Barbara Basting01.10.2024Cotton was the most important commodity of the 19th century. Yet very few artists took an interest in it. One who did was Edgar Degas. His painting of a cotton office in New Orleans is a truly spectacular work.
Kurt Messmer16.05.2024We humans are predisposed to brood over the changing nature of luck. The wheel of fortune has been turning since ancient times, and remains popular today. Around 1220, a rose window at Basel Cathedral was designed to resemble a wheel of fortune, homage was paid to the goddess Fortuna in a Bavarian monastery in the form of the Carmina Burana. Yet, undeserved luck plays no part in the Christian world view. Heavenly salvation is something that has to be earned.
Barbara Basting14.05.2024Children love pictures teeming with animals, even in the 21st century. Roelant Savery was an expert in painting wildlife, and he used his skills to impress the Habsburg emperor over 400 years ago as well as inspiring many of his contemporaries, including Swiss artists.
Franziska Rogger23.04.2024Born in Russia, Ida Hoff became one of the first women to attend university in Switzerland around 1900. In addition to pursuing a career in medicine, she was a staunch advocate of women’s rights, guided by her feminist conscience and a penchant for irreverence. She found an outlet for the latter at the second Swiss Congress for Women's Interests in 1921, where she wittily subjected Ferdinand Hodler’s painting “The Day” to a fresh new feminist interpretation.
Barbara Basting29.02.2024Who paints older women? A look at art history shows that painters have always struggled with the subject matter and that they usually needed a pretext to even depict them at all.
Barbara Basting28.12.2023The Reformation brought stricter social mores to many places in Europe, and artists had to adapt if they didn’t want to lose commissions. But these social mores were not popular with everyone – as revealed by this painting by Hans Bock in Basel’s Kunstmuseum.
Benno Schubiger22.12.2023The French invasion 225 years ago not only brought about major political upheaval in Switzerland, but also death and destruction. Vestiges of acts of vandalism to cultural property can still be seen today.
Noah Businger07.11.2023When it comes to William Tell, the general consensus seems to be that he is a symbol of Switzerland’s patriotic national history. But a small monument in Ticino raises some questions.
