Kirjahaku

How is art criticism to be understood within an expanding artistic field? A look at its history and its manifestations within globalized conditions shows the variety of the genre, of the criteria and of the styles of writing. This reader is an attempt to bring a diverse range of art-critical voices and perspectives into conversation with each other, with texts from the 18th century to the present. The editors Beate Söntgen and Julia Voss have invited colleagues from various geographical and intellectual backgrounds to present and discuss the art critics of their choice, choosing one example from their respective bodies of work to comment upon. How have these writers approached art criticism? Which styles do they employ? What makes them extraordinary? What can we learn from their writings today, and why is it important in its contemporary context? Texts by: Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, Denis Diderot, Takashi Kashima, Patrick Mudekereza, Annemarie Sauzeau-Boetti, Bertha Zuckerkandl and many more Comments by: Juli Carson, Yuriko Furuhata, Isabelle Graw, Angela Harutyunyan, Monica Juneja, Wolfgang Kemp, Florencia Malbran, Yvette Mutumba, Azu Nwagbogu, Sarah Wilson and many more

A highly anticipated biography of the enigmatic and popular Swedish painter. The Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was 44 years old when she broke with the academic tradition in which she had been trained. While her naturalistic landscapes and botanicals were shown during her lifetime, her body of radical, abstract works never received the same attention. Today, it is widely accepted that af Klint produced the earliest abstract paintings by a trained European artist. But this is only part of her story. Not only was she a successful woman artist, but she was also an avowed clairvoyant and mystic. Like many of the artists at the turn of the twentieth century who developed some version of abstract painting, af Klint studied Theosophy, which holds that science, art, and religion are all reflections of an underlying life-form that can be harnessed through meditation, study, and experimentation. Well before Kandinsky, Mondrian and Malevich declared themselves the inventors of abstraction, af Klint was working in a non-representational mode, producing a powerful visual language that continues to speak to audiences today. The exhibition of her work in 2018 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City attracted more than 600,000 visitors, making it the most-attended show in the history of the museum/institution. Despite her enormous popularity, there has not yet been a biography of af Klint-until now. Inspired by her first encounter with the artist's work in 2008, Julia Voss set out to learn Swedish and research af Klint's life-not only who the artist was but what drove and inspired her. The result is a fascinating biography of an artist who is as great as she is enigmatic.

Bilder sind keine unschuldigen Illustrationen - sie wirken buchstäblich an der allmählichen Verfertigung der Gedanken mit. In ihrer brillanten Studie untersucht Julia Voss die Rolle der Bilder bei der Entstehung der Evolutionstheorie: von den berühmten Galapagosfinken, dem Evolutionsdiagramm, dem Argusfasan bis hin zum lachenden Affen. Sie zeigt spannend und anschaulich, wie Darwin "mit dem Auge denkt" und wie Bilder und Evolutionstheorie aufs Engste zusammenhängen.

Hilma af Klint skapade mer än tusen målningar, skisser och akvareller och har revolutionerat måleriet. Redan före Kandinsky och Mondrian målade hon abstrakta verk. Hon drog sig medvetet tillbaka från den manligt dominerade konstvärlden, och hon visste att hon var före sin tid: vid sjuttio års ålder bestämde hon att hennes bilder skulle få visas först tjugo år efter hennes död.Återupptäckten av den svenska konstnären Hilma af Klints verk är den största konsthistoriska händelsen under senare år. Utifrån ett gediget forskningsarbete berättar nu Julia Voss historien om denna ovanliga konstnärs liv, krossar många klichéer och myter och tecknar också en bild av en epok som i en världspolitiskt omvälvande tid inte bara revolutionerade konsten.

Published on the occasion of Karin Kneffel’s exhibition Haymatlos at Dirimart (13 November 2020–17 January 2021), this trilingual catalogue explores themes of memory, displacement, and belonging. The 19 paintings on view establish a dialogue between Germany and Turkey through the notion of heimatlos—statelessness—probing how the past is recalled, altered, or transformed, leaving ambiguous traces in the present. Kneffel engages with the legacies of three exiled figures who lived in Istanbul: architect Bruno Taut, sculptor Rudolf Belling, and designer Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky. Their iconic works—the Bosphorus house designed by Taut, Belling’s Inönü sculpture and Skulptur 49, and Schütte-Lihotzky’s pioneering Frankfurter Küche—reappear under Kneffel’s painterly veil of drops, bubbles, and brushstrokes, questioning whether the world is ever truly familiar. Enriched with an essay by Julia Voss, along with studio and installation views, the catalogue situates Haymatlos within Kneffel’s broader practice and her celebrated retrospective STILL in Germany. Text in English and Turkish and German.