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KUNST.
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The BLOG for art histories with interviews, columns, current research and reports from the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut.

Editors & Authors A — Z

Historiography, Humans, Media Library, Plants, Technologies

VIDEO: Nehemiah Grew and the Making of the Anatomy of Plants (1682), by Christoffer Basse Eriksen

How can the “invisible life” of the vegetable world be made visible by means of visual techniques? Christoffer Basse Eriksen’s lecture puts a spotlight on the innovative representational styles devised by 17th-century botanist Nehemiah Grew in his book The Anatomy of Plants (1682), aimed at the dynamic representation of the vegetal processes of generation, germination, and growth. The talk is followed by a response by Prof. Anna Marie Roos (University of Lincoln) and a panel discussion.

4A_Lab, Christoffer Basse Eriksen

Field Notes, Historiography, Plants, Practices, Spatial Orders

The Transnational and Interdisciplinary Journey of Gärtnerisches Planzeichnen

Villa Parey was built in 1895–1896 as the family house of Paul Parey, founder of the publishing house Paul Parey Verlag. The company was unrivalled in the fields of agriculture, horticulture, forestry as well as plantation technologies, with some publications relating directly to the colonial project of the Kaiserreich. Others had more unexpected effects on landscape history and urban gardening, as in the case of Max Bertram’s Gärtnerisches Planzeichnen (1891) in Meiji Japan.

Jung-Hwa Kim

Field Notes, Historiography, Objects, Practices, Technologies

Faunal Nature Printing: Traces of Life in Sherman Denton’s Moths and Butterflies (1900)

Nature self-printing (Naturselbstdruck) is a printing technique that consists in pressing the coloured surface of an object directly onto paper, hereby imprinting the page with a distinctive, non-reproducible image. In this article, 4A_Lab Fellow Judith Elisabeth Weiss traces the history and development of nature prints, highlighting some crucial issues in 19th-century discourses around nature, aesthetics, and art.

Judith Elisabeth Weiss

Architectures, Media Library, Plants, Practices, Spatial Orders

VIDEO: The Forest Cons: Sylvan Reflections within Architectural Imaginaries, by Dan Handel

Architect and curator Dan Handel explores the multifaceted ways in which forests are being conceived, experienced, and transfigured through human imagination, shedding light on how silvan epiphanies may find correspondence in spatial orders and architectural designs. The talk took place on December 13, 2021 as part of the 4A_Lab online seminar series.

4A_Lab, Dan Handel

Architectures, Historiography, Media Library, Practices, Spatial Orders

VIDEO: The Last Gift from Beijing: the Jesuit Gardens and the Sino-European Botanical Exchanges, by Lianming Wang

In this 4A_Lab talk, Lianming Wang contextualizes the Beijing Jesuit gardens in the framework of global dynamics of horticultural and hydraulic practice as places of fruitful transcultural encounter and scientific knowledge production. The event took place on July 12, 2021 as part of the 4A_Lab online seminar series.

4A_Lab, Lianming Wang

Architectures, Media Library, Spatial Orders

The Alps as a Central Periphery? Recordings from a Research Trip along the Brenner Pass

By its very nature, a crossroads is a place you pass through, briskly moving onwards to the final destination of your journey. This podcast, curated by Emily Neumeier, provides a tantalising glimpse into one of Central Europe’s busiest border zones and mountain crossings—the Brenner Pass. A polyvocal account in eight acts based on a research trip of the Max-Planck Research Group “Objects in the Contact Zone – The Cross-Cultural Lives of Things” across Italy and Austria.

Emily Neumeier, Eva-Maria Troelenberg

Historiography, Media Library, Objects

VIDEO: Fragments of the Spanish Conquest from the Americas: Relics or Memorials? Curator Talk with Manuela Fischer & Bat-Ami Artzi

By means of two case studies closely related to the Spanish conquest of the America, Bat-ami Artzi and Manuela Fischer reflect on the value of the fragment as an aesthetic and scientific interpretative tool within the European tradition. They also consider the role of fragments as relics and memorials, and examine their relation to questions of identity in both an Andean and European context.

4A_Lab, Bat-Ami Artzi, Manuela Fischer

Media Library, Objects, Plants, Practices

VIDEO: Images and Psychotropic Plants in Mesoamerica, by Johannes Neurath

The consumption of hallucinogens in ritual settings was—and to some extent still is—a common practice in Mesoamerica; yet, the artistic and aesthetic implications of this phenomenon have received little attention. In this talk, Johannes Neurath presents his research on the art inspired by psychotropic experiences in the context of Mesoamerican shamanic rituals. The talk took place on October 13, 2020 as part of the 4A_Lab online seminar series.

4A_Lab, Johannes Neurath

Field Notes, Objects, Plants, Practices

Sullu Sullu, an Abortifacient Plant at the Service of the Inca Empire

Human beings are rarely represented in the art produced in the heartland of the Inca Empire. However, in the collections of the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin we find a remarkable exception: a ceramic jar from the Cusco region on which six women are depicted holding a tree branch with two flowers sprouts. Who are these women, and what was the nature of their relationship with the plant?

Bat-Ami Artzi