Syllabus
1) Introduction: a jurisdiction of art (and the false hopes of those who do art)
2) Giotto. The image as a prayer and a revelation
3) Renessaince Space: Reason, Beauty and Faith (so far not on the warpath)
4) Flay them, slay them: Titian and the cannibalism of art
5) Mannerism(s) of the imagination: From Michelangelo to cancer
6) Academy, the forever enemy: Drawing, Blindness and the Discipline
7) To romantize the world (is to miss it): the case of Caspar David Friedrich
8) Why impressionism never worked: Monet, Cézanne and the (self)destructive force of the instant
9) Why abstraction never worked: From Kandinsky and Malevich to Abstract Expressionism and American Minimalism
10) Objects from the outer space: Duchamp and the logic of the ready-made
11) Surrealistic visions of the past (feeding on the classicism)
12) The limits of irony: the role of the concept in art
13) Theoretical summary and general discussion Recommended Introductory Literature: Ernst Gombrich: Art and Illusion. A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (1960) Georges Didi-Huberman: Confronting Images (2005) Erwin Panofsky: Idea: A Concept in Art Theory (1924)
Annotation
The course will present 13 diverse, yet interconnected case studies of the key artworks or artistic strategies from the 14th to 21th century, showing not only how contemporary art unconsciously took over some old renaissance and baroque traumas (mimetic alienation, concept vs. revelation, the problem of unfinished artwork etc.) but how the language(s) of art continually tried to deal with the ever-changing world, posing again and again the very same question: what is the actual jurisdiction of art? What aspects of the world can be reflected and what has to be left untouched? What can be disclosed, unfolded, announced, REVEALED? The course will meet two goals at the same time: it will offer a philosophically enriched history of modern art in a nutshell, for those who would like to deepen their awareness of art. The course will thus explicate the key characteristics and concepts of some of the most important art movements (what is mannerism and why it always haunted its protagonists? what motivated impressionism and why even Monet saw it as a failure? why abstraction never worked for it's inventors? etc.).
Yet the course will also use the case studies to develop the notion of the "jurisdiction" of art and to outline the specific principles of the "readibility" ("Lesbarkeit") of art: not only how, but why to "read" art in general and last but not least: when it is necessary to "close the book".