Travel in time and space

• Applicant: Dr. Elke Seibert
• Subject Area: Art History
• Term: from 2015 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 269218795

The research project focuses on the question how the art of prehistoric rock painting from 1930-60 influenced the genesis of contemporary art in Paris and New York. This includes analysing the exhibition Prehistoric Rock Pictures from Europe and Africa, which was curated by Alfred H. Barr in New York (Museum of Modenr Art, 1937) and in Paris (1933) which worked as a catalyst for 20th century art. 150 copies of prehistoric rock paintings from the collection of the German anthropologist Leo Frobenius will be put into new social contexts of visual culture, and the mechanisms of appropriating them will be analysed in detail. For the first time, rock art was shown to the public in colour and in its original size, thus visualizing the origins of human creativity. The exhibition initiated reception processes by surrealist artists in Paris and representatives of abstract expressionism in New York. Artists of the New York School, the Indian Space Painter and the American Abstract Artist, such as Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Will Barnet, Mark Rothko and Balcomb Greene had been greatly influenced by the concepts of prehistoric art up to the 1960s. The discourse will also draw on media-anthropological issues of original, copy, reception, and the mobility of prehistoric art in the first half of the 20th century, especially from Altamira.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: USA
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Thomas Kirchner
• Cooperation Partners: Dr. Virginia Mecklenburg; Charles Ritchie; William Truettner