Word formations – claim to interpretation and self-positioning in modernist artists’ writings

Conference at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte Munich
October 10 – October 12, 2024

The aesthetic, social and economic upheavals of the modern age meant that, from the end of the 19th century onwards, artists became increasingly involved in the public discourse on art in a variety of literary ways. In written statements, they claimed sovereignty of interpretation over themselves and their work, commented on artistic developments or launched programs that flanked their own work. The expanding field of art journalism and a public of interested laypeople provided the basis for this. This corresponded to a growing interest on the part of the readership in the ‘personality’ of artists, their experiences, their perspectives and individual approaches to creative work. Artistic existence became a projection surface for preconceived expectations, to which artists in turn reacted in a critical, confirming or guiding manner.

The conference will focus on the journalistic commitment and strategies of exhibition artists (Oskar Bätschmann), which are initially required out of economic necessity in order to assert themselves on a free art market. Artists not only have to promote themselves and their products and establish a ‘brand core’. Their voice also carries weight when it comes to positioning themselves in the context of the avant-garde in the field of divergent directions, be it with pamphlets, statements or artistic programs. The choice of means also concerns the problem of the conception of artists’ writings themselves: Which literary form is suitable for which purpose? Which concepts of art criticism or art history are reflected and taken up, which are rejected or revised?

The conference addresses the phenomenon of the artist as a literary actor with a focus on cultural modernism, i.e. from the long 19th century to the present day. The conference defines artists’ writings as texts that were written for the purpose of publication, i.e. which, in contrast to private correspondence or diary entries, were intended for publicity from the outset. These can be very different literary genres and text types – from reviews and essays to autobiographical texts, theoretical drafts, manifestos and art-theoretical essays, as well as memoirs, anecdotes and interviews.

The conference does not intend to categorize this plurality across the board, nor to draw up a list of artistic ‘double talents’. Rather, it focuses on a virulent concern and problem for contemporary artists by asking with what intentions and in what way artists ‘inscribe’ themselves in the discourse on contemporary art, how artists’ writings in practice flank, comment on or influence processes of interpretation and perception of art and what authority the voice of artists has in the journalistic discourse – that is, from the perspective of publishers, critics and readers, but not least also of academic art history. How much weight do we attach to the artist’s word (in historical retrospect)? What authenticity and authority do we grant him with regard to the sovereignty of interpretation over art?

Conference languages: German, English and French

Organized by Felix Billeter and Julie Kennedy (Hans Purrmann Archives, Munich), Stephanie Marchal (Ruhr University Bochum), Christine Tauber (Central Institute for Art History, Munich) and Andreas Zeising (Technical University Dortmund)

Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte
Katharina-von-Bora-Straße 10
80333 Munich

Further information can be found here.