Wunderkammer

The term Wunderkammer means room of wonders: the Wunderkammer exploits the wonderment and the astonishment capability inherent in an art work. Wunderkammer are assemblages of objects, that in the Middle European courts from the second half of 1300 till 1700 testify the fact that works of art -as Breton would put it in his Art Magique- are magic because they exploit the primeval energy. Objects in the Wunderkammer are rare, exceptional, unusual, strange and extraordinary, and such as to arise amazement and marvel in a spectator. Yet something monstrous is also present in this collection process, due to a component detected by Heidegger: fear is part of wonder, since fear contains a quotient of surprise diverting from usual schemes. Wunderkammer are based on a change: big and small, for instance, and then on a proliferation of monstrous details and finally on a mixture of animal and vegetable, or animal and mineral: amazement that imitates nature in its anomalies and creates new ones. The two poles in Wunderkammer are the Naturalia, on one side, and the Artificialia on the other. Conspicuous was in ancient collections the basilisk: a little dragon counterfeited with parts of the devil-fish.