Johann Heinrich Füssli's famous painting "Der Nachtmahr" (1790/91), a showpiece of the Goethe Museum in Frankfurt, is the focus of the show, which turns to the night side of the psyche with the theme "Dream and Madness".
Füssli's "Nachtmahr" combines motifs from art, literature, myth, popular belief and medicine with his own obsessions; in this way the bizarre figuration becomes a timeless projection surface for nightmare, vision, eroticism, chills and delusion.
On the basis of more than 150 exhibits-paintings, drawings, prints, books, and films-we illuminate for the first time the genesis of this fascinating image and trace its reception in various media, which continues to this day.
The lively echo of the "Nachtmahr" in caricature in particular is demonstrated by a wealth of satirical sheets from the Wilhelm Busch - German Museum of Caricature and Drawing, the exhibition's cooperation partner. The "Nachtmahr" also provides a link to the pioneers of Gothic Romanticism, to Polidori's "The Vampyre", Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", Nodier's "Smarra" or E.T.A. Hoffmann's "Sandmann". Horst Janssen's etching sequence "Alp" in particular stands for modernism's examination of Füssli.
The cinematic adaptation is documented by film excerpts from Murnau's "Nosferatu" to the current "Nachtmahr" by Akiz.
Source and further information: http://www.goethehaus-frankfurt.de/ausstellungen_veranstaltungen/ausstellungen/wechselausstellung/fusslis-nachtmahr-traum-und-wahnsinn/
