CASE STUDIES ON RUBENS BY SLAWOMIR ELSNER
There is no doubt that the bold pictorial worlds of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) are still fascinating today and some of them have lost none of their topicality.
The draughtsman Slawomir Elsner (*1976) turns his enquiring eye to the masterpiece “Honeysuckle Bower” by the Flemish Baroque master Ruben, a true favourite of the Alte Pinakothek, in order to question it artistically in his project Case Studies on Rubens at the Pinakothek der Moderne. In a suite of 17 graphic paraphrases – each in the impressive size of the painting of 178 × 136.5 cm – he raises the question of the relevance and significance of the original, like an empirical case study. In his graphic-analytical research, he goes so far as to evoke the motif before our eyes as a memory between image and likeness in ever new and different ways, challenging our perception and memory of Rubens’ painting.