we are surrounded by these images of doom, to look at these images with such critical considerations.”
Alongside these more serious considerations, however, Reckert would like the exhibition to evoke some of the same pleasure that sunsets evoke: “I hope that this winter, with all the bad news and the lights out in the cities, visitors find their … can warm the soul and that the exhibit conveys sensual pleasures and moments of fulfilment.”
Adaptation from English: Verena Greb, Petra Lambeck
