Otto Karl Werckmeister

Otto Karl Werckmeister (* 1934 in Berlin ), also OK Werckmeister and O.-K. Werckmeister is a German art historian and author . He is a professor emeritus for art history.

life and work

Otto Karl Werckmeister was born in 1934 in Berlin as the child of the art dealer Karl Werckmeister and the artist Rose Petzold. He studied art history, philosophy and modern German literature at the Free University of Berlin , where he in 1958 with a thesis on Carolingian gold reliefs doctorate was. 1961–62 he received a travel grant from the German Archaeological Institute .

In 1965 Werckmeister moved to the United States , where he taught art history at the University of California, Los Angeles . In 1981/82 he received a Guggenheim grant . From 1984 to 2001 he was the Mary Jane Crowe Distinguished Professor of Art History at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois . He was visiting professor at the Universities of Marburg and Hamburg and took on research assignments for the London Warburg Institute and the German Archaeological Institute . He was also known as an essayist and lecturer.

At the beginning of his career Otto Karl Werckmeister dealt with medieval book illumination and the corresponding book covers . His approach to art history is shaped by Marxism ; his essay on the political ideology of the Bayeux Tapestry is an example of this. In 1976 he was one of the founding members of the Caucus for Marxism and Art of the College Art Association of America with David Kunzle and TJ Clark .

In citadel culture, Werckmeister thematizes the citadel as a metaphor for a contemporary culture that turns to crises out of prosperity, but no longer intends to resolve them politically, on the contrary, has a stabilizing and normalizing effect. In Linke Ikonen , the author analyzes five works of art of the 20th century in their shift in meaning from revolutionary to transfiguration and functionalization.

In his last book, The Medusa Effect , Werckmeister deals with the political imagery after the attacks of September 11, 2001 and in photographic war reporting . According to Werckmeister, new electronic image processing and dissemination methods are changing the effect of images on the viewer by not only recording reality, but also acting on it.

Werckmeister has lived in Berlin again since 2001. Contributions by him have since appeared in the features section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . Werckmeister published an article in 2006 under the title The Political Confrontation of the Arts: From the Great Depression to the Second World War, 1929-1939 and is working on a book with this title.

Otto Karl Werckmeister was married to María Eugenia Lacarra , born in 1944, from 1965 to 1983 .

Fonts (selection)

• The cover of the Codex aureus of St. Emmeram : Ein Goldschmiedewerk d. 9th century with 72 illustrations on 26 plates; Dissertation 1958 . Baden-Baden, Strasbourg 1963.
• Irish-Northumbrian illumination of the 8th century and monastic spirituality . De Gruyter, Berlin 1967.
• End of aesthetics . S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1971, ISBN 3-10-091101-6 .
• Ideology and Art in Marx and other essays . S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1974, ISBN 3-10-091101-6 .
• The political ideology of the Bayeux Tapestry . In: Centro Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo (ed.): Studi medievali (3ª series) . tape 17 . Spoleto 1976, p. 535-595 (English).
• Attempts via Paul Klee . Syndikat Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-8108-0156-9 .
• The Making of Paul Klee's career, 1914-1920 . University of Chicago press, Chicago 1989. Online: limited preview in Google Book search
• Citadel culture: the fine art of doom in the culture of the eighties . Hanser Verlag, Munich, Vienna 1989, ISBN 3-446-15164-8 .
• Left icons: Benjamin , Eisenstein , Picasso - after the fall of communism . Hanser Verlag, Munich, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-446-19136-4 .
• The Medusa Effect: Political Image Strategies Since September 11, 2001 . Form und Zweck Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 978-3-935053-04-4 .

literature

• Radical Art History: An academic conversation about OK Werckmeister , in: Wolfgang Kersten, Barbara Fay Abou-El-Haj: Radical art history: international anthology, pp. 375–397 . Zurich InterPublishers, original from University of Michigan, Zurich 1997. (Festschrift on the occasion of his 60th birthday)

See also

• Image studies and art history

Web links

• Literature by Otto Karl Werckmeister in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature by Otto Karl Werckmeister at WorldCat
• Literature by Otto Karl Werckmeister at Regesta Imperii
• Contributions in the FAZ :
  • Kafka's sentences: The individual without a mandate from September 18, 2008
  • Modern Warfare. The collateral murder video from May 6, 2010
  • Panzerknacker - David vs. Goliath today, from Prague to Syria September 17, 2011

References and comments

1. ↑ ^{a b} Tate Liverpool Critical Forum Political Picasso: Peace and Freedom in the Cold War, May 2010. Archived from the original on May 8, 2010 ; accessed on December 31, 2011 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Otto Karl Werckmeister in the Dictionary of Art Historians. Retrieved December 27, 2011 . 
3. ↑ Otto Karl Werckmeister with Perlentaucher. Retrieved December 27, 2011 . 
4. ^ Andrew Hemingway: Marxism and the history of art, p. 179, Pluto Press 2006. Retrieved January 1, 2012 (English). 
5. ↑ Lothar Böhnisch: Split Normality: Coping with Life and Social Pedagogy at the Boundaries of the Welfare Society, p. 144 ff. Juventa Verlag, Weinheim 1994, ISBN 978-3-7799-1021-3 . Online: limited preview in Google Book search
6. ↑ Philine Helas: picture / story: Festschrift for Horst Bredekamp, ​​p. 35 . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-05-004261-9 . Online: limited preview in Google Book search
7. ^ Michael Hauffen: Otto Karl Werckmeister - Left Icons; in: Kunstforum international, Volume 140, 1998, p. 496. Accessed January 5, 2012 . 
8. ↑ Guernica , Angelus Novus , Panzerkreuzer Potemkin , Kafka by Steven Soderbergh and the comic strips by Enki Bilal : Book Description at Artservice. Retrieved January 5, 2012 . 
9. ↑ Jan Thorn-Prikker at the Goethe Institute on Werckmeister's “The Medusa Effect. Political Image Strategies since September 11, 2001 ”in December 2005. Accessed January 5, 2012 . 
10. ↑ Review by Perlentaucher. Retrieved January 5, 2012 . 
11. ↑ ^{a b} Bauhaus University Weimar: 11th International Bauhaus Colloquium 2009. Accessed on December 27, 2011 . 
12. ^ Otto Karl Werckmeister: The political confrontation of the arts: from the Great Depression to the Second World War, 1929-1939 . In: Georges Bloch Yearbook of the Art History Institute of the University of Zurich, 11/12/2004/05 (2006) . 2006, p. 143-175 . , from: OPAC - Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max Planck Institute  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
13. ↑ WorldCat on this name. Retrieved December 30, 2011 . 
14. ↑ also: Maria Eugenia Lacarra de Werckmeister , z. B. as author: Ideology and social conflict in the "Poema de mio cid" , dissertation, Univ. of California, Univ. Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, 1976 ( detection at Open Library. Retrieved 30 December 2011 .  ), And other name variations. ( Library of Congress. Retrieved 30 December 2011 .  , WorldCat. Retrieved 30 December 2011 .  )
15. ↑ German National Library. Retrieved December 30, 2011 .