Susanne von Falkenhausen

Praktiken des Sehens im Felde der Macht (Practices of Seeing in the Field of Power)
Gesammelte Schriften (Collected Writings)
VOLUME 209

How Does History Enter the Picture?

Do images make history? And what do art history, museums, and exhibitions do with art? Susanne von Falkenhausen’s texts on modern and contemporary art explore the structures where concrete aesthetic form is reflected on historically and becomes politically explosive. The author offers nuanced reconstructions of the conditions of aesthetic production and reference systems while taking into account the different facets and historical shifts within art reception. From this perspective, artworks are not passive mirrors of the historical constellations that gave rise to them, but are rather integrated into the production of history and participate in its writing and rewriting.

The volume includes texts on international modern and contemporary art, on Italian Futurism, and on nineteenth-century history painting. Von Falkenhausen’s analyses of contemporary art take the discourses that have defined the art system in recent decades a step further. With great insight and wit, the author points out many connections that have been ignored or suppressed by academia and criticism alike.

Susanne von Falkenhausen (b. 1951) is an art historian and critic. In the early nineties, she was one of the first teachers to introduce feminist, gender-theoretical, and deconstructivist approaches to art history. Since 1993 she has been Professor of Modern Art History at Humboldt University in Berlin. Before that, she was director of the Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (NGbK) in Berlin.