The Visible and the Invisible

Die holländische Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts reflektiert ihr Verhältnis zur sichtbaren Wirklichkeit. Sie thematisiert Ambivalenzen und Widersprüche. Als Avantgarde künstlerischer Medien trägt sie zur Herausbildung einer modernen “bürgerlichen” Subjektivität bei. Sie entlässt die Themen aus ihrer traditionellen ikonologischen Fixierung und evoziert unterschiedliche Imaginationen und Semantisierungen - Aspekte, die in der Forschung bisher kaum wahrgenommen worden sind.

Das Buch versteht sich als Plädoyer für eine Kunstgeschichte als Kulturwissenschaft, die das semantische Potential von Kunst innerhalb diskursiver und sozialer zeitgenössischer Praxen untersucht und zugleich ihre Aktualität aufzeigt. Werke von Rembrandt, Metsu, Vermeer und Hoogstraten u. a. dienen als exemplarische Fallbeispiele zur Auseinandersetzung mit aktuellen kunst- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Debatten, beispielsweise zur Repräsentation von Geschlechterdifferenz, zur Text-Bild Beziehung und zum Affektdiskurs.

The book addresses the scientific debates on Rembrandt, Metsu, Vermeer, and Hoogstraten that are currently taking place in art history and cultural studies. These focus mainly on the representation of gender difference, the relationship between text and image, and the emotional discourse. They are also an appeal for art history as a form of cultural studies that analyses the semantic potential of art within discursive and social contemporary practices.

Dutch painting of the seventeenth century reflects its relationship to visible reality. It deals with ambiguities and contradictions. As an avant-garde artistic media, it also contributes to the emergence of a subjectivity towards the modern “bourgeois”. It discards subject matter from its traditional fixation with iconology and evokes different imaginations and semantizations - aspects that have not been sufficiently taken into account in previous research.

The book is to be understood as an appeal for art history as a form of cultural science that analyses the semantic potential of art within discursive and social contemporary practices, and, at the same time, demonstrates its relevance today. Works by Rembrandt, Metsu, Vermeer, Hoogstraten, and others serve as exemplary case studies for addressing current debates in art history and cultural studies, such as representation of gender difference, relationship between text and image, and emotional discourse.

Preface. - Part I: Visible becomes Invisible. Gender Construction in Rembrandt's Works: On Female Representation or on the disappearance of male protagonists from the field of representation. On Male Representation or on the disappearance of female protagonists from the field of representation. Asymmetry. Gender Relations in the Field of Sexuality. Summary. - Part II Invisible becomes Visible. Painting, not Mimesis: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall ?…: Woman before the Mirror by Frans van Mieris. The Picture within the Picture or Conveying the world through media: Woman Holding a Balance by Vermeer. Farewell to Lessing's Laocoon: Leaving behind a Methodological Dispute: Gabriel Metsu's A Woman Reading a Letter. The Gender of Letters. Affect / Emotion / Imagination. - Literature. - Illustrations.