Gottfried Kerscher

Gottfried Kerscher (2009)

Gottfried Kerscher (born August 17, 1954 in Ingolstadt ) is a German art historian and since October 1, 2006 Professor of Art History of the Middle Ages at the University of Trier . In addition, the subject, which researches the history of art from the early Middle Ages to the present, has professorships from early modern times, modern times and gender studies .

Life

Kerscher was 1984 in Munich with a thesis on the picture program of the Baptistery of Parma doctorate . His idiosyncratic publication of this work, which begins with a fictional dialogue, already suggested at the time that Kerscher would not always approach the research objects in the conventional manner.

After an internship at the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments (1989–1990), two scholarships followed in Italy , at the Art History Institute in Florence (1985–1987) and at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome (1987–1989).

Kerscher devoted himself a. a. the transmission of astronomical / astrological ideas in the Middle Ages by means of illustrated manuscripts as well as the creation processes of visual art. This gave birth to a field of research that Kerscher approached again and again in different ways: the evaluation of different source material and their interpretation . Already in the Marburg graduate college "Art and Context " he was interested in this question as part of the organization of the conference, from which the publication of the same name " Hagiography and Art" arose.

Kerscher has been concerned with architecture since Rome . His interest was now the palace building of the late Middle Ages, especially the Papal Palace in Avignon. Here, too, he was able to find new methodological approaches: He devoted himself to the question of what role the ceremonial began to play in the design of architecture in the course of the 14th century.

Apparently, the ceremonial and the development of court systems contributed to the realization of a uniform palace structure with a non-uniform formal apparatus - a contradiction to an art history that predominantly argues formally. Kerscher had meanwhile completed his habilitation at the Technical University of Berlin and was appointed to the Art History Institute of the University of Frankfurt am Main when he was able to publish this in two books: " Architecture as Representation " and " Late medieval palace architecture between splendor and ceremonial requirements (Avignon, Mallorca, Papal States ) "as well as" Head rooms - a little journey through time through virtual spaces ", which leads through history in reverse, so to speak.

The question of the ceremonial and the part in the conception of art will continue to interest him. In 2009, the Historical Cultural Studies Research Center Trier and the research department approved start-up funding for an international project. The focus of this project is the first European ceremonial manuscript, the Leges Palatinae .

His research and teaching focuses on medieval art history, secular architecture and ceremonial, spatial arrangements and virtual spaces, new media (net art, etc.) and monument preservation.

Research projects

• The Leges palatinae - Cod. Lat. 9169 the Bibliothèque Royale Albert Ier in Brussels - the first illuminated European ceremonial manuscript and its special position in the Mediterranean cultural area
• Lines of development of art in the 11th and 12th centuries (in preparation)
• History of secular architecture in the Middle Ages (project in preparation)
• Architecture of the public

Publications

• Benedictus Antelami or the Baptistery of Parma. Art and communal self-image, Munich 1986 (dissertation)
• Hagiography and Art, Berlin 1993 (editor) (numerous reviews)
• Net art. Special volume of the Critical Reports 26, 1998, Issue 1 (edited together with Hans Dieter Huber and Christoph Danelzik-Brüggemann).
• Head spaces. A little time travel through the history of virtual spaces, Kiel 2000.
• Architecture as representation. Late medieval palace architecture between splendor and ceremonial requirements: Avignon, Mallorca, Papal States, Tübingen-Berlin 2000.

Essays, articles

• Quadriga temporum. On Sol iconography in medieval manuscripts and architectural decoration (with an excursus on Codex 146 of the Abbey Library in Göttweig), in: Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz 32, 1988, 1-76.
• "100,000 white foaming Isar stallions" - hydropower plants on the Isar, in: Yearbook of the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation 43, 1989, 134–162.
• Private room and ceremonial in the late medieval papal and royal palace. On the Montefiascone representations by Carlo Fontana and a floor plan of the Papal Palace of Avignon, in: Römisches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 26, 1990, 87-134.
• Palazzi "pre-rinascimentali": La "Rocca" di Spoleto ed il Collegio di Spagna a Bologna. Architettura del Cardinale Ægidius Albornoz, in: Annali di Architettura. Rivista del Centro Internazzionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio (Vicenza) 3, 1991, 14-25.
• Art. »Antelami« in: »Lexicon of visual artists of all times and peoples«, Vol. IV, Leipzig / Munich 1992,
• "Geistliches Goldt" - remarks on the restoration of the first version of St. Lorenz in Kempten (on the examination of the findings of St. Lorenz), in: Zeitschrift für Kunsttechnologie und Konservierung, issue 1, 1992, 174-189. Reprinted in: Allgäuer Geschichtsfreund 96, 1996, 119–152.
• Islamic Culture for the East? A lost Islamic palace in Italy and its successors, in: Kritischeberichte 1, 1992, 29–42.
• The Mallorcan ceremony at the papal court: Comederunt cum Papa rex maioricarum ...; in: »Ceremonial as a courtly aesthetic in the late Middle Ages and early modern times«, ed. v. JJ Berns and T. Rahn (series 'Early Modern Times', Vol. 25), Tübingen 1995, 125–149.
• Advertising contra art in public space, in: Falko Herlemann and Michael Kade (eds.), Art in public. Aestheticization, historicization, medialization, Frankfurt am Main . etc. 1996, 163-184.
• The potentate's perspective. Differentiation of »private wing« or apartment and ceremonial rooms in late medieval palace buildings, in: Zeremoniell und Raum (1200–1600) [4. Symposium of the Residences Commission of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Potsdam September 1994 = Residences Research Vol. 6], Sigmaringen 1997, 155–186.
• From riding monkeys and other works of art of the Kistler craft Foreword from: G. Maierbacher-Legl, chest and cupboard.
• Graphically decorated furniture from the South German late Renaissance, Munich 1998.
• The structuring of the Mallorcan court around 1330 and the habitus of court society, in: Höfe und Hofordnung (1200–1600), ed. v. H. Kruse and W. Paravicini [5. Symposium of the Residences Commission of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, October 1997 Sigmaringen = Residences Research, Bd. 10], Sigmaringen 1999, 77–89.
• Trends in grave research (report on the conference in Trier 1997), in: Kunstchronik 51, 1998, 340–344.
• The ceremony on the Iberian Peninsula , in: Lexikon des Mittelalters Volume IX, Munich 1998, Sp. 566-569.
• Brave New OPAC-World. Bibliography and research on the Internet, in: Kunstchronik 52, 1999, 51–56.
• Virtual Art History? Project - Promises - Reality, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Geisteswissenschaften, March 20, 1999
• "If you can talk about it, it has nothing to do with cinema" (David Lynch) - Hitchcock's doppelganger motif and pathos formulas in David Lynch's films, in: Kritischeberichte 27, 1999 (Issue 1), 4-16.
• Form of rule and spatial planning. On the reception of Mallorcan and Spanish-Islamic art in the Mediterranean region, in: Christian Liberang (Hrsg.): Gothic architecture in Spain. La arquitectura gótica en España, Frankfurt 1999 (= Ars Iberica, 4), 251-272.
• The future of art history (a roundtable discussion with specialist representatives), in: Kritischeberichte 28, issue 1, 2000.
• Poetry and film time or film time - real time - zero time: The veil of time and the montage of the inner monologue, in: Duration - Simultaneity - Real time: Kunstforum International 151, July – Sept. 2000, 160-172.
• Violence in the film - violence in the head, in: Kunstforum International 152, Jan. – March 2001, 162–173.
• Architecture Digitalized. The structure of time in a digital architectural representation (German / English)
• Art in film - film as art (discussion of the conference of the same name in Frankfurt / M. Oct. 2000), in: Kritischeberichte 2001.
• Image and sign - icon and eye-catcher. Image strategies on the Internet, in: Thinking with the eye. Strategies of visualization in scientific and virtual worlds, ed. Bettina Heintz / Jörg Huber, Zurich, Vienna, New York 2001, 251–264.
• MoVie and MuVi. On the interpretation of moving images in film and music video clips as image studies and "critical style analysis" (together with Birgit Richard), in: Yvonne Ehrenspeck / Burckhard Schäfer (eds.), Film and photo analysis in educational science. An introduction. (2002)
• Meaning formation in medieval art: a foray through the newer Antelami literature and a discussion of old problems, in: Festschrift für Antje Middeldorf-Kosegarten, ed. v. B. Klein u. a. (2002)
• Use of thesaurus and internationalization in image databases, Kunstchronik 57.2004, 606–608.
• Literacy - the stepchild of language development in Germany. Literacy early education - the encounter of preschool with written culture, in: Future manual for day-care centers (2006)
• Jan Vermeer and the “Pictures in the Maze of the Soul”, in Razor Sharp. The art of reproducing, exh. Kat. Friedrichshafen 2007, 193-204.
• Jacobi III Regis maioricarum: Leges palatinae - A ceremonial as statute ?, in: From order to norm: Statutes in the Middle Ages and early modern times.
• Files for the conference from 12-14 October 2006 in Munich, Paderborn a. a. (Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh) January 2008 (in press)
• Migration of Elements of Islamic Art into Italy from Spain and the Balearic Islands in the Fourteenth Century, in: Crossing Cultures. Conflict. Migration. Convergence, ed. By Jaynie Anderson, Melbourne 2009. (= 32nd Congress of the International Committee of the History of Art, CIHA)

Web link

• Homepage at the University of Trier

Individual evidence

1. ↑ AHWA-AWHA: CIHA London 2000 Section 23 Digital Art History Time. Retrieved February 7, 2020 .