Five hundred years after the celebrated artist Albrecht Dürer produced his Melencolia I engraving, the historic work is the centrepiece of an exhibition at The University of Queensland Art Museum.
“Since the Renaissance, melancholy has been invoked as a condition, perspective, or mood, and inhabited figures, objects and landscapes,” said Dr Andrea Bubenik, an art history lecturer at UQ.
Dr Bubenik has curated the ‘Five Centuries of Melancholia’ exhibition at the UQ Art Museum in partnership with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (Europe 1100–1800). She is a specialist in Northern Renaissance art and the art and science of Albrecht Dürer. “I relish the opportunity to mark the 500th anniversary of one of the most enigmatic and written-about images in the history of art,” Dr Bubenik said.
“Understanding the ways historical images stake their claims in the present is an essential task for art historians and curators, museums and art galleries. This exhibition explores the iconic status and visual reception of Dürer’s engraving, as well as the idea of melancholia in and of itself. As an art historian, I find it fascinating to trace the creative prominence and trajectory of melancholia through time and to discover the influence of Dürer’s engraving in artworks from the 16th century right up to the present day”, says Dr Bubenik.
However, Dr Bubenik acknowledges it is difficult to qualify a universal experience of melancholia: “Its interpretation has shifted dramatically over time, and the modern tendency is to associate melancholy with depression,” she said. “Melancholy hasn’t always been viewed as an affliction or stigmatised in the way depression sometimes is today. In fact, melancholy has a history of being interpreted positively by those who reflect and comment on the creative enterprise. This exhibition demonstrates that melancholy can be contemplative, self-reflective and a creative state, as well as a concept used to frame experience in a useful, and at times, very positive way” explains Dr Bubenik.
‘Five Centuries of Melancholia’ comprises 46 works by 33 artists drawn from national and state institutions and regional, university and private collections.
UQ Art Museum
Until 30 November 2014
Queensland
Albrecht Dürer, Melencolia I, 1514, engraving on paper, 24.1 x 18.7cm
Courtesy the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
