Frankenstein / Eine Uni ein Buch: Max Ernst, Surrealism and the Monster
Tuesday, October 9, 2018 5:00 pm – 8:30 pm EDT/GMT-4Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg, Schlossstrasse 70, 14059 Berlin
Lecture by Geoff Lehman (Art History faculty, Bard College Berlin) with an introduction by Kyllikki Zacharias (curator Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg, Nationalgalerie)
Bard College Berlin and the Sammlung Scharf-Gestenberg invite you on Tuesday, October 9, 2018 to an encounter & presentation in the frame of the Frankenstein / Eine Uni ein Buch Fall 2018 program.
Max Ernst's art resonates in provocative ways with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and its depiction of the "monster." His collages that combine scientific illustrations with poetic, irrational, and unsettling imagery often invoke the monstrous in the context of scientific research. His contributions to a broader Surrealist engagement, accentuating the uncanny and the dreamlike, evoke an experience of the monstrous that could easily slip into the world of Shelley's novel.
With the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg's collection as a focus, this presentation will examine the role of the monstrous in the unstable interchange between science and the irrational. We will consider the monster and from this view explore the ambiguous boundary between organism and machine. In Ernst's pictures and in Shelley's novel, what are the encounters with the anthropomorphic machine, with the uncanny double, or with the fragmentation and reconstitution of the human body? Is there a connection between horror and (sexual) pleasure?
The presentation by Geoff Lehman, followed by an open discussion, may reveal some answers, or not.
Program
5:00pm - Encounter with selected works from the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg
6:00pm - Drinks
6:30pm - Welcome Kyllikki Zacharias, Curator of the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg followed by a presentation by Geoff Lehman, faculty Bard College Berlin
7:15pm - Open Discussion
8:00pm - Drinks
Note:
All Bard College Berlin students can enter the museum at 5:00pm for free on condition that they are registered. All other guests must buy an entrance ticket.
Attendance of the presentation at 6:30pm is free for all.
Date & time: Tuesday, October 9, 2018, from 5:00pm
Venue: Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg
Schlossstrasse 70
14059 Berlin
Email: [email protected]