The Disturbance

Wit, spirit, and Prussian discipline, incorruptible judgment, unparalleled industriousness, and exceptional talent all came together in the genius of Adolph von Menzel (1815-1905), one of the most impressive, productive and likeable artists of the century. He created paintings for an epoch whose interests were divided. On the one hand, thirsting for education, people sought images of the past and its most respectable figures. On the other hand, there was a desire for works that documented the current political, social, and technical upheaval. Finally there was the work that Menzel himself considered to be secondary: reflections of the routine life of the bourgeoisie, from the Pre-March Era through the turn of the century.

The Kunsthalle owns two works by Menzel, a "Head Study" (1855), and a painting that was truly representative of the artist's œuvre, entitled "The Disturbance" (1846). This being his first large- format painting, Menzel worked on it over the course of three years with several interruptions.

It is evening in a salon decorated with soft carpets, heavy curtains, and stucco. (The architecture is reminiscent of the halls of Sanssouci Palace, which Menzel had studied intensely for his illustrations of Franz Kugler's book on Frederick the Great.) Two young ladies sit at a piano by candlelight. Through the wide open French doors, balmy evening air enters from the garden. The happy moment of leisurely music-making is abruptly interrupted.

The door opens, and in comes - cautious, smiling, and yet still disturbing - an older couple. The piano player turns toward them, her right hand still resting on the keys. She seems reluctant to permit the interruption. The listener has already stood up to greet the uninvited guests. The theme of disturbance, which was to become a leitmotiv in Menzel's œuvre, is explicitly treated in this wonderfully picturesque work with its brilliant use of light.

It seems to reflect an experience of disharmony in both the private and social spheres, the fragmentary, chaotic element that breaks into the secure bourgeois, Biedermeier inner world. Without pathos, captured in an unspectacular genre, this theme indicates a modern attitude towards life. There is a rupture between the individual and society. In the image, these contradictions are no longer harmonised, but rather exposed. Menzel's works are masterworks of composition, colour scheme, and use of light, bearing witness again and again to the growing loneliness and the conflicts of modern man.