(c) Archive Kathleen Bomani
Freedom with images: The Occidental System of Art
Today’s art globally-reaching ethnological folklore and its worldwide scope must not let it be forgotten that art is a uniquely European cultural achievement. Unlike the other two major monotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam, it was Christianity that built a cult of imagery based on the imperial rule of the Roman Catholic Church and then developed it further. This lecture traces the stages of an autonomy of images, which differentiated itself at the time of the Crusades and then developed – from the idea of the individual, the free markets, the separation between the Church and State, and the Enlightenment – into what we have called art since 1800.
Beat Wyss is the Chairman of Art Studies and Media Theory at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe, and has been a speaker for the Karlsruhe post-graduate program “Image-Medium-Body” since 2003.
With these two lectures, the art, science & business program touches on the two main themes “Image and Visualisation” and “Memory and Forgetting” upon which the program was organized since 2003.
The art, science & business program is made possible by the financial support of the State Foundation of Baden-Württenberg, the city of Stuttgart as well as the LBBW Foundation for Art and Culture.