Objectives

This course will provide students with an introduction to the history of modern (19th to 21st century) History Painting. Upon completion of this module, students will become familiar with different (modern) theories about history as well as major visual strategies to visualize notions of history. Besides the theoretical knowledge students will get practise in visual analysis of different visual media. The students will become familiar with methods of visual communication, storage and production of (historical) knowledge. Furthermore, they will be able to develop arguments and conduct their own research on further and more specific issues in this field. Finally, students will become aware of the interdisciplinary nature of visualising history, and its relations to theories on memory, imagination and the documentation of “reality.”

Contents

The research seminar explores the history and theory of modern History Painting in western art. This includes a brief history of the development of the classical genre "History Painting" in Europe as well as a discussion of the reasons for its "decay" in the 19th century. From the beginning of the Modern period around 1800 new visual solutions for dealing with "history" arise and will be continually modified up to our present days. The seminar will analyse the various pictorial strategies of visualising history (which leaves the medium painting behind) and it will inquire into different theoretical approaches towards history. This includes discussions of the various attempts of defining what historical time and historical incidents are. This research seminar focuses on pictorial innovations in different media, visual strategies and theories, and the creation of "visualised history"; its functions and intentions. From Goya’s Desastres de la guerra or Turner’s Waterloo, via Menzel’s paintings around Friedrich II, Picasso´s Guernica and Richter’s cycle about the Baader–Meinhoff Terrorists to the Chapman brother’s actualisations of Goya’s Disasters, the history of modern attempts to visualize history deals with ongoing struggles (including the inevitable failure) in gaining an understanding of "reality" and "memory" or of what is and what was.