Franz Marc. »Das Tier in der Kunst.« Art History. Animals.
This website is devoted to my research on Classical Modernism’s integrative personality, Franz Marc, but like the artist, writer, ethologist, and pantheist it contains many other passions and projects. Here you will find information about Franz Marc of course but also art and literary criticism, and links to my publications and activities. A Projects section brings attention to some notable working happening in art history, archaeology, and animal studies. Michelangelost™, the latest incarnation of the long-running blog, is here also.
This photograph of Franz Marc was taken by his brother Paul in the spring of 1914 at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. I wrote about discovering this photo for Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, where it was first published. The image in the background is a detail of the Paradies mural made by Marc and August Macke in Macke’s Bonn’s atelier in 1912.
„Ich sah das Bild, das in den Augen des Teichhuhns sich bricht, wenn es untertaucht: die tausend Ringe, die jedes kleine Leben einfassen, das Blau der flüsternden Himmel, das der See trinkt, das verzückte Auftauchen an einem andern Ort, – erkennt, meine Freunde, was Bilder sind: das Auftauchen an einem anderen Ort.“
– Die 100 Aphorismen (82), 1915.
“I saw what the moorhen sees as it dives: the thousand rings that encircle each little life, the blue of the whispering sky swallowed by the lake, the enraptured moment of surfacing in another place. Know, my friends, what images are: the experience of surfacing in another place.”
Michelangelost™ is the newest name for the blog I have been writing since 2006, which began as mostly about dogs and animals. It has since had several titles, including Errata and German Modernism, and expanded to include numerous topics. Even though this website is becoming more of an official enterprise, I have kept my experimental and sometimes idiotic posts in the archive. The name Michelangelost™ came to me in Berlin, where Michelangelostraße is one of the stops on the Tiergarten Buslinie 200. Because the name of the stop is so long it was (funnily to me) abbreviated as “Michelangelost” on the scrolling Haltestelle legend. A remarkable photo was taken to document this occasion. I love obscurantist plays on words plus it seems descriptive of where we are in the art world right now.
RECENTLY ON MICHELANGELOST™...
Eden and Everything After:
Exhibition and Catalogue
From: 21 January 2023-21 December 2023 Opening: 21 January 2023, 14:00 University of Stavanger Archaeological Museum Peder Klows gate 30A 4010 Stavanger Norway Hours: Tuesday 11 – 20 Wednesday – Sunday 11 – 16 Monday closed....
bauhaus imaginista:
Framing the Weimar in Woke at #Bauhaus100
An assessement of the international, simultaneous “bauhaus imaginista” exhibition project, which emphasises the school’s dispersed legacy in geographic terms.
Never Mind the Pollocks Here’s the Bauhaus:
Abstract Expressionism Conjures Josef Albers at the Tampa Museum of Art
This article originally appeared with the title Fear of a Black Mountain: Tampa Museum of Art’s Elevation of Abstract Expressionism in the 24 May 2019 edition of ArteFuse.There is a formidable father figure hovering over the powerful double exhibition of...
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This timeline in German and English is about art history and animals.