NEWS RELEASE Contact: Rebecca Garrity Putnam Director of Communications (206) 432-8217 RGarrity-Putnam@fryemuseum.org                                                                                          Séance: Albert von Keller and the Occult SEATTLE, August 10, 2010—Major paintings by the Munich Secessionist Albert von Keller which explore the occult, mystical healing, and the life of the soul at the dawn of the twentieth century are presented in Séance: Albert von Keller and the Occult, on view Oct. 9, 2010, through Jan. 2, 2011, at the Frye Art Museum, Seattle. Curated by Frye Director Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker and Swiss art historian Gian Casper Bott, and drawing on the renowned collection of the Kunsthaus Zürich, Séance is the first exhibition in America dedicated exclusively to the work of Albert von Keller (1844–1920). A founding member of the Munich Secession, one of Europe’s most influential artists’ associations, Keller was a flamboyant figure who was highly regarded on both sides of the Atlantic for his modern, psychological painting and his interest in the occult. An artist of exceptional ability, Keller’s lifelong search for new techniques and visual forms to describe shifting, uncertain, states of being was often overshadowed by his spectacular subject matter. Fascinated by the paranormal and the mysteries of the human psyche, Keller was equally enthralled by traditional Christian narratives such as the raising of the dead, the powers of mystical healing, and the mysteries of stigmata. His close association with the Munich psychiatrist Dr. Albert von Schrenck-Notzing (1862–1929), and his participation in séances and paranormal experiments, placed him at the center of passionate debates in fin de siècle Germany on Seelenleben, or the life of the soul. This premiere exhibition at the Frye Art Museum – its sole US venue – showcases Keller’s enigmatic subjects—corpses, séances, dancers in trance-like states, martyred saints, and burning witches—revealing a potent combination of religious fervor, mysticism and sensuality. Accompanying the exhibition at the Frye Art Museum will be a 104-page catalog that documents the reception of Albert von Keller’s work in America and Europe; his participation in international exhibitions in Chicago, New York, and Saint Louis; and his presence in important private collections of German art in America. Both the exhibition and the catalog feature key works by Keller from the late 1870s to the beginning of the First World War, a period that coincided with the scandal of his elopement with the beautiful banker’s daughter, Irene von Eichthal (1858–1907); the tragic death of his only child, Hans Balthasar, in 1906; and the death of Keller’s wife only months later in a state of profound grief. Frye public programs associated with Séance highlight the connection between Keller’s time and the present, noting the resurgence of interest in the supernatural and forms of knowledge outside of conventional scientific endeavor. Scheduled are programs exploring the fascination of artists, writers, dancers, and intellectuals with the mysteries of the human psyche and the occult in the late-nineteenth century. Humanities Washington has generously supported exhibition-related lectures and pubic programs including a series of three Connections and Contexts lectures co-presented by the Frye Art Museum, the University of Washington’s Germanics Department and Simpson Center for the Humanities.  An important contribution to ongoing scholarship on the Frye Founding Collection, this series will include lectures by the following distinguished scholars: Professor Dr. Georg Braungart, Professor of Literature at the University of Tübingen; Dr. Sabine Wilke, Professor of German at the University of Washington; and Dr. Ann-Charlotte Gavel Adams, Professor of Swedish Studies at the University of Washington. Other public programs include gallery talks with the exhibition’s curators, psychoanalysts, and a dance/movement therapist, as well as historical and contemporary film screenings and discussion through the Magic Lantern: Talks on Film and Art series. Séance: Albert von Keller and the Occultis organized by the Frye Art Museum and curated by Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker and Gian Casper Bott.  The exhibition is funded by the Frye Foundation with the generous support of Frye Art Museum members and donors.  Seasonal support is provided by ArtsFund. Public programs are supported by Humanities Washington. The exhibition catalog, with essays by Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker and Gian Casper Bott, is published by the Frye Art Museum and distributed by the University of Washington Press. It will be available in the Frye Store for $30. # # # FRYE ART MUSEUM Séance: Albert von Keller and the Occult Excerpted in part from Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, “A Cachet of Strangeness” in: Séance: Albert von Keller and the Occult (Seattle: Frye Art Museum, 2010) One in a series of research and exhibition projects at the Frye Art Museum celebrating the Munich Secession and its artists, Séance: Albert von Keller and the Occult explores the allure of spiritualism as an armor against materialism that Keller shared with many artists and intellectuals at the-turn-of-the-last-century, among them literary giants such as Thomas Mann and Rainer Maria Rilke. Albert von Keller and fellow Munich Secessionists Hugo von Habermann, Gabriel von Max, and Wilhelm Trübner were among the earliest members of the Psychologische Gesellschaft [Psychological Society], an influential learned society founded in Munich in 1886 that engaged in para-psychological research. Keller participated in numerous séances organized by the Society, some of which he hosted in his studio or in his elegant residence in Munich’s fashionable Maximilian Street. His fascination with somnambulism or hypnotism, dreamlike states of trance, and mystical healing found expression in a number of key works around the time the Society was founded. As Keller became more deeply involved in experiments conducted by the Psychological Society, the boundaries between his artistic and his “scientific” explorations of Seelenleben or the “life of the soul” became increasingly blurred. Both Albert von Keller and Gabriel von Max were considered key exponents of a new, subjective, modern painting, which sought to link the aesthetic, the scientific, and the occult.  Keller, Max and other leading Secessionists such as Franz von Stuck, were seen by their contemporaries as “sworn foes to the commonplace and hackneyed” whose work was marked by a “cachet of strangeness, which comes from a modern treatment of legendary, biblical, mystic or symbolic subjects.” Keller especially was considered to have “a vast contempt for banality.” What Keller accomplished with utmost distinction, especially in the period from the late 1870s to the beginning of the First World War, was to fearlessly depict the phantasms and specters of a somnambulant, modern world. The occult was for him not only a shield against the materialism of modern society, such as Rainer Maria Rilke had described. It was a portal to the anxieties of a society in a state of radical transformation, a society, as Thomas Mann would observe, rife with intellectual, artistic, moral, and social problems. It is in this context that Keller’s constant experimentation with unstable forms of representation can be understood. His use of extreme saturations of color and rapid, expressive, but unfinished brushstrokes to portray the female figure in extreme psychological states signified not only the application of “modern techniques” but also the practice of what Albert von Schrenck-Notzing termed psychological painting. This singular opportunity for the Frye Art Museum, as the sole US venue, to reintroduce the accomplishments of Albert von Keller to American audiences, has been made possible by the exceptional support of one of Europe’s finest museums, the Kunsthaus Zürich, which agreed to lend all of the works in the exhibition from their own holdings. The collection of the Kunsthaus Zürich was greatly enriched by the gift of more than three hundred works by Albert von Keller from the estate of the Swiss chemist Oskar A. Müller (1899–1994). This gift, as well as generous financial support to enable the Swiss art historian Dr. Gian Casper Bott to research and catalogue over three hundred fifty artworks by Keller over an extended period, was made possible by Dr. Müller’s widow, Hannelore, who first approached the Kunsthaus Zürich in 2005 in this regard. The result was a highly successful, large-scale exhibition—the first retrospective of the work of Albert von Keller in one hundred years - that brought this important artist once again to his proper place. Curated by the Swiss art historian Dr. Gian Casper Bott, the exhibition was presented in the beautiful historical rooms of the Kunsthaus Zürich in the summer of 2009. Séance: Albert von Keller and the Occult draws on the findings of Gian Casper Bott’s research for the retrospective exhibition in Zürich as well as that of Frye Art Museum Director, Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, on the reception of Albert von Keller’s work in both America and Europe. Séance: Albert von Keller and the Occultis organized by the Frye Art Museum and curated by Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker and Gian Casper Bott. The exhibition is funded by the Frye Foundation with the generous support of Frye Art Museum members and donors.  Seasonal support is provided by ArtsFund. Public programs are supported by Humanities Washington. The exhibition catalog, entitled Séance: Albert von Keller and the Occult, with essays by Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker and Gian Casper Bott, is published by the Frye Art Museum and distributed by the University of Washington Press. # # # The Frye Art Museum is located at 704 Terry Avenue, Seattle, Washington, USA. Admission is free. For complete information on all exhibitions and programs, visit fryemuseum.org -30-