LAC Lugano Examines Western Myth of India in 'Le vie dell’illuminazione'

The LAC Lugano presents 'Le vie dell’illuminazione. Il mito dell’India nella cultura occidentale', a critical survey of how the West has imagined India from Romanticism to pop culture. Curated under outgoing director Marco Franciolli, the exhibition opens in 1808 with Friedrich Schlegel’s foundational text, then moves through Orientalist painting, Symbolist works by Moreau and Redon, early photography, and 20th-century primitivism in Kirchner, Kokoschka, and Brancusi. Architecture features Le Corbusier’s modernist transplants; the counterculture section includes Beat poets, Beatles memorabilia, and Sottsass’s ironic vases. Contemporary art occupies a full floor with Richard Long’s 'Stone circles', Frank Stella, Luigi Ontani, Julian Schnabel, and Anselm Kiefer. The dense installation, heavy on photography, is intellectually rigorous but somewhat unwieldy. The show is part of Focus India, a broader program of music, dance, and film.