Bazon Brock, Hans Ulrich Reck

Utopie und Evidenzkritik / Tarnen und Täuschen
BAND 185
VOLUME 186

Two Titans of Theory

When Bild keeps celebrating Dieter Bohlen and Oliver Kahn as titans, one might think that there is no point in trying to compete. But one could not be more wrong: Bazon Brock and Hans Ulrich Reck, the titans of theory, eat those monsters of pop culture for breakfast—rather than bank on shaky celebrity, primped blondness, the quick buck, and the idea that might makes right in public opinion, they know their impuissance, exercise their poverty, put their excess weight in the balance.

Hans Ulrich Reck (b. Schönenwerd, Switzerland, 1953) is a philosopher, art scholar, and writer. He was a professor and rector at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne until 2020.

Bazon Brock (b. Stolp, Pomerania, now Poland, 1936; lives and works in Berlin and Wuppertal) is professor emeritus of aesthetics and cultural education at the University of Wuppertal. He also held professorships at the University of Fine Arts (HFBK) Hamburg (1965–1976) and the University of Applied Arts Vienna (1977–1980). Both as a theorist and an artist, he contributed substantially to the rise of Pop Art and the Happening in Germany, organized numerous exhibitions, and published widely on art, design, everyday culture, and aesthetics.