Art Historical Seminar: “Menschenbilder” in Art History        

(PD Dr. Joseph Imorde)

The notion of the “Menschenbild” (often translated as “the idea of man”) is not only common within anthropological discourse, but is also common within everyday language and pertains to the notion or rather to the “image” that a society, religion or an ethnic group has of the human being. In this sense the “Menschenbild” is always ideologically charged and is part of a weltanschauung or a set of teachings.

First of all, we will examine the thesis that every image and thus every “menschenbild” contains a particular approach to the world and thus makes reference to a religious, political, social and personal context.  The concept of the “menschenbild” allows us access to the particular social construction of the human body that is in operation at any given moment within the history of art, revealing the historical specificity and the limits of representation. One might say that this topic has both an anthropological and a cultural-historical side: Anthropologically, one must assume that the human desire to represent him or herself and her surroundings is relative immutable, which thus implies in turn the relative immutability of the notions of the image, the medium and the body (following the logic presented by Hans Belting in his Bildanthropologie). In cultural-historical terms, however, the anthropological “menschenbild” has been differentiated into a vast assortment of “images of man”, which are no longer viewed and understood with regards to that which they hold in common, but rather through their respective alterity and particularity. This dialectic of anthropological commonality and cultural diversification itself has a historical dimension, which implies both that the relationship between both of these methodological assumptions within Art History and Visual Studies be continually re-examined and always have been re-examined.

The manner in which one examines “Idealism” from antiquity or medieval "Realism" must be determined by the preferences in operation within each of those periods. Political and social preconditions determine the particular “menschenbilder” common to any given art historical and art theoretical discourses.   Thus it is the goal of this seminar to investigate the ideological and cultural assumptions of these discourses in order to limit the broad field implied by the notion of the “menschenbild” to a single exemplary historical discourse. A central feature of our examination will be, on the one hand, the methods and theoretical approaches used by the scholarship produced within the context of the historiography of art: the paradigms of the history of style and iconology would be pertinent here. On the other hand, the (multi)medial expansion of knowledge about art, propagated by means of inexpensive reproductions or popular texts will be critically examined. It will be understood here that "the man of the Renaissance" is as much a construct as is Michelangelo's Neoplatonism, and that the interest in the “nervous” artist of the Baroque period represents an animation of historical knowledge, as much as the stylization of Matthias Grünewald as the most “German” of all German artists did.  In short, our focus will be on the construction and popularization of “menschenbilder”, in order to examine the manner in which the complex regimes of thought and vision, have contributed to manner in which the Art History has been written.

Participants

Literature to be studied (examples):  

Belting, Hans: Bild-Anthropologie. Entwürfe für eine Bildwissenschaft. (= Bild und Text) München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag 2001.

Burckhardt, Jacob: Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien. Mit einem Geleitwort von Wilhelm von Bode. Vollständige Ausgabe. Berlin: Verlag von Th. Knaur Nachf. 1928. 

Fischer, Eugen Kurt: Deutsche Kunst und Art. Von den Künsten als Ausdruck der Zeiten. Mit 44 Abbildungen. Dresden: Im Sibyllen-Verlag 1924. 

Hagen, Oskar: Deutsches Sehen. Mit 64 Tafeln. München: R. Pieper & Co. 1920. 

Hausenstein, Wilhelm: Der nackte Mensch in der Kunst aller Zeiten. Mit 150 Abbildungen. Erstes bis fünftes Tausend. München: R. Pieper & Co. Verlag 1911.  

Hausenstein, Wilhelm: Vom Geist des Barock. Mit dreiundsiebzig Tafeln. München: R. Pieper & Co. Verlag 1920. 

Lange, Julius: Die menschliche Gestalt in der Geschichte der Kunst. Von der zweiten Blütezeit der griechischen Kunst bis zum XIX. Jahrhundert. Herausgegeben von P. Köbke. Aus dem Dänischen übertragen von Mathilde Mann. Strassburg i. E.: Druck und Verlag von J. H. Ed. Heitz (Heitz & Mündel) 1903. 

Tietze, Hans: Verlebendigung der Kunstgeschichte [1925], in: Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 33 (1980), 7–12. 

Weigert, Hans: Die heutigen Aufgaben der Kunstwissenschaft. (= Kunstwissenschaftliche Studien Band XVII) Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag 1935.  

[Wölfflin, Heinrich:] Renaissance und Barock. Eine Untersuchung über Wesen und Entstehung des Barockstils in Italien von Heinrich Wölfflin. Mit 22 Abbildungen. München: Theodor Ackermann königlicher Hof-Buchhändler 1888.  

[Wölfflin, Heinrich:] Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Das Problem der Stilentwicklung in der neueren Kunst von Heinrich Wölfflin. München: F. Bruckmann 1915.

[Wölfflin, Heinrich:] Italien und das deutsche Formgefühl von Heinrich Wölfflin. Mit 92 Abbildungen. (= Die Kunst der Renaissance) München: F. Bruckmann 1931.

Additional materials: Mappenwerke, Reproduktions- und Postkartenserien, etc.

(Every participant is encouraged to collect examples of popular art history and to include them in our discussions.)