Crimes, confessions and self-reflection will come together at the National Gallery’s landmark show exploring sin in spring 2020. Contemporary and recent artists including Tracy Emin and Andy Warhol will be shown alongside pieces by Brueghel and Hogarth.
The gallery said: “Sin has permeated life since the earliest days. But until now the story of its relation to art has never been told.”
Joost Joustra, the curator of the exhibiton said: “I wanted to make religious imagery more accessible and I thought sin was a theme that could show the gallery’s works in a new light.
“Sin underlines a lot of the themes in the art. In some it is explicit, such as in portrayals of Adam and Eve, but artists like Hogarth address sin in the everyday.”
The artwork on show covers a range of periods and artistic genres but all the pieces are linked to the theme of sin.
Jan Brueghel the Elder’s painting, The Garden of Eden, an exploration of the original sin, will be on loan from a collector in Hong Kong. From the gallery’s own collection, audiences can expect to see An Allegory With Venus and Cupid, the Italian artist Bronzino’s depiction of the Roman goddess of love kissing her son on the lips.
The gallery will also include Hogarth’s series Marriage A La Mode. The satirical series explores an arranged aristocratic marriage that ends in murder and adultery.
Tracy Emin’s neon piece spells out: "It was just a kiss." For Joustra the piece was like "a confession".
The Andy Warhol painting comes from a series of newspaper adverts the artist put in newspapers in the 1980s and depicts: "Repent and Sin No More!"
Joustra said: “I always say everyone’s done something bad, something that could be called a sin, so I think the theme is something that’s very relatable to a lot of people.
“Sin is always on people’s minds, even if it’s out of plain sight.
“I’d like the exhibition to prompt people to think about their own sins and their ideas about sin and their own lives. I hope it leads to introspection and self-reflection.”
Joustra thinks the diversity of work in the exhibition shows that sin is “universal and that maybe it hasn’t changed that much but artists have always found creative ways of showing it and engaging with it”.
The show is free entry and will run from 15 April to 5 July 2020.
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