Nikolaus Bernau on the Mythical Creature in Art

Palace décor, hot-pink squeaky toys, the LGBT flag: unicorns remain part of the history of art and religion to this day—but above all of everyday life and culture in the Western world. In a four-part series, cultural journalist Nikolaus Bernau explores the mythical creature in art on rbb’s Kulturradio, radio3 (in German).

The first episode focuses on tapestries from Brandenburg to Paris. One little-known yet extraordinary work on view comes from St. Gotthardt’s Church in Brandenburg an der Havel, which has loaned a unique 15th-century tapestry measuring 5.5 meters in length, with a unicorn depicted at its center. Kept in the church for centuries, the tapestry was cleaned and restored especially for the unicorn exhibition at the Museum Barberini.

At the very beginning of the exhibition The Unicorn in Art at the Museum Barberini in Potsdam, visitors encounter a Dutch painting featuring a massive, horse-like unicorn that appears anything but cute. Right beside it, displayed in a glass case, is a unicorn from China. What connects the two, and why does the unicorn appear so brutal? Bernau investigates these questions in Part Two.

In the third episode, Bernau examines the collections of Berlin’s museums and traces the paths of influential collectors—from Friedrich Wilhelm IV and Wilhelm von Bode to James Simon. The fourth and final episode is all about today’s unicorns — colorful, queer, political, and sharp-witted.