Art History versus Cultural Studies (Univ.-Ass.Mag.art.Dr.phil. Brigitte Franzen)

Massculture and -esthetics have a special impact on the genesis of art during the twentieth century. They are as well visual sources and an opposition to the art world. In that context, photography as artistic media has a special position, concerning its documentation of the public and the private. Discourses in art production and art history tried to distinguish properly between "high" and "low". During the sixties the borders of different cultural topics became permeable. Artists reflected massively those separations and connected them with a profound institutional critique. "L'art pour l'art"-positions were preserved in concept art as well as in painting but new attitudes arose, some with help of new media. Leslie A. Fiedlers initial text on post-modernism "cross the border, close the gap" (Playboy, Dec. 1969) tried to establish new methods and subjects for writing (but could also be read as an instruction for art and architecture).It was a pleading for the analysis and the establishment of a new connection of contemporary myths, mass-culture and art. Todays interest of artists in cultural studies and cultural anthropology is to be seen on this historical and theoretical background of the last 30 to 40 years. It evolves new questions on methods of art history of the twentieth century and the contemporary which are part of this project.