December 30, 2020 • Noemi Smolik on “Russian Avant-Garde at the Museum Ludwig: Original and Fake”
View of “Russian Avant-Garde at the Museum Ludwig: Original and Fake,” 2020–21. Two works attributed as Alexandra Exter’s
Kostümentwurf “Herodes,” 1921 and 1917 respectively.
WHAT HAPPENS when a painting is unmasked as a forgery? The colors, the forms, and the brushwork remain the same, and yet, everything has changed. The spell of authenticity, related to what Walter Benjamin called an artwork’s “aura,” has broken. A taboo-shattering exhibition organized by Rita Kersting and Petra Mand at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, titled “Russian Avant-Garde at the Museum Ludwig: Original and Fake” and on through February 7, seeks to pick up the pieces, provocatively pairing