Showing him in a clearly dishevelled state, this self-portrait by Tillmans is titled deranged granny and presents him sporting a shirt with a grandmotherly floral print and a wig and headscarf. Tillmanns’s persiflage of an act of crossdressing can be interpreted as a gesture of emancipation from an authoritarian understanding of gender. After all, by slipping into what is commonly thought of as the “wrong” clothing, Tillmans is able to illuminate the many facets of a personality, while perhaps also posing questions about openness and tolerance in society.
Shown in close proximity to pastel portraits in the Pastel Cabinet of the Old Masters Picture Gallery, the work illustrates with astounding clarity a departure from 18th century pastels, whose sitters hold static poses, their appearances highly controlled. Instead of being dominated by a sense that the sitter has posed for hours, Tillmans’s work gives the impression of intense closeness and spontaneity.
In 1746, the pastels were given their own dedicated room in the former electoral stable yard, which had been converted into a picture gallery. The cabinet shows people of high social status: princes and princesses, nobles, but also artists and musicians – as well as muses and allegories. Adorning the walls of the Pastel Cabinet most prominently were 157 pastels created by the famous Venetian artist Rosalba Carriera. Attention was showered on the technique of “dry painting” with pastel crayons, which was typical for 18th century European portraiture, in particular because, with its powdery appearance, it seemed to render quite realistic likenesses of people who, following the fashion of the day, made up their faces and powdered their hair and wigs. Yet, for all their elegance and artistic perfection, the pastels reflect both the dominant fashions and the strict social conventions to which the sitters were bound.
Also giving expression to his generation and time, the contemporary artist Wolfgang Tillmans documented the queer scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s, photographing his friends and acquaintances in a non-glorified and yet personal and empathetic way.
A goal for the donated works of the Sammlung Hoffmann is to have them enter a dialogue with objects from the various museums of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, thereby opening up different perspectives and levels of meaning for both the contemporary and the historical exhibits.
