Do or Die - The Human Condition in Painting and Photography
Teutloff Photo + Video Collection meets Wallraf

This exhibition deals with separation and society, with relationships, elective affinities and chance encounters.

First of all, I would like to mention a process of separation, the pain of which is still felt. In 2001, with the opening of the new Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in the building designed by Oswald Mathias Ungers, the geographical separation from the Museum Ludwig was finally consummated. The Wallraf had always exhibited art of what was at the time the present day, and with the collection of Josef Haubrich in 1946 and that of Peter and Irene Ludwig in 1976 large and important accumulations of modern art found a place in the immediate vicinity of Lochner, Dürer, Rembrandt and van Gogh. The exponential expansion of contemporary art, along with the addition of Ludwig’s Picasso collection, however, finally forced the divorce of the old masters from the new. Cologne was not alone in this development, on the contrary. In many cities, the modern departments have lost their arthistorical foundation, or, to put it another way, the continuity linking the old works with the new has been broken. Museums where visitors can still proceed from theMiddle Ages to modernity under one roof have become the exception.

This is regrettable, and hence, for us at the Wallraf-Richartz- Museum, it is not just a self-indulgent game when, time and again, we leave the familiar field of easel painting and engraving to take a bold leap into the modern age. For after all, separation means that when old and new do meet, the encounter can be experienced with greater awareness. In recent years there have been several such encounters. In 2006 we collaborated with the Academy of Media Arts Cologne to exhibit works by the holders of the Spiridon-Neven-DuMont Prize (“Echo”). In 2007, under the title “Hotel California,” we presented works by the art photographers Desiree Dolron and ThomasWrede in dialogue with medieval martyrdom scenes and Baroque depictions of Paradise. In 2008 theWallraf was the venue for an exhibition by the artists who had received the Nam June Paik Award from the Kunststiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen. And now we are playing host to the Teutloff Collection. For us this temporary gift is not only welcome, but also provides us with an opportunity once more to take a new leap into less familiar territory.

Lutz Teutloff collects with passion, but not at random. His photographs and videos have as their theme human beings and their bodily experiences. The works in the collection are, sometimes, extreme and disturbing. By confronting them with paintings from our own rich collection, we postulate theses that at first sight may strike many as banal: 1. art knows no temporal boundaries; 2. artists are true to their subject matter; and 3. the condition humaine remains the most important theme. From the starting point of these theses, we hope that readers and visitors will fan out in all directions.

What the works, which span the period between the 15th and 21st centuries, evince in the way of formal similarities and differences is revealed by attentive and patient observation. You may find the comparisons obvious, you may find them stimulating and original, or you may find them merely far-fetched. All those involved in this project are, however, certain that the exhibition in its totality offers an abundance of highly interesting pictorial material that stimulates entirely new ways of seeing pictures of the human being and the human body. We wish you an enjoyable visual experience.

The catalogue provides a number of aids to this experience. The curator Roland Krischel presents a critical examination of photographic theory, addressing the pictorial comparisons directly. Bazon Brock looks at the cyclical development of the theme from life to death and back. A crucial source of inspiration for the internal structure of the exhibition and its appearance wasMark Z. Danielewski’s novel House of Leaves. We therefore bring together not only pictures, but also authors who have a great deal to say to us. We are grateful not just to them, but also of course to the artists. I should like to single out in this connection, as representative of all of them, Hendrik Kerstens, who allowed us to use the photograph of his daughter as our theme picture. Daniel Schäfers and his team were masterly in their implementation of the idea of illusionist architecture. Perspective lines separate the pictures and at the same time unite them in a spatial optical illusion that compensates for the differences in size. The designer Bärbel Maxisch has found convincing solutions for a complex subject. Kerstin Ludolph and Katja Durchholz of Hirmer Verlag have produced an exemplary catalogue.

Among our own staff, we should like to thank Bruno Breuer, Berni Cimera, Götz Czymmek, Karin Heidemann, Isabella Ionescu, Tomoyoshi Iwamatsu, Thomas Ketelsen, Thomas Klinke, Ester Mönnink, Tobias Nagel, David Owsianik, Grzegorz Polecki, Caroline von Saint-George, Iris Schaefer, Elisabeth Schmidt-Altmann, Stephanie Sonntag, Stefan Swertz and Barbara Trier, along with Jörg Streichert from the Verein der Freunde, as well as the staff of the Rheinisches Bildarchiv.

Thanks are also due to Christian Alexander Bauer, Thomas Böhm, Warren Frazier, Regina Hundeck, Elizabeth Kerr, Kurt Steinhausen and SabineWeichel for their assistance in a variety of fields.

And not least we must say thank you to Lutz Teutloff. It was his idea, and it is his photographs that have taught us so much about the art of the Old Masters and about ourselves.

Andreas Blühm
Cologne, June 2010