Ulrike Theusner - A Rake's Progress

We warmly invite you and your friends to the opening with the artist on Saturday, November 29 at 9 PM.

Dr. Ulrike Bestgen from Neues Museum Weimar will speak.

Music: Silke Gonska and Christoph Theusner

In 1733, William Hogarth began his work on “A Rake’s Progress” – a series of paintings and engravings that narrate the downfall of the extravagant merchant heir Tom Rakwell. Hogarth intended to provide a moral commentary on English society in the mid-18th century, but he created a timeless piece. It inspired Igor Stravinsky to compose an opera in 1951 and a few years later, David Hockney to create a cycle of the same name.

Ulrike Theusner's reinterpretation of the theme includes a series of eight large-scale drawings and a corresponding collection of etchings.

“The rake becomes a metaphor for an isolated generation: frozen in a plethora of possibilities, oversaturated by relentless distractions in an endless flood of information, growing more foolish despite the easily accessible knowledge. ... Abundance turns into ennui, manifesting in a consequence-free anti-attitude, a pseudo-revolution. The attempts at opposition in the land of plenty remain questionable.”
Ulrike Theusner