Chinese painting has many faces: landscapes, religious and mythological subjects, genre scenes and portraits. A distinction has long been made between commissioned works executed by professional painters and those created by educated "amateurs", which have always been held in much higher esteem than the former. This "literary painting" has many manifestations, but is basically characterized by a remarkable continuity and a restrained, quiet language. Not infrequently, color is completely dispensed with, the world in them appears solely in delicate traces of ink. For viewers, such works offer great challenges. And so it is hardly surprising that, unlike Chinese porcelain, for example, painting from the Middle Kingdom only found its way into Western collections much later and to a much lesser extent.
Even in the Museum Angewandte Kunst, whose extensive Asian collections date back to the late 19th century, Chinese painting remained a niche topic for a long time. However, around 60 works, some of which are highly significant, are now part of the museum's collection. Due to their sensitivity to light, they are only shown rarely and for a limited time. All of the selected pictures were scientifically analyzed in a multi-year research project starting in 2020. To mark the completion of the project, the previously largely unknown Chinese Painting Collection will now be presented at the Museum Angewandte Kunst from Saturday, March 23 to Sunday, July 14 in an exhibition curated by Stephan von der Schulenburg. At the same time, all the works will be accessible to the public in the new online catalog of the Museum Angewandte Kunst's collection with precise descriptions, transcriptions and translations of all inscriptions. In this way, the quiet and multi-layered language of these works of art can be fully experienced.
Access to the collection digitally will be available from Friday, March 22, from 6 p.m. at sammlung-digital.museumangewandtekunst.de.
