FEMME FATALE Gaze – Power – Gender

Hamburger Kunsthalle

09 Dec 2022 to 10 April 2023

With the epoch-spanning exhibition FEMME FATALE: Gaze – Power – Gender, the Hamburger Kunsthalle is dedicating itself for the first time to diverse artistic treat-ments of the dazzling and clichéd image of the femme fatale. The stereotype of the erotic and seductive woman who holds men in her thrall, ultimately leading them to their downfall, has long been shaped by the male gaze and by a binary understanding of gender. The show will focus on various artistic manifestations of this theme dating from the early nineteenth century to the present while critically examining its origins and transformations: What historical changes and subsequent appropriation processes has the image of the femme fatale undergone? What role does it still play today? How do contemporary artists negotiate the gaze, power and gender constellations this image evokes in an effort to shift our perspective? 

The exhibition explores these questions based on some 200 exhibits across diverse media. On display are paintings by Pre-Raphaelite artists (Evelyn de Morgan, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John William Waterhouse) as well as works of Symbolism (Fernand Khnopff, Gustave Moreau, Franz von Stuck), Impressionism (Lovis Corinth, Max Liebermann), Expressionism and New Objectivity (Dodo, Oskar Kokoschka, Jeanne Mammen, Edvard Munch, Gerda Wegener). Early feminist avant-garde artists (VALIE EXPORT, Birgit Jürgenssen, Maria Lassnig, Betty Tompkins), alongside recent works taking intersectional and (queer) feminist approaches (Jenevieve Aken – Philipp Otto Runge Foundation Fellow, Nan Goldin, Mickalene Thomas, Zandile Tshabalala) build a bridge to the present day. Among the paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculptures, installations and video works on view are a wealth of high-ranking international loans as well as major works from the collection of the Hamburger Kunsthalle. Highlights include Gustave Moreau’s major Symbolist work Oedipus and the Sphinx (1864), Edvard Munch’s painting Vampire in the Forest (1916-1918), Sonia Boyce’s much-discussed video installation Six Acts (2018), and Nan Goldin’s recent video works Sirens (2019–2021) and Salome (2019).

The »classical« image of the femme fatale was inspired mainly by biblical, mytho-logical and literary figures (such as Judith, Salome, Medusa, Salambo and the Sirens) that were associated in art between 1860 and 1920 with the notion of mortal danger. Combining the feminine ideal with ominous portents, these pictures, often featuring stylised protagonists, convey a demonisation of female sexuality. Around 1900, this female image was increasingly projected onto real people, in particular actors, dancers and artists (such as Sarah Bernhardt, Alma Mahler and Anita Berber). Striking in this context is the simultaneous advance-ment of women’s emancipation and an upsurge in images of the femme fatale. The exhibition therefore also takes a look at the ideal of the New Woman that emerged in the 1920s as a counter-image that subtly takes up aspects of the femme fatale. Equally telling is the caesura that feminist artists brought about starting in the 1960s by radically deconstructing the myth and, with it, entrenched points of view and pictorial traditions. Contemporary artistic positions in turn address questions of gender identity, female corporeality and sexuality as well as the #MeToo movement and the male gaze. They track the traces and transformations of the image of the femme fatale or in other cases establish explicit counter-narratives.

Max Liebermann (1847–1935) Simson und Delila, 1902 Öl auf Leinwand, 151,2 x 212 cm Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main © Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882),

 Helena von Troja, 1863. Öl auf Mahagoniholz, 32,8 x 27,7 cm 

© Hamburger Kunsthalle / bpk. Photo: Elke Walford

john William Waterhouse, 

Circe offering the cup to Ulysses, 1891, oil on canvas, © Gallery Oldham 

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Vampir im Wald, 1916–1918 Öl auf Leinwand, 150 × 137 cm Munch Museet, Oslo © Munchmuseet Foto: Ove Kvavik

Gustave Moreau (1826–1898)

Ödipus und die Sphinx, 1864

Öl auf Leinwand, 206 x 104,8 cm

© The Metropolitan Museum of Art,

New York, Bequest of William H. Herriman, 1920