ECSTASY

Ecstasy is one of the oldest and most astonishing anthropologically universal phenomena, whose evaluation is continuously changing and expanding. In its cultural significance and complexity, ecstasy also entered the visual arts and engaged in extraordinary alliances with the related disciplines of music and dance. Drawing from paradigmatic examples from antiquity to the present, the exhibition illuminated the various spiritual, political, psychological, social, sexual, and aesthetic implications of euphoric and intoxicated states between asceticism and excess.

With art at its foundation, the exhibition introduced the viewer to the various ways that artists have approached ecstatic states—from pictorial representations to video and installation works to kinesthetic experiences. The visitor could therefore not only comprehend but also experience the relevance and historical development of ecstasy. Music plays a central role here, as it unifies transcendental experience in all cultures. Rhythmic sounds, repetitive movements, and visual stimuli prepare the groundwork for reaching a state of "being beside oneself."

In order to show the arts' engagement with the phenomenon of ecstasy beyond the works in the exhibition, the Kunstmuseum cooperated with a number of Stuttgart's cultural institutions.