Ulrich Pfisterer – författare

A 300-year history of influential artist training academies in more than a dozen countries  This ambitious volume delves into the institutional history of art academies. These academies provided practical training for artists as well as spaces for theoretical discussions and debates as they emerged across Europe and the Americas around 1600 and through their proliferation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Many were founded under official auspices, with state, ecclesiastical, or monarchical support for the teaching of “fine arts.” Others originated through private patronage or expanded beyond painting, sculpture, and architecture, competing or merging with trade schools. Complex models for teaching art evolved around the world across an array of institutions, as the European academy model responded to differing regional conditions, including colonial contexts.  Seventeen essays from leading and emerging scholars examine academies from Brazil, Colombia, Italy, France, Germany, Mexico, Turkey, the United States, and beyond. In examining academies of art both within specific political and historical moments and across transnational boundaries, the authors ask nuanced questions about the institutions’ goals and rules around membership, addressing issues of race, class, and gender. The picture of art academies that emerges is one of malleable institutions that wrote, reformed, and adapted policies according to local needs.  Published by the National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts/Distributed by Yale University Press

The art of the Sistine Chapel, decorated by artists who competed with one another and commissioned by popes who were equally competitive, is a complex fabric of thematic, chronological, and artistic references. Four main campaigns were undertaken to decorate the chapel between 1481 and 1541, and with each new addition, fundamental themes found increasingly concrete expression. One theme in particular plays a central role in the chapel: the legitimization of papal authority, as symbolized by two keys-one silver, one gold-to the kingdom of heaven. "The Sistine Chapel: Paradise in Rome" provides a concise, informative account of the decoration of the Sistine Chapel. In unpacking this complex history, Ulrich Pfisterer reveals the remarkable unity of the images in relation to theology, politics, and the intentions of the artists themselves, who included such household names as Botticelli, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Through a study of the main campaigns to adorn the Sistine Chapel, Pfisterer argues that the art transformed the chapel into a pathway to the kingdom of God, legitimising the absolute authority of the popes. First published in German, the prose comes to life in English in the deft hands of translator David Dollenmayer.

Based on the key concepts of ‛pluralization’ and ‛authority’, the series presents studies on early modern literature and culture from the 15th to the 17th century. The early modern period is increasingly recognized in cultural studies as an age whose cultural paradigms still largely depended on medieval norms and traditions but at the same time also created a set of conditions that facilitated Europe’s transition to modernity. As opposed to established historical grand narratives such as modernization or secularization, the volumes in this series attempt to describe the dynamics of the period as a complex interaction of mutually competing world views, knowledge structures and behaviour patterns. The series explores these dynamics from an interdisciplinary perspective, including studies on literature, linguistics, history, philosophy, art, music and legal history.

Ausgehend von Archivmaterial aus der Studienzeit Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreichs richtet diese Publikation den Blick auf historische Unterrichtsformen im Fach Kunstgeschichte sowie auf die engen Verflechtungen von kunsthistorischer Lehre und Forschung. Heydenreichs Aufzeichnungen machen den Gang eines Hamburger Studenten von der Immatrikulation bis zur Promotion in allen Details nachvollziehbar. Gleichzeitig erlauben sie Einblicke in die Abläufe am Kunsthistorischen Seminar Hamburg sowie an der Kulturwissenschaftlichen Bibliothek Warburg. Der Band enthält Mitschriften der Gotik Vorlesungen Erwin Panofskys (1925/26) ebenso wie detaillierte Aufzeichnungen der Methoden-Übungen Aby Warburgs inkl. aller Referate und auch Bildtafeln, die die Studierenden für ihre Vorträge zu arrangieren hatten.

Erwin Panofsky’s assertions in Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (1960) that a new historical consciousness and a quest for an ‘all’antica’ idiom was manifest in the art and architecture of the period are routinely reiterated in art historical narratives.By formally analyzing fifteenth-century visual culture, however, questions can be raised about what the artists and architects of the period actually used as their models and how they understood and studied the past. Maria Fabricius Hansen juxtaposes in this essay the conventional definitions of the Renaissance, through its endeavors to revive or renew Roman Antiquity, with observations of paintings and buildings of the fifteenth century in order to reconsider the characteristics of Italian visual culture of the time. Debate on the ideas of all’antica and classicism in the Italian Renaissance Critical review of art historical mappings of causes of inspiration from Roman antiquity Discussion of Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (1960)

Zentrale Leitideen, Methoden und Hilfsmittel der Kunstgeschichte. Die Autoren erläutern Begriffe und Theorien und bieten historische Abrisse, die wesentliche Entwicklungsstränge aufzeigen. Auf diese Weise kann der Leser die historischen Voraussetzungen heutiger Diskussionen über Kunst nachvollziehen. Die Neuauflage des Standardwerks wurde aktualisiert und um rund 25 Beiträge erweitert. Auf ca. 80 zusätzlichen Seiten werden Begriffe wie Abbildungen und Reproduktionen , Hybridität , Kunst im öffentlichen Raum , Rahmen , Visual Culture , World Art Studies u. a behandelt.

Das Lexikon erläutert die zentralen Leitideen, Methoden und Hilfsmittel der Kunstgeschichte bis hin zu jüngsten Forschungsansätzen. In etwa 150 Stichwörtern, z.B. Original, Fälschung, Repräsentation, Kunsthändler, Kunstmarkt, Manierismus, Ende der Kunst, wird dabei auch die wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Entwicklung der Disziplin ausführlich dargestellt. Damit steht das Werk außer Konkurrenz. Die Autoren erläutern Begriffe und Theorien aus der Zeit vor der eigentlichen Begründung der Kunstwissenschaft im 19.Jahrhundert, beginnend mit der Antike. Auf diese Weise erfährt der Leser mehr über die historischen Voraussetzungen heutiger Diskussionen über Kunst und erkennt zugleich die Andersartigkeit der damaligen Kunstbetrachtung. Damit unterscheidet sich das unter Mitarbeit von 50 renommierten Kunsthistorikern entstandene Handbuch wesentlich von bisherigen, großenteils personen- und sachkundlich orientierten Nachschlagewerken.