Michael Diers, Denis Grünemeier, Beat Wyss

Focus on Blow-Up
Die Gegenwart der Bilder bei Antonioni
VOLUME 220

What Is a Picture? Technical, Aesthetic, and Artistic Stratagems in Antonioni’s Blow-Up

Michelangelo Antonioni’s (b. Ferrara, Italy, 1912; d. Rome, 2007) classic Blow-Up (1966) is a milestone in the history of the cinema and filmmaking, and not only because it painted an astute and widely hailed portrait of its time. No less significant are the reflections it unfurls on the subject of the “picture,” which, as creative as they are trenchantly skeptical, have lost none of their explosive power. Beyond the questions it raises, primarily along the paradigm of photography, about the interrelation between image and reality and its implications for critical media studies and epistemology, Blow-Up is also a film about the difference and interference between fine and performing arts and hence about film as a peculiar hybrid between an art set in space and one unfolding in time.

To bring these aspects into focus, the book turns the spotlight on the status of the picture, the comparison between film and photography, painting, fashion, dance, and music as media and arts, and the relation between perception and truth, between reality and deception (illusions).

With contributions by Gabriele Brandstetter (professor of theater and dance studies), Michael Diers (professor emeritus of art history and the history of the image), Denis Grünemeier (art historian, curator, and art critic), Vera Lehndorff / Veruschka (artist and actor), Volker Pantenburg (professor of film studies), Sonia M. Schultz (art historian, film scholar), Martin Seel (professor of philosophy), Wim Wenders (director and photographer), and Beat Wyss (professor emeritus of art history and media theory).

EDITORS

Michael Diers (b. Werl, Germany, 1950) ranks among the most prominent art historians and academics in Germany today. He has written widely on the history and theory of art and the image and on political iconography. He has also edited numerous books and is a coeditor of the collected writings of Aby Warburg.

The art historian and cultural scholar Denis Grünemeier (b. Kokchetav, Kazakhstan, 1980) completed a doctoral thesis on the subject of light and lighting design in film and works as an art critic and curator, writing for magazines including Monopol and Artnet.

Beat Wyss (b. Basel, 1947) is a Swiss art historian and professor of art history and media theory. He has written about subjects in the history of ideas and mentalities, analyzing the political culture of the postwar era and reconstructing the history of art from a systems-theoretical perspective.