The DANDY-CLUB has the honour of presenting a truly special painting: Since last Friday, another successful dandy painting has adorned the Pückler Foundation in Branitz.
The Potsdam (Nuthetal) artist Julia Theek initially wanted to show Prince Pückler in her painting, – but she lacked a suitable image of the most important German dandy of the 19th century as a model. So she took – as a kind of double – another dandy: Nick Cave. The artist has understood the substance of both; – she calls them “brothers in spirit”, and hits the bull’s eye. For both exceptional personalities elevate their lives to works of art. Prince Pückler, with his wife’s permission, went to England in search of a wealthy noblewoman. Nick Cave’s dandyism has long been known to the initiated.
Motivated by classic 19th-century street views of Berlin, this painting takes as its subject the appearance of garden artist Herrmann Fürst von Pückler-Muskau on the capital’s promenade Unter den Linden in a carriage drawn by stags. It is one of the most famous traditions that manifested Pückler’s dandy image. But Julia Theek replaces Pückler with Nick Cave. In her explanation she writes:
“Like Pückler, for all his fame, he is simultaneously met with a high degree of incomprehension. Both fit in with the deer pressed into the harness, whose rutting cry echoes impressively and alienatingly at the same time through the metropolis. The carriage has stopped its journey, all eyes are on the viewer. The scene in which Pückler wooed the daughter of the state chancellor Hardenberg with his stag parade is precisely quoted. The model is a historical panorama – the so-called ‘Lindenrolle’, which documents ‘Unter den Linden’ in 1820 as a quasi photographic snapshot, because none of the buildings between Pariser Platz and ‘Forum Fridericianum’ are still standing today (…).
Julia Theek, born in Potsdam in 1966, obtained her Magistra Artium at the Humboldt University in Berlin in 1995. She has concentrated on art theory, cultural history and the new media. Her work, influenced by street art, includes painting, sculpture, photography, film, video and multimedia.
