Stephan von Huene

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Stephan von Huene with "Die neue Lore Ley II", 1997

Stephan von Huene (born September 15, 1932 in Los Angeles ; † September 5, 2000 in Hamburg ) was an American artist of German origin, in whose sound sculptures art and science come together, images, sounds and movement are synaesthetically combined.

Life

Stephan von Huene studied painting, drawing and design at the Chouinard Art Institute (Bachelor of Arts), as well as art and art history at the University of California , Los Angeles (Master of Arts). His first, abstract expressionist , later collaged pictures were created in the early 1960s, at the same time also series of mostly figurative pen and pencil drawings. Drawing as a playful and targeted form of searching has been an essential part of his work for him throughout his life. It served the self-observation in the creative process as well as the generation and manifestation of ideas. The phenomenon of onomatopoeic painting can already be seen in the early pictures and drawings.

In the 1960s he created sculptures inspired by Surrealism made of wood, leather and other materials. Between 1964 and 1970 Stephan von Huene constructed his first sound sculptures based on investigations into the acoustics of musical instruments, mechanical pianos (player pianos), jukeboxes and organs and controlled with optoelectronic programs (punched tape). Stephan von Huene's extensive theoretical examination of acoustic phenomena was also in this context; the reading of Hermann von Helmholtz's "Theory of Sound Sensations" (1865) as well as Dayton C. Miller's "The Science of musical Sounds" (1916) were formative for this.

The development of electronic programs was used for the later works, in which the preoccupation with communication theory and its application to artistic work played a role. Gregory Bateson , Paul Watzlawick and later also the cyberneticist and friend Heinz von Foerster were important and stimulating sources of information here. Stephan von Huene had been friends with Allan Kaprow and Ed Kienholz , but also with the painter Sam Francis , since his early days as an artist. He worked with the composer James Tenney on the "drum" for the Exploratorium in San Francisco . During his time in Hamburg he met the composer György Ligeti . Close relationships developed with the art historians Horst Bredekamp and Martin Warnke and the historian Achatz von Müller , some of which are also reflected in the work, for example in 1997 in the works “What's wrong with Art”, “Blue Books” and “Initial Questions / Initial questions ".

Stephan von Huene had been a committed teacher since his student days, and his students included Mira Schor, Olav Westphalen and Thomas Zitzwitz . He taught “sculpture” at the California Institute of the Arts from 1971 to 1980, and later in Europe also basic drawing classes (which for him mainly meant perception) at the summer academy in Salzburg . In Karlsruhe , from 1992 to 1997, he set up the "Low Fidelity Studio" at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in the media art department. In 1977/78 Stephan von Huene received a scholarship from the German Academic Artists' Program in Berlin, and in 1980 he moved his studio from Los Angeles to Hamburg . In 1991 he was part of the Scholar Program at the Getty Research Institute in Santa Monica , and in 1997 as a guest at the Villa Aurora in Pacific Palisades .

Von Huene was married to the Hamburg feature editor of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit and cultural critic Petra Kipphoff . As part of an 'exchange of letters', von Huene's ZEIT collages were created. Petra Kipphoff had sent him issues of the weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT by post, who replied with clippings from photos and scraps of sentences from ZEIT glued to A4 format, which were supplemented with his own drawings. The works were exhibited in the Hamburger Kunsthalle for the first time in 2003 and entered the collection of the Hamburger Kunsthalle in 2014 as a gift from ZEIT Verlag.

Themes of the sound sculptures

Stephan von Huene's work is characterized by an intensive preoccupation not only with technical details, but especially with social, humanities and natural science theories. His sound sculptures transform these theories with the help of techniques (musical instrument mechanics, E-PROMs, computers). In this regard, they can be classified into four larger subject areas that can be found in each sound sculpture with different focuses:

Mechanical Music Productivity

Stephan von Huene oriented himself towards mechanical musical instruments and not towards reproductive media. This was a search for spatial effects of sounds produced in the here-and-now (which Huene described as "productive"), in contrast to reproductive media such as records or tapes. An example is the change in the overtone composition when the pipe lips of the organ pipes of totem tones move.

Blurring of human communication

The moving parts of his sound sculptures refer to theories about human communication, such as those of Birdwhistell , Scheflen or the movement patterns of eurythmy . In doing so, von Huene used it in a more blurred manner and not as a one-to-one communication between sound sculpture and recipient. For example, Schwitter's extended sound sculpture addresses human communication using gestures and language components.

Continuity between language and music

Another aspect of his sound sculptures is the theming of language as sound. The sound sculptures thus turn against the separation between the signified and the signified as propagated by Saussure : the linguistic sounds of the sound sculptures are both at the same time; it emphasizes the continuity between a language and its sounds. One example is the vowel sounds of Magic Flute .

Sound sculpture as embodied cognition

Through the direct inclusion of the recipient in his sound sculpture, von Huene thematized human perception processes and states of consciousness. The sound sculptures emphasize that these cognitive processes arise directly from the body and its surroundings (i.e. as an embodiment ). It is noteworthy that Stephan von Huenes' sound sculptures thematized the cognition of the recipients as embodied, before the change in consciousness theories towards embodied perception (embodiment or enactivism ) in philosophy and psychology took place in the 1990s . Examples are the eardrum as the retina during greetings or the drum as the sense of hearing.

Works (selection)

  • Kaleidophonic Dog, 1967 (Los Angeles County Museum)
  • Tap Dancer, 1967 (Ed Kienholz estate)
  • Totem Tones I-IV, 1969 (various owners)
  • Rosebud Annunciator (Museum Ludwig, Cologne)
  • Text Tones, 1979/82/3 (Hamburger Kunsthalle)
  • The Magic Flute, 1985 (estate of Stephan von Huene)
  • Extended Schwitters, 1987 (Sprengel Museum, Hanover)
  • Table dancer, 1988/93 (ZKM │ Museum of New Art, Karlsruhe)
  • Lexichaos, 1990 (Helmholtz Institute at the Humboldt University, Berlin)
  • Drum II, 1992 (Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg)
  • The New Lore Ley II, 1997 (Max Liebermann House, "Brandenburger Tor" Foundation, Berlin)
  • What's wrong with Art ?, 1997 (Stephan von Huene's estate)
  • Sirens Low, 1999 (Dresden State Art Collections, Albertinum)

Exhibitions (selection)

Solo exhibitions

  • 2005/06: Stephan von Huene - border commuter, border shifter , ZKM , Karlsruhe.
  • 2002/03: Tune the World. Stephan von Huene. The retrospective , Haus der Kunst, Munich; Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum Foundation, Duisburg; Hamburger Kunsthalle.
  • 1998 What's wrong with Culture? New Museum Weserburg, Bremen (cat.)
  • 1990 sound sculptures , Louisiana Museum, Humlebæk (cat.); Hans Mayer Gallery , Düsseldorf; Lexichaos, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (cat.)
  • 1983/84 State Art Gallery Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden (cat.); Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Berliner Kunstverein in Charlottenburg Palace, Berlin
  • 1974 Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
  • 1970 Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (cat.); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
  • 1969 Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Los Angeles (cat.)

Group exhibitions

  • 2014: Art or Sound , Fondazione Prada, Venice (cat.)
  • 2008 Babylon. Myth and Truth , Pergamon Museum, Berlin
  • 2006 A magic flute machine , exhibition on the 350th birthday of WA Mozart, Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna
  • 2000 Sonic Boom , Hayward Gallery , London; Theatrum Naturae et Artis , Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin; Machine theater , City Museums Heilbronn, Heilbronn
  • 1996 Sonambiente , Festival for Hearing and Seeing, Academy of the Arts, Berlin
  • 1995 46th Biennale, Venice
  • 1993 Artec 93 , Nagoya, Japan; Multimedia 3, ZKM, Karlsruhe
  • 1987 documenta 8, Kassel
  • 1986 Inventions 86. Music and Language , Academy of the Arts, Berlin
  • 1985 From the sound of pictures , State Gallery Stuttgart, Stuttgart
  • 1980 For eyes and ears , Akademie der Künste, Berlin
  • 1979 Sound Sculpture , Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
  • 1976 37th Biennale, Venice. Painting and Sculpture in California, San Francisco
  • 1975 See to hear , Düsseldorf / San Francisco
  • 1973 Sound Sculpture , Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver
  • 1972 California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
  • 1968 The West Coast Now , Portland
  • 1967 Electro Magica (International Electric Art Exhibit), Tokyo
  • 1967 American Sculpture of the Sixties , New York / Los Angeles / Washington DC
  • 1966 California Art Now , San Francisco / Seattle / Washington
  • 1962 Long Beach Museum
  • 1961 Pasadena Art Museum

Literature (selection)

  • Stephan von Huene - sound sculptures. Exhibition State Art Gallery, Baden-Baden; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover; New Society for Fine Arts, Berlin, 1983/4; Catalog ed. by Katharina Schmidt, with contributions a. a. by Stephan von Huene, Allan Kaprow, Thomas von Randow , Wieland Schmied, Katharina Schmidt.
  • Stephan von Huene: table dancer. with contributions by Horst Bredekamp and Petra Oelschlägel, Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 1995.
  • Stephan von Huene: What's wrong with Culture? Sound and media sculptures. Exhibition Neues Museum Weserburg, Bremen 1998, catalog ed. by Thomas Deecke.
  • Stephan von Huene - The Retrospective. Exhibition Haus der Kunst, Munich; Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum , Duisburg; Hamburger Kunsthalle 2002/2003, Cantz Verlag catalog, Ostfildern, with contributions by Joan La Barbara , Horst Bredekamp, ​​Christoph Brockhaus, Wolfgang Kemp , Petra Kipphoff von Huene, Achatz von Müller, Martin Warnke, William Wilson, ISBN 3-7757-1211- 9 .
  • Stephan von Huene - border commuter, border shifter. Exhibition ZKM / Center for Art and Media Technology, Karlsruhe 2006, catalog ed. and with contributions by Barbara Könches and Peter Weibel, Achatz von Müller.
  • Stephan von Huene. The Song of the Line. The drawings 1950–1999. ed. v. Hubertus Gaßner and Petra Kipphoff von Huene, Ostfildern 2010.
  • Alexis Ruccius: Sound art as an embodiment. The kinetic sound sculptures Stephan von Huenes. Frankfurt am Main 2019, ISBN 978-3-96505-000-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alexis Ruccius: Sound Art as Embodiment. The kinetic sound sculptures Stephan von Huenes. Frankfurt am Main 2019.
  2. ↑ "productive". Stephan von Huene, "Getty Talk" (lecture 1990); Transcript in: Alexis Ruccius: Sound Art as Embodiment. The kinetic sound sculptures Stephan von Huenes. Frankfurt am Main 2019, pp. 317–331, here: p. 319.
  3. ↑ Alexis Ruccius: Sound Art as Embodiment. The kinetic sound sculptures Stephan von Huenes. Frankfurt am Main 2019, p. 89.
  4. ↑ Ibid, pp. 157-163.
  5. ↑ Ibid, pp. 222-234.
  6. ↑ Ibid, pp. 261-306.
  7. ↑ Alexis Ruccius: The interpretation of the tone sensation. Stephan von Huene and Hermann von Helmholtz. In: all-over. Magazine for art and aesthetics. Issue 4, 2013.
  8. ^ Stephan von Huene - Grenzgänger, Grenzverschieber . December 9, 2005 - June 18, 2006 in the ZKM Media Museum. Catalog published by Kehrer, Heidelberg 2006, ISBN 3-936636-85-0 .
  9. ^ Tune the World. ( Memento from January 23, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) May 23 - August 24, 2003 in the Hamburger Kunsthalle.
personal data
SURNAME Huene, Stephan von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American artist
DATE OF BIRTH September 15, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH los Angeles
DATE OF DEATH September 5, 2000
Place of death Hamburg