With its focus on the achievement of painterly effects in photography , the international Pictorialist movement sought to employ various techniques and aesthetic approaches in order to capture images of landscapes and delicate feminine beauty within perfectly composed atmospheric settings. Facing the turn of the twentieth century, a time when the…[Read more]

The development of the use of computers and software in art from the Fifties to the present is explained. As general aspects of the history of computer art an interface model and three dominant modes to use computational processes (generative, modular, hypertextual) are presented. The “History of Computer Art” features examples of early…[Read more]

The core of the Conceptual artists (Mel Bochner, Sol LeWitt; the Siegelaub group with Robert Barry, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner; English and American members of Art & Language) is situated in the art context of the late sixties and the first half of the seventies. The self-positioning of the Conceptual artists within the art…[Read more]

The outline of the development of Performance Art features happenings in New York and Vienna in the sixties as well as body art and performances with closed circuits in the seventies (among others). Action Art, Environmental Theater and Intermedia are the terms defining the main characteristics of the works discussed. The research method is mainly…[Read more]

Article from the proceedings of the conference “Europa baut auf Biographien”

Behind every printed national biography is a board of editors responsible for finding established scholars to write the biographies. The personal and institutional networks, the scientific and ideological socialization of these authors have a significant influence on the biographical constructs and narratives they have designed, and thus also…[Read more]

From 1852 the Hôtel Drouot was the space where the French auctioneers (Commissaires-Priseurs) – who held a stately sanctioned monopoly – organized their auctions. By processing data from the art auction catalogue repertory by Frits Lugt and the extended version Art Sales Catalogues Online, it is possible to map the networks of art marketing at…[Read more]

From 1852 the Hôtel Drouot was the space where the French auctioneers (Commissaires-Priseurs) – who held a stately sanctioned monopoly – organized their auctions. By processing data from the art auction catalogue repertory by Frits Lugt and the extended version Art Sales Catalogues Online, it is possible to map the networks of art marketing at…[Read more]

The following text presents an online project, which has been developed since April 2007 with a duration of five years on the initiative of the Kunstgeschichtliches Institut in Frankfurt and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, together with the partner institutions Städel Museum and Historisches Museum in Frankfurt and jointly financed by…[Read more]

The following text presents an online project, which has been developed since April 2007 with a duration of five years on the initiative of the Kunstgeschichtliches Institut in Frankfurt and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, together with the partner institutions Städel Museum and Historisches Museum in Frankfurt and jointly financed by…[Read more]

Drei digitale Kunstprojekte aus den Jahren 2015 und 2016 werden in diesem Text vorgestellt und verglichen, Game Over Facebook, WrongGrid und Curating Money. Ihnen ist gemeinsam, dass sie in Konfrontation zu ihrem jeweiligen technischen und ästhetischem Kontext stehen, beispielsweise zu den digitalen Plattformen, auf denen sie gespeichert sind,…[Read more]

Am 11.10.2014 erschien im Feuilleton der Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung ein Artikel von Gina Thomas über die derzeitige Intensivierung der wissenschaftlichen Arbeit zum Kunstmarkt. Der Titel lautete: Wie der Kunsthandel die Wissenschaft erobert. Auf diese Bestimmung eines Verhältnisses und die gebrachten Beispiele soll hier reagiert werden.

In Along an African Border, anthropologist Sónia Silva examines how the Angolan refugees living in Zambia during the Angolan civil war used their divination baskets to cope with daily life in a new land. To many people, these baskets are capable of thinking, hearing, judging, and responding. They communicate by means of small articles drawn in…[Read more]

Sónia Silva is an Associate Professor of anthropology at Skidmore College. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Zambia, as well as museum work in Europe and the USA, Silva’s research deals with materiality, material religion, the notion of the fetish, ritual and religion, divination, witchcraft, violence, and museums. Silva is the author of Alon…[Read more]

Throughout historic developments, the publicly ascertained and published price of an artwork repeatedly served as a reference point for art theoretical discussion. Particular importance was attached to the auction sale price, since this financial evaluation of art was of such a public nature. While there is a long history of these ideas about the…[Read more]

The city of Lucca was never limited to the urban area within the walls. Autumn and winter would be lived in the city palazzo, with life concentrating upon commercial activities enlivened by entertainments such as music and theatre. In spring and summer life was relocated en masse to the villa. This article outlines the essentials of Lucchese…[Read more]

The garden theatre can take many forms: it can erupt forth in an explosion of water and sound as in the teatro d’acqua; it can appear carved into a hedge as a teatro di verzura; or it can calmly wait to be filled with performers as in a teatro avanti il palazzo. The garden theatre was first a feature of the Baroque garden in Italy, before f…[Read more]

The present article seeks to dig into Gustave Doré’s (1832-1883) vision of the Wood of the Suicides from his illustrations of the Divine Comedy (d. 1861), establishing a comparison between its critical reception, the works that have illustrated the chant over the centuries and Doré’s works themselves. A goal here is to glimpse if negative criti…[Read more]

This study tells the story of Architectural Forum magazine during the Time Inc. ownership period, 1932-64. Why and how did this episode in American discursive life come about? What were its failures and successes, lessons, potential legacy? In answering these questions, the author describes the unusual building industry-wide sense of community…[Read more]