Enfilade

Upcoming exhibition at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum:

Drawing or Design? Fine Art Versus Applied Art
Zwischen Disegno und Design? Von der Zeichnung zum Entwurf
Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne, 2 September — 20 November 2016

The Wallraf-Richartz Museum has recently been able to identify a set of more than twenty vase drawings in its collection as the work of Louis-Claude Vassé (1716–1772). As a Sculpteur du Roi (sculptor to the king), the artist enjoyed a considerable reputation in his lifetime, but today his name is familiar only to experts. The new attributions have prompted the Museum to devote an exhibition to the specific aesthetic properties of designs for works of decorative art. Such works are still categorised as distinct from fine art drawings, yet designs for applied art produced by French, German and Italian artists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries show that the distinction is spurious both in aesthetic terms and as regards artistic quality. The exhibition in the Print Room outlines the rationale behind the separation of the two kinds of drawing and seeks to encourage debate on the subject.