Notes from the Field: Materiality

DoProfiL 2.0 – Das Dortmunder Profil für inklusionsorientierte Lehrerinnen- und Lehrerbildung

“…Was bedeutet die Hinwendung zum Kunstwerk als Objekt? Sie führt zu einem besonderen Interesse an der Materialität des Kunstwerks und an den Prozessen seiner Produktion, seinen -auch: musealen -Displays und seiner Zugänglichkeit in diachroner Perspektive (Rosler, Walker Bynum, Eaton, Holly, Jones, Kelly & Weddigen, 2013) (Sonne & Welzel, 2016;Welzel, 2017b). Dieser und vergleichbare Prozesse bürgerschaft lichen Engagements sind als Beispiele für demokratische Initiativen zum Erhalt des lokalen kulturellen, säkular codierten, Erbes Gegenstand der Kulturvermittlung im Rahmen von TU@Adam's Corner: der urbane Raum als Raum der Debatte, nicht der Bestätigung (Macdonald, 2013).…”

Sculptures and Accessories: Domestic Piety in the Norwegian Parish around 1300

“…In the Middle Ages, people's engagement with sculptures took many forms. Sculptures, as well as manuscript pages, relics and reliquaries, could be grasped, stroked, kissed and tasted; at times they were felt as becoming living flesh under the hands of the devout (Freedberg 1989;Bynum 2011;Rosler et al 2013) and they could be dressed and undressed (Trexler 1991;Genovese 2011). Sculptures, and in particular crucifixes, could also act themselves (Tripps 2000;Kopania 2010).…”

Materiality, Sign of the Times

“…In 2013, under the rubric "Notes from the Field," The Art Bulletin dedicated several pages to a debate on the meaning of "materiality" involving scholars from across the humanities. 9 The survey marked an important step in revealing changing perspectives in art history that rehabilitated, indeed, extolled the idea of materiality as a legitimate component of art historical methodologies, whose expansive, transcultural, interdisciplinary, and diachronic valence extended from mere investigation of the material constitution of an artifact to the more complex quest for its meaning as an "embodied object" in reciprocal phenomenological dialogue with its historical setting, functions, and makers-observers. By engaging a broad range of resources, media, and methodologies, The Art Bulletin exchanges became paradigmatic of a methodological shift in our field marked by a novel egalitarian approach to objects (things) as culturally signifying portents, beyond traditional divisive taxonomies based on aesthetics, standard art historical periodizations, and entrenched concepts of "high" and "applied" ("low") arts.…”