“Oh, it is easy to be clever if one does not know all these questions,” sighs with resignation the protagonist of Robert Musil's Young Törless. These words mark a turning point in the novel, when Törless attempts in vain to give a rational framework to his adolescent imagination and anguished consciousness, only to discover that “cleverness” shored up by self-assurance against sensation and the random ambiguity of experience fails at such a task.

It was precisely the unity of intellect and feeling, observation, and instinct, unattainable for Musil's hypersensitive protagonist, that for Musil was the task of art as well as the key to the critical interpretation of a work of art. Although Musil's writings articulate the priorities of a different era, the same aspiration persists in the various ways in which works of art and their understanding reflect and make sense of the experience of the world today, and it is therefore the ideal of this exhibition.