Rosalind E. Krauss

Das optische Unbewusste (The Optical Unconscious)
VOLUME 194

Rosalind Krauss’ Landmark Study in German for the First Time

In its search for artistic evidence of a “refusal of the optical logic of mainstream modernism,” Rosalind E. Krauss’ The Optical Unconscious (eng. first edition 1993) unfolds a dazzlingly multifaceted vision of the history of modern art. Artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Jackson Pollock, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, and Eva Hesse feature at the heart of this analysis.

In this study turned manifesto, she attacks the ideological underpinnings of modernism in its artistic and theoretical manifestations while letting readers eavesdrop on Bloomsbury salons, Clement Greenberg’s living room, and Michael Fried’s seminars, with detours via Freud, Lacan, Bataille, Deleuze, and many others. Not only is Krauss’ “alternative history” refreshing. Her writing style freely shifts between art history, aesthetic theory, and diaristic observations to offer a sweeping narrative with literary appeal. This volume is the first German translation of the by now canonical work.

Rosalind E. Krauss (b. 1941) is one of the most important American art historians and critics of our age. She is professor in the Department of Art History at Columbia University, New York, as well as a founding editor of the journal October.