Imagination in the Age of Reason

Imagination and reason: for many, the two terms are diametrically opposed. One conjures fantasy and folly, the other order, logic, and objectivity. Though the Enlightenment period in Europe (about 1685–1815) has long been celebrated as “the age of reason,” this exhibition explores how imagination was also a powerful force exploited by artists and intellectuals of the period to understand and critique the world around them. 

Key to Imagination in the Age of Reason is what the Enlightenment actually was. Traditional narratives stress the period as one in which European society questioned old ideas thought to be true. Enlightenment intellectuals strove to establish a new society whose ideals of truth and knowledge were based on direct observation and reason. Yet Enlightenment principles were also used to promote subjective beliefs and biases about marginalized peoples and their experiences. Imagination, today often viewed as reason’s opposite, was then a contested topic. While some argued for its ability to reveal truth and stimulate innovation, others believed it was a dangerous temptation that could lead to immorality and vice. Artists in particular reveled in the power of the imagination to expose hidden principles, conjure strange worlds, or concoct illusions.

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Imagination in the Age of Reason reveals the importance of imagination in the period and uncovers its complex relationship with the Enlightenment ideals of truth and knowledge. All of the works on view are drawn from the museum’s holdings. The exhibition presents an exceptional opportunity to view recent acquisitions for the first time and to examine rarely seen collection highlights in a fresh light. 

Among the most exciting works is Jean-Étienne Liotard’s pastel portrait of François Tronchin on view for the first time in a decade. At first glance, the pastel appears to be a straightforward representation of the influential Swiss art collector alongside his most treasured artwork, but the image is an optical illusion that was crafted to give the appearance of reality. Liotard manipulated pastel’s powdery nature to imitate a variety of different surfaces: the velvety texture of the sitter’s jacket, his elaborately curled and powdered wig, and the Rembrandt painting at right. The artist’s illusionistic image invites the type of careful observation and scrutiny prized by Enlightenment society and required of such connoisseurs. Tronchin’s gesture and that of the woman pulling back the curtain in the painting further bring us into an imagined conversation with the collector, who encourages us to inspect the pastel’s surface and test our eye and knowledge against his. 

While artists like Liotard produced works that mimicked reality, others created highly imaginative compositions that expose subjective values about the real world. Recently acquired and on view for the first time, Filippo Morghen’s prints possibly after designs by Jean-Pierre-Louis-Laurent Hoüel combine whimsy and fantasy with a visual language of racial difference to envision life on the moon. The lunar inhabitants, much like the clever pumpkin dwellings seen in the print illustrated here, are depicted as curiosities. Although the artists endowed the lunarians with ingenuity, they also relied on racist stereotypes propagated by Europeans to claim superiority over Indigenous North Americans and people from Asia.

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The most recognizable name for many visitors to the exhibition may be Francisco de Goya, who employed his expansive imagination to comment on Spanish society in Los Caprichos, which translates as “caprices” or “artistic fantasies.” Goya’s critiques are not always clear, and many of the prints are intentionally ambiguous, likely to evade censorship. In They Have Flown, a young woman is transformed into a human butterfly, perhaps reflecting views at the time that characterized women as flighty. However, both the association of butterflies with life’s fragility and the presence of witches—often used by the artist to symbolize immorality and sex work—may invite a more sinister interpretation. 

Though created in the age of reason, these works, and others in the exhibition, reveal how Enlightenment-era artists used imagination as a dynamic tool through which they revealed or obscured truth, entertained or educated viewers, and supported or criticized systems of power.