C. Archaeological artifacts and contemporary arts

For Example Mithras part I and II at the Saalburg

Contemporary art and archaeology, how to bring both together? What priorities to set in the approach of hosting both in a strict context under one roof as we have done with Mithras?

‘For Example Mithras’ employs the aesthetical language of the archaeological findings, but leaves the tracks of scientific archaeology and spins the myth on to draw up contextualities with our present day world.

Some projects dedicated to today’s arts and the arts of our (more or less) dim historical past have focussed on a reflection on the materiality of arts and not so much on the mind-content and the inner core of what might be expressed in an artefact.

As far as the “plain” iconography is concerned, this project focuses on the factual pictorial contexts and does not seek for abstract interpretations. The exhibit creates a direct bridge between “figures” and symbols of the past, in a linear way, from the pictorial mythologems of the past to the language of arts today.

The exhibit can be understood as a philosophical approach in arts that takes the aesthetical language of the past serious, and the artist decides to depict the figurative in a representative mode.

Finally, instead of looking for the natural scientific side of understanding artist, artwork and the ideas behind the art of the past, the link in the possible understanding, the underlying mythological and aesthetical conceptions are sought – in a time-span-comprising approach.