Oskar Batschmann

In this highly original and innovative study of Nicolas Poussin, one of seventeenth-century Europe's greatest artists, Oskar Batschmann presents a series of connected studies that offer new ways of interpreting the work and ideas of this brilliant and complex figure. This superbly illustrated book is a polemical challenge in a field of art-historical research that has often lost its way in insoluble disputes and erudite details.

English summary: Frames protect pictures and separate works of art from their surroundings - but they also mediate between inside and outside. We are not only surrounded by frames in museums; buildings and gardens are also framed places. And even screens are framed pictures. German description: Mit dem Begriff des Rahmens wird langst uber die Grenzen der Kunstgeschichte hinaus operiert. Rahmengeschichte und seine Funktion rucken zunehmend in den Blickpunkt der Kunstbetrachtung. Der Rahmen grenzt das Werk von seiner Umgebung ab, vermittelt gleichzeitig zwischen Betrachter und Gerahmten und stellt nicht selten selbst einen eigenstandigen Kunstgegenstand dar. Seine Funktion lasst sich dabei nicht allein auf die Malerei beschranken, sondern reicht uber Architektur und Skulptur bis hin zu den neuen Medien. In Beitragen verschiedener Autoren werden Fallbeispiele vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart vorgestellt, die uber die Grenzen der Gattungen hinaus von der Vielfalt der Rahmensysteme und dem Variantenreichtum ihrer Auspragung zeugen.

In seiner Durer-Monografie von 1905, die hier ediert wird, entwickelt Wolfflin eine Anleitung zum Sehen und Erkennen der neuen kunstlerischen Moglichkeiten in der Malerei und Grafik des Kunstlers. Wolfflin legt in seinem Durer-Buch neue Moglichkeiten der Beschreibung dar. Dazu baute er das vergleichende Sehen und die differenzierte Beschreibung der Form zu einem Instrument der Analyse aus. Wolfflin definiert die neuen Ausdrucksmoglichkeiten Durers in den unterschiedlichen Techniken Zeichnung, Malerei, Kupferstich und Holzschnitt. Seine Formanalysen liefern der Durer-Forschung bis heute wichtige Anregungen. Fur das Fach Kunstgeschichte entwickelte Wolfflin mit seiner Arbeit das vielfach verwendbare Instrument der analytischen Beschreibung, die von der Untersuchung der Form zu Begriffen fuhrt. Der lebenslange freundschaftliche Wettbewerb von Wolfflin mit Erwin Panofsky uber ihre Durer-Arbeiten ist fur die Rezeptionsgeschichte besonders wichtig. In der Einleitung analysiert Oskar Batschmann die Entstehung, die historischen Voraussetzungen, die Methode und die Rezeption der Arbeit. Die Ausgabe ist von einem kritischen Kommentar von Elena Filippi und Christine Grundig begleitet.

Although the idea of a collective audience for art – an ‘art public’ – is highly significant in the art world, this is the first book to enquire into the actual history of the art public. The book explores both written and pictorial evidence of its behaviour, and disentangles the connections between art production, the expectations of the audience and a work’s reception.Two aspects shape the narrative: first, the transformation of the audience from passive recipient to active agent; and second, the mockery of the audience by satirists such as George Cruikshank, Thomas Rowlandson, Honoré Daumier and many others. This sweeping account moves from the Greek artist Apelles to Leon Battista Alberti and Leonardo da Vinci, and from Oscar Wilde to film stars, art tourists and leading art museums and galleries worldwide.

Ferdinand Hodler (1853-1918) is arguably the foremost Swiss artist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Ignoring artistic conventions of his time he created a vast oeuvre comprising landscapes and portraits, monumental historic scenes and symbolic and allegorical figures, and also drawings and sketches. A number of recent international publications and exhibitions as well as rising prices for his works at auction indicate that Hodler today has secured his place as an important figure in art history. Although Hodler's work has been widely published in recent years, a catalogue raisonne of his work has been lacking. This gap is being closed now by the Swiss Institute for Art Reasearch (SIK-ISEA) in Zurich. The result of years of scholarly work is going to be published in four parts until 2016. The new volume 2 documents Hodler's oeuvre in portraiture and includes all known works. It presents also all works where attribution to Hodler is questioned by recent research, works where attribution has been proven wrong or that are proven forgeries.

Hailed as the ‘saviour’ of Venetian painting by Jacob Burckhardt and declared by Albrecht Dürer to be the foremost painter of the city, Giovanni Bellini is a pivotal figure in the development of Italian Renaissance art. With Giovanni Bellini, renowned art historian Oskar Bätschmann charts the fraught trajectory of Bellini’s career, highlighting the crucial works that established his far-reaching influence in the Renaissance.The artist struggled to break out of the long shadow cast by his accomplished father Jacopo and father-in-law Andrea Mantegna, and Bätschmann chronicles Bellini’s development of distinct aesthetic and painting techniques that enabled him to set himself apart. Bellini also insisted on choosing his own subjects and themes, independent of the preferences of his patron Isabella d’Este, and thus set new standards for the role of the artist.Anchoring the analysis are a wealth of vibrant colour reproductions that include such famous works as The Feast of the Gods and Madonna and Child, as well as photographs of Bellini’s lauded altar-pieces at the churches of San Giobbe, Murano and San Zaccania. Drawing on these masterpieces, Bätschmann argues that Bellini’s artistry and skillful blending of colours created a new aesthetic more akin to music than to previous approaches to painting. And by leading viewers to understand this subtle, refined sensibility, Bellini transformed them into knowledgeable admirers of art. A beautifully illustrated and expansive study, Giovanni Bellini is essential for all historians and admirers of Renaissance art.