Art is almost as old as people, and at our best, we seek to protect and preserve it wherever we find it. The older it is, the more precious it is, because
December 30, 2020 • Noemi Smolik on “Russian Avant-Garde at the Museum Ludwig: Original and Fake”
View of “Russian Avant-Garde at the Museum Ludwig: Original and Fake,” 2020–21. Two works attributed as Alexandra Exter’s
Kostümentwurf “Herodes,” 1921 and 1917 respectively.
WHAT HAPPENS when a painting is unmasked as a forgery? The colors, the forms, and the brushwork remain the same, and yet, everything has changed. The spell of authenticity, related to what Walter Benjamin called an artwork’s “aura,” has broken. A taboo-shattering exhibition organized by Rita Kersting and Petra Mand at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, titled “Russian Avant-Garde at the Museum Ludwig: Original and Fake” and on through February 7, seeks to pick up the pieces, provocatively pairing
Cave Paintings and Sculptures
A map of decorated caves in western Europe with the names of a few notable or outlying sites. The broken line encloses caves decorated in the distinctive Mediterranean Style which seems to have been little influenced by the master artists of France and Spain. It often features simple, stark animal representations together with quite elaborate geometrical designs. There are important caves decorated in the Mediterranean style in southeast Spain, the Ardèche canyons in southern France, the heel of Italy, and in Sicily.
There are now some 200 Painted caves known in southern France and northern Spain. Several new discoveries in the remote Spanish Basque country appear to be closing the gap between these two main regional groups which, in any case, certainly share many correspondences of style and theme.