Susanne von Falkenhausen

Susanne von Falkenhausen (born March 24, 1951 in Göttingen ) is a German art historian and art critic . In the early 1990s she was one of the first teachers to introduce feminist , gender-theoretical, and deconstructivist theoretical approaches to art history.

Career and work

Susanne von Falkenhausen studied art history , philosophy and German studies in Vienna and Heidelberg from 1970 to 1978 . In 1979 she did her doctorate at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg (The Second Futurism and the Art Policy of Fascism in Italy from 1922 to 1943); In 1991 she qualified as a professor at the University of Tübingen, Venia Legendi for art history (Italian monumental painting in the Risorgimento 1830–1890. Strategies of national imagery).

After a traineeship from 1982 to 1984 at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (with positions in the Neue Nationalgalerie , the Kupferstichkabinett and the Kunstgewerbemuseum ), Susanne von Falkenhausen took over the management of the New Society for Fine Arts (NGBK), Berlin, from 1984 to 1986 . She subsequently accepted visiting professorships in 1991 at the University of Tübingen , in 1991/92 at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main , in 1992 at the Humboldt University in Berlin and in 1992/93 at the Technical University of Berlin (as a senior assistant) .

In 1973/74 she led the Schurman Scholarship for the Ph.D. program at Cornell University , Ithaca, NY, USA. Further research grants followed, such as for the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome (1979–81), for the Art History Institute in Florence (1987) and for the Clark Art Research Institute, Williamstown, Mass., USA (2005).

Since 1993 she has been professor for modern art history with a focus on modernity at the Humboldt University in Berlin . From 1998 to 2007, Susanne von Falkenhausen was a member of the Graduate School Coding of Violence in Media Change at the Humboldt University in Berlin, from 2000 to 2006 she was chairwoman of the gender studies selection committee for the Berlin program to promote equal opportunities for women in research and teaching she was also a member of the selection committee for university programs from 2000 to 2006. Since 2001, von Falkenhausen has been a member of the advisory board of the Bremen research collective Thealit , which focuses on gender differences and their inherent power relations and their effects on scientific and artistic practices. From 2003 to 2009 she was a member of the International Advisory Board, Art History.

Research priorities

Susanne von Falkenhausen's research interests include art, architecture and power since the French Revolution , art of the 19th century, gender studies in modern art history, theories and practices of representation, rhetoric and media coding in art since 1945, questions of interdisciplinarity in art history and art studies as well as the relationship between art history and cultural and visual studies .

An essential basic component of their research is a comprehensive critique of representation. In the early 1990s, von Falkenhausen was one of the first teachers in Germany to introduce feminist, deconstructivist and poststructuralist theoretical approaches, in particular the theories of Judith Butler , to art history and its teaching. Falkenhausen's main focus is on an interdisciplinary range of events and courses based on an understanding of art history, the generation of images, their specific power relations and gender-specific connotations . In recent years her research has increasingly focused on the sometimes difficult relationship between art history and visual culture studies . For this purpose, the 7th Art Historians Conference (Berlin 2002), which was co-organized , as well as numerous seminars at the Institute for Art and Visual History at the Humboldt University in Berlin (including: Art History Today: Your Relationship to Visual Culture Studies, WS 2005/2006; Visual Culture Studies, Identity and Politics of Visibility, SoSe 2006), as well as the lecture Excentric Identities - Intimacy and Photographic Apparatus in the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin (2008).

But even if von Falkenhausen stated in 2007: “At the turn of the millennium, art history has grown into the status of a 'father / mother' discipline: tradition-conscious, in the eyes of the 'sons / daughters' visual culture studies and image studies outdated, narrow-minded and no longer up-to-date. ”In her opinion, art history and its methods do not lose their importance. Viewed in this way, the “status of art as a proven practice with the corresponding apparatus [...] can bundle exemplary information for the central subject of visual culture studies: about the practices of seeing in the field of power” (cf. . on this Susanne von Falkenhausen: Verzwelte Kändsrelände: Kunstgeschichte, Visual Culture, Bildwissenschaft. In: Philine Helas, Maren Polte, Claudia Rückert, Bettina Uppenkamp (Ed.): Bild / Geschichte. Festschrift for Horst Bredekamp. Berlin 2007, p. 3– 13.)

Images - both of the apparently outdated history painting and of contemporary art production - are analyzed by Susanne von Falkenhausen as agents that create meaning and reality within complex communication processes: They are not only part of discourses , but have the potential to be discursively effective themselves. In doing so, it shows at the same time the topicality and the possibilities of art historical research, which is involved both in the formation and criticism of past and present cultural repertoires, and on the other hand can identify conflicting layers of history and meaning.

Susanne von Falkenhausen transfers this approach to architecture and its representation. The monograph KugelbauVisionen. The cultural history of a building form from the French Revolution to the media age (2008) traces the spherical structure as a cult space suggesting a unit to the present day and leads to a criticism of totalizing spaces of meaning, including digital network metaphors.

Another research focus is Italian futurism . The 100th anniversary of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto in 2009 was the occasion for a renewed reflection on the relationship between art and power, which decidedly reinterpreted conventional readings with regard to the instrumentalization of art by the political system: According to von Falkenhausen, artists and regime would rather have been different mutually legitimized so that one could speak of an abuse of art.

Susanne von Falkenhausen wrote numerous essays and articles in catalogs and art magazines such as texts on art or critical reports. A selection of these texts can be found in: Susanne von Falkenhausen, Ilaria Hoppe (Hrsg.): Bettina Uppenkamp (Hrsg.): Elena Zanichelli (Hrsg.): Practices of seeing in the field of power. Collected Writings. Hamburg 2011.

Publications

Monographs and editorships

The Second Futurism and the Art Politics of Fascism in Italy from 1922 to 1943. Haag & Herchen Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1979.
Co-author: Prints and Drawings by Adolph Menzel. A Selection from the Collections of the Museums of West Berlin, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge 1984.
Co-author: Adolph Menzel - drawings, prints and illustrated books. An inventory catalog of the Nationalgalerie, the Kupferstichkabinett and the Art Library, Berlin 1984.
Italian monumental painting in the Risorgimento 1830-1890. Strategies of national imagery. Berlin 1993.
Edited with Silke Förschler, Ingeborg Reichle, Bettina Uppenkamp: (New) Media: Mediality - Cultural Transfer - Gender. Marburg 2004.
KugelbauVisions. Cultural history of a design from the French Revolution to the media age. Bielefeld 2008. [1]

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Falkenhausen, Susanne von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German art historian and art critic
DATE OF BIRTH	March 24, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH	Goettingen