A new exhibition at Kunsthalle Bremen opening Saturday explores the history of the dachshund in art, featuring works and objects from major artists and collectors.
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The dachshund will take centre stage in a new exhibition in Germany that traces the sausage dog’s history in art, opening Saturday at Kunsthalle Bremen.
“The Dachshund: An Icon off the Leash” features artwork by dachshund owners and fans, including Pablo Picasso, David Hockney and Andy Warhol. Organizers say the show spans painting, drawing, photography and video, along with stuffed toys and other dachshund-themed objects.
Museum director Christoph Grunenberg said the exhibition is believed to be the world’s first dedicated specifically to the dachshund in art, rather than dogs in general. He described the dachshund as “a muse” and said there is “an incredible wealth of representation of the dachshund in very different styles by significant artists.”
Grunenberg said the exhibition takes the dachshund “as an object, as an inspiration to artists,” tracing it through history in different forms, including key works by Picasso, Warhol and Hockney and related ephemera.
The show highlights the breed’s long association with Germany, including that Kaiser Wilhelm II kept dachshunds, known as Dackel in German, and that Britain’s Queen Victoria was a fan, bringing some dogs from Germany. It also includes exhibits brought in from Edinburgh, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh.
German artist Thorsten Brinkmann contributed a bronze sculpture honouring the dachshund’s reputation as a “handbag dog,” depicting a handbag supported by dachshund legs. Brinkmann also provided the colourful “Toxie Love” installation in the exhibition’s first room.
Brinkmann said the dachshund’s distinctive shape is “a very curious, very special form, very long — kind of too long, actually, with the short legs — and it looks already surrealistic to me.” He was supported by objects loaned by the Dachshund Museum in Regensburg, in southern Germany.
In addition to the exhibition, separate rules for bringing small dogs into museum rooms are described as applying at the Dachshund Museum in Regensburg, not at Kunsthalle Bremen. For several hours on Thursdays and Saturdays, the Regensburg museum will allow dachshunds and other small dogs into three of its eight rooms, with conditions including a maximum shoulder height of 30 centimetres (about 1 foot) and an online time-slot ticket, plus a “Dachshund Lounge” as a waiting area.
A series of photographs in the exhibition includes images by Finnish photographer Elina Brotherus of her dachshund, Marcello, who is 13. Brotherus said Marcello has been her model since 2013 and described the bond as personal, saying, “I did not manage to have children, so then we got him and he’s my baby.”
Brotherus said: “There’s something so, like, cute and philosophical and special about these dogs.”
Kelsey Crossman, a business developer who lives in Bremen and originally hails from Florida, attended a preview with her dachshund, Leonidas, or Leo for short. She said the dogs’ appeal lies in “their attitudes — they’re small, but they’re very strong and a little stubborn, probably like myself,” adding that they are also light enough to be easily transported.
Crossman said she enjoyed the dachshund collectibles in Brinkmann’s installation, describing “a really cool collection of little dachshunds that you might see at grandma’s house, or collectors’ things, and a ton of stuffed animals.” She added that Leo is not allowed near the exhibit because “he will certainly grab one from the exhibit.”
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