"Art Quotations": Intermediality and Tradition

1. Premises In connection with the newly emerging discipline of image studies the number of theoretical studies on imagery has grown exponentially. In addition, an increasing number of monographs are devoted to references to (non- imaginary) art works in the texts of specific authors; in the literature of modernism, such "painting quotations" have predominantly poetological function. A survey of literary history reveals synchronically privileged "image donors" and diachronically "linked sequences" of quotations, that is: the references to art in the text "quote" not only a painting, but also implicitly their own literary precursors. Thus they are phenomena both intermedial and intertextual. At present, however, a gap in the research on this topic is evident: monographs and studies focused on one author generally assume that the author in question is verbalizing a direct response to the art work cited. However, with few exceptions, for example Dürer, there are no diachronically focused studies that trace such references chronologically through literary history. 2. Central Problems Accordingly, a comparative investigation of the tradition of the art reference in modernist literature in German is the major desideratum that this study proposes to address. It is possible to demonstrate that references to art produce their own canon. This canon has specific constants (one specific feature of German literature being e.g. the over-representation of Dürer, Brueghel, and Barlach); but as well variables, namely "clusters" of quotations that prove to be typical of a specific era, or the emergence of new "image donors" (e.g. the "renaissancism" of the "Gründerzeit" or the paradigm shift from traditionally figural-objective art to abstract art, and so on). Another problem is the selection of the quoted paintings, which is determined on the one hand by new technical possibilities of image-reproduction, on the other hand by existing guidelines born of conventions in art history, popular science, and trivial literature. In the linked sequences of citations themselves, ideological and iconological factors can play a decisive role: the way the precursor or precursors have interpreted the painting may be affirmed or critically questioned. 3. Preliminary Studies The preliminary project P 17919 provides the premises for the planned investigation. In addition to a lexicon of art references by 250 modernist German authors, an extensively detailed databank (ca. 13,000 entries) was produced. It provides for the first time a statistically valid survey of the use of painting quotations between 1870 and 2005. 4. Goals of the project The plan is to produce a comparative study of dominant trends in art references. The intention is not merely to document the history of the literary reception of specific artists and paintings, but rather to investigate the complex interplay of textual and medial references. The individual painting quotation is to be considered a replication of visuality and verbalization. Since texts, even as ekphrases, do not simply reproduce the pictures but rather interpret them as visual recollections, they will be described here as hermeneutic readings of paintings. The concrete goal of the investigation is to produce approximately 12 paradigms, which will involve the investigation of the most dense interrelated sequences of citations of artists and art works (these in the following order being Picasso, Michelangelo, van Gogh, Dürer, Leonardo, Bruegel, Goya, Raffael, the Sistine Chapel, the Mona Lisa, the Isenheim altar, and Guernica). The main guiding categories involved are the central "Denkbilder" of intertextual as well as intermedial transfer (for example, "creation" as a creative emblem; blindness as a paradoxical poetological topos; the "Pathosformeln" of pain and war).

The project was aimed at documenting and analyzing references to visual artworks in literary texts and was grounded on the preceding project Art in Texts (P 17919, 1. 7. 2005 30. 6. 2009), during which art references in modern German literature had been collected using certain canonical parameters; their individual usage within a group of 250 authors from 18702005 was depicted systematically. Furthermore, an extensive database was established (including about 13.000 data sets). This record of data now allowed for the examination of distinct formations of traditions of art references. Categories of discourse history and mediality such as ideological options (which e.g. explain the overrepresentation of Dürer, Breughel and Barlach in German literature), innovative techniques of reproduction or popular scientific regulators such as travel- or museum guides notably took on an essential role in these examinations. Also, historical changes within the donors of images were determined (cf. the replacement of Dürers Knight, Death and the Devil as the presumably best- known image of all German art by Melencolia I, which was declared the image of images after 1945). Furthermore, it was established that the fictionalization of an artwork triggers a poetological feedback of all following references: It is not only the artwork that is quoted, but implicitly its literary history of reception as well; every additional art quotation also references the artworks preceding interpretations. Thus, literary references to art prove to be intermedial as well as intertextual phenomena. Whereas the laid out groundwork had resulted in the publication of the Handbook of Art References in two volumes with de Gruyter publishing in December 2011, examining author-specific usages of art quotations, this follow-up project focused on the examination of exemplary histories of discourse of the most frequently quoted artists and artworks. Correspondent studies (on Dürers Knight, Death and the Devil and Leonardos Mona Lisa) and analyses of poetological and/or medial reflections on art references (as seen e.g. with Wilhelm Genazino and Thomas Kling) were conducted. In May 2011, the international conference Gemälderedereien was organized in order to depict and discuss literary discourse on artworks, such as the paradigmatical Laokoon (A-K. Reulecke) or Géricaults The Raft of the Medusa (N. Badenberg). Together with all conference contributions, the projects findings were published in spring 2013, as a miscellany volume with Erich Schmidt publishing. Meanwhile, the number of data sets had increased to approx. 16.000; an extension of the duration of the project not only allowed for additional in-depth research, but also for the technical and visual realization of the open-access Database of Literary Art References (Datenbank literarischer Bildzitate, www.univie.ac.at/bildzitat, launch: September 2014). Search options include the categories author, text, artist and artwork and render it possible to not only look for specific art galleries of specific authors, but also to visualize all instances of literary receptions of an artist via a single search request. The respective (excerpts of) texts and artworks are referenced to with the help of complete or first editions, standard works and oeuvre catalogues and illustrate one another mutually.