This post is long overdue, I really wanted to get it up sooner, but alas! While visiting Seattle, went to the Frye Museum to see a show titled "Seance", featuring the works of Albert Von Keller. I was ignorant of his works and was mesmerized by their wonderfully creepy, moody, druggy kind feel. Some made one feel like they were in a turn of the century insane asylum, while others had an opium-den-brothel kind of feel to them. I fell in love with them all. Incredible antique frames anointed each piece as well. Getting a nice photo of them was very difficult, you will need to see these works for yourself, if ever you get the chance. This museum was a surprisingly great visit as well, the fantastic permanent collection in the back room will have to wait for an even later post.
From the Frye's site:
"Keller’s close association with the Munich psychiatrist Dr. Albert von Schrenck-Notzing (1862–1929), and his participation in séances and occult experiments, placed him at the center of passionate debates in fin de siècle Germany on Seelenleben, or the life of the soul. While fascinated by the paranormal, Keller was equally enthralled by traditional Christian narratives such as the raising of the dead, the powers of mystical healing, and the mysteries of stigmata. He engaged in a lifelong search for new techniques and visual forms to describe shifting, uncertain states of being and becoming."
"The Frye Art Museum’s exhibition showcases Keller’s enigmatic subjects—corpses, séances, dancers in trancelike states, martyred saints, and burning witches—to reveal a potent combination of religious fervor, mysticism, and sensuality. It presents key paintings by Keller from the Kunsthaus Zürich, whose collection was recently enriched by the remarkable gift of more than three hundred paintings by Albert von Keller from the estate of Swiss chemist Oskar A. Müller (1899–1994)."
