A Philosopher with the Constitution of an Artist: Ludwig Wittgenstein's Photographs in Vienna

Wittgenstein's father was already an upper-middle-class industrialist who supported Viennese artists in the period around 1900 and was also acquainted with composers such as Mahler and Brahms. The musically gifted Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was a philosopher, logic and language were his metier, but he also lectured at Cambridge on questions of aesthetics and was interested in art as a collector and photographer. In many of his writings, Wittgenstein describes his philosophical thinking as if it were an artistic work process.

The Leopold Museum takes his photo album from the 1930s, which has only been published in part, as the starting point for an examination of Wittgenstein as a photographer. In addition to images of the house he himself helped design for Margarete Stonborough-Wittgenstein, the staged self-portraits in particular are part of this exhibition. Wittgenstein's images are shown in the context of his long-planned but never completed project to write a standard work on the theory of photography.

In the exhibition, Wittgenstein enters into dialogue with numerous contemporary photographs by artists such as Hanne Darboven, Ólafur Eliasson, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Nan Goldin, Sherrie Levine, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Cindy Sherman, Sturtevant, Andy Warhol, and many, many more. The unusual Wittgenstein exhibition runs until March 06, 2022.