graw semester 15/16.indd

WS 2015/2016
Prof. Dr. Isabelle Graw
Art History and Art Theory
1) Introduction to all the Seminars and distribution of papers
Mon Oct 12th at 4.30pm in room I9, Dürerstraße 10.
2) Seminar
‘The Invention of the Modern Concept of Art in the 18th century’
Mon Oct 26th (2am-5pm), Tue Oct 27th (2-5pm ), Wed Oct 28th (2-5pm ) in
room I9, Dürerstraße 10.
Art is not a transhistorical category. Its meanings have changed historically. It was not until
the eighteenth century that different individual practices came to be thought of as a “distinct
domain, the fine arts, or simply “Art” which is distinguished from the variety of other human
activities“ (Martha Woodmansee). This seminar looks at several seminal texts by Kant, Schiller, Schlegel and Moritz that contributed to a new understanding of Art. It is the aim of this
seminar to reconstruct the independence that was claimed for Art in the late eighteenth century: The idea of an Art that set its own purposes rather than surrender to external motivations.
This ideal of an autonomous Art not only derives from theological thinking, but also reacted to
new pressures and constraints. Faced with an Art Industry and its economic criteria, philosophers and writers refuted the instrumentalization of Art by granting a kind of self- agency to
it. However, while the ideal of an autonomous Art was originally directed against increasing
market pressures, it turned out to serve the interests of the market very well for it rendered its
products more marketable.
Literature:
English:
-Paul Oskar Kristeller, „The Modern System of the Arts, in: Morris Weitz, ed. Problems in
Aesthetics, 2d edition, New York:1970, p. 108-164
http://esztetika.elte.hu/baranyistvan/files/2012/09/kristeller-modern-system-of-arts-I-1951.pdf
http://esztetika.elte.hu/baranyistvan/files/2012/09/kristeller-modern-system-of-arts-II-1952.pdf
-Friedrich Schiller: On the Aesthetic Education of Man, New York 2014
-Immanuel Kant: Critique on the Power of Judgement, Begin: On art in general, The Cambridge Edition of the works of Imanuel Kant, Cambridge 2008, p.182-p.203
-Larry Shiner: The Invention of Art: A Cultural History, Chicago 2011, p. 75-98, p. 99-129,
p. 130-151
-Marta Woodmansee: The Author, Art, and The Market. Rereading the History of Aesthetics,
New York 1994, p. 1-10, p. 11- 33, p. 57- 86
Deutsch:
-Paul Oskar Kristeller, Das moderne System der Künste, in: Humanismus und Renaissance
II, München 1976, S. 164-206
-Karl Philipp Moritz: Versuch einer Vereinigung aller schönen Künste und Wissenschaften
unter dem Begriff des in sich selbst Vollendeten. An Herrn Moses Mendelssohn, in: Ders.:
Die Signatur des Schönen und andere Schriften zur Begründung der Autonomieästhetik,
Hamburg 2009, S. 7-15. Only in German
-Friedrich Schiller: Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von
Briefen. Mit den Augustenburger Briefen herausgegeben von Klaus L.Berghan, Stuttgart
2000, S.7-123
-Immanuel Kant: Deduktion der reinen ästhetischen Urteile, Beginn: Von der Kunst
überhaupt in Ders.: Kritik der ästhetischen Urteilskraft, Werkausgabe Band X
Herausgegeben von Wilhelm Weischedel, Frankfurt am Main 1996, S.237-265
-Friedrich Schlegel: Athenäums-Fragmente und andere Schriften. Auswahl und Nachwort
von Andreas Huyssen, Stuttgart 1978, S.76-142
3) Seminar:
‘Digital Photography’ – a seminar with Josephine Pryde’s class in Berlin
Tue Nov 24th (2-6pm), Wed Nov 25th (2-4pm), in Berlin, exact location to be
announced.
What happens to indexicality in a digital world? Is there still a physical link to be assumed
between the digital photograph and the reality it depicts? Have objects been replaced by subjects in digital photography?
Literature:
-Walter Benjamin: Kleine Geschichte der Fotografie / Little History of Photography (1931)
-Siegfried Kracauer: Die Fotografie / Photography (1927)
-Roland Barthes: Die helle Kammer / Camera Lucida (1980)
-Robin Kelsey: Photography and the Art of chance, p. 1-11 (2015)
-Alexander García Düttmann: Is there a Self in Selfies, 2015
http://www.fourbythreemagazine.com/is-there-a-self-in-selfies.html
-Texte zur Kunst Nr. 99, Photography Issue, September 2015
-Jaime Schwartz: Is a Photograph Still an Index If It’s on the Internet?
http://dismagazine.com/discussion/41736/a-discursive-mask/
Registration for this trip is important! You can register with Isabelle Graw’s
assistant Julian Irlinger ([email protected]).
4) CANCELLED
Seminar
‘Authorship Revisited’
Wed Dec 9th , Thu December 10th in Room I9, Dürerstraße 10.
During our last seminar „Institutional Critique in the Digital Age“ with Benjamin Buchloh (April
2015, Berlin) a discussion about authorship took place. Questions emerged over whether we
can still radically question authorship and value those artistic practices that seem to undermine it. How is the situation today after the often invoked „death of the author,“ considering
that artworks still tend to be ascribed to their originator when circulating in the art industry?
How can we theorize authorship once we incorporate the lessons from Roland Barthes and
Michel Foucault? Can we remain sceptical of the notion of an authorial author? And what
remains of artworks if we avoid relating it to their authors in an reductionist fashion? Once we
assume that the author is not the sole origin of an artwork and that it exceeds her, the question remains: How do we conceptualize authorship?
Literature:
Deutsch
-Roland Barthes: Der Tod des Autors, in: Texte zur Theorie der Autorschaft, Herausgegeben
und Kommentiert von Fotis Jannidis, Gerhard Lauer, Matias Martinez und Simone Winko,
Stuttgart 2000. S.185-197
-Michel Foucault: Was ist ein Autor? In: Ebend. S.198-229
English:
-Roland Barthes: The death of the author (1967)
-Michel Foucault: What is an author?, in: Aesthetics, Method and Epistemology, Edited by
James D. Faubion, New York 1998, p. 205-222
-Martha Woodmansee: Der Autor-Effekt. Zur Wiederherstellung von Kollektivität, Ebend:
S.298-314.
-Art and Objecthood. Graham Harman in Conversation with Christophe Cox and Jenny
Jaskey, in: Realism, Materialism, Art, Eds C.Cox, J.Jaskey, S.Malik, Berlin 2015, S.97-116.
5) Workshop
Art Industry: History and Dimension of an interrelation
by Isabelle Graw and Juliane Rebentisch
Tue 26th of Jan (2-5 pm), Wed 27th of Jan (10 am-1pm)
Meeting point: On the 26th we meet in room I9, Städelschule, Dürerstraße
10, on the 27th in the left Chapel, HfG Offenbach, Schlossstraße 31.
This workshop intends to investigate the interrelation of art and industry in both historical and
systematic perspectives. With Tocqueville’s and Adorno/Horkheimer’s critiques of the culture
industry as well as Alois Riegl’s account of the late Roman art industry as a background, we
will discuss different notions of production, distribution, and reception as well as the respective challenges they pose to art.
It will also examine the various historical manifestations of an industrialized art by considering its respective historical conditions. The different notions of industry – from Adorno/
Horkheimer’s culture industry to Graw’s „visual industry“ – will be regarded as ways of coming
to terms with structural changes that affect both our understanding of art and the organization
of its social universe.
Literature:
English:
- Max Horkheimer/Theodor W. Adorno [1944], „Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception”, in: Dialectic of Enlightenment, London/New York 1976, pp. 120-167
- Alois Riegl, Late Roman art industry [1901], Rome 1985. p.5-17, p. 223-234
- Isabelle Graw, High Price. Art Between the Market and Celebrity Culture, Berlin 2009, pp.
9-17, 19-79, 147-148, 149-152
Deutsch:
- Max Horkheimer/Theodor W. Adorno, „Kulturindustrie. Aufklärung als Massenbetrug”, in:
dies., Dialektik der Aufklärung. Philosophische Fragmente [1944], Frankfurt/M. 1997, S.
141-191.
-Alois Riegl, Spätrömische Kunst-Industrie 1901, Bremen 2011. (Auszüge werden noch
festgelegt.), S 1 -13, S. 209 - 217
-Isabelle Graw, Der große Preis. Kunst zwischen Markt und Celebrity Kultur, Köln 2008,
„Vorwort”, S. 9-18; „Der Siegeszug des Markterfolgs”, S. 24-83; „Die Kunstwelt als ‚Visualität
und Bedeutung herstellende Industrie’”, S. 152-154; „Geben und Nehmen”, S.154-158.
Registration for this workshop is obligatory! You can register either with
Isabelle Graw’s assistant Julian Irlinger ([email protected]) or with Juliane
Rebentisch’s assistant Eva Novak (assistenz.rebentisch@hfg-offenbach.
de).
How to speak about my work
1) Fri Dec 11th , 2-5pm in I9
2) Date will be announced soon
HOW TO TALK ABOUT MY WORK GUIDELINES
General: The presentation should be no longer than 20 minutes in order for us to have time
for the discussions. It is important to focus on ONE problem - instead of showing many works
in a row. For one student we can use one to one and half hours of time the maximum.
Options:
1) You speak about your work by presenting it. There is a discussion of your work and your
presentation afterwards.
2) The presenter doesn’t say anything about her work and waits until everybody has commented upon her work. Than she talks about whether the comments relate to how she conceptualizes her work.
3) You present your work and the group is either divided into two or two people are taking on
the role of a) the one who criticises it (“bad cop”) b) the one who defends (“good cop”).
4) The professor talks about the work (without seeing it before) as it was her work.
1) General Guidelines for Presentations (written or oral)
Your presentation should ideally start by situating the text or the book historically – when was
it written, who is its author, what else has she written, and what was at stake when she wrote
it? It is most important to present the main ideas of the text and its central proposition, that is,
how you understand it. There is no “given meaning” of a text – the meaning of a text is usually
disputed and the object of many different interpretations. Please make a distinction between
what the author says and what you say – and please don’t present her ideas as some abstract free-floating knowledge or absolute “truth”. You should never forget that you are summarizing the ideas of another person – but it is also your understanding and interpretation of
their thoughts and propositions that you present to us. It would be good if you could also refer
to how the text is structured, ig. what kind of rhetorical strategies are used in it.
If you are dealing with statements of an artist please keep in mind that they don’t tell us the
truth about her work – they also have to be decoded and interpreted. If you could add a critical comment to the text at the end of your presentation this would be very welcome
Practicalities:
Your presentation should ideally be no longer than two pages.
Please send it to [email protected]