Miriam Oesterreich
Prof. Dr. Miriam Oesterreich ist seit dem Sommersemester 2021 Professorin für Theorie der Gestaltung/Gender Studies an der Universität der Künste Berlin. Sie war zuvor Athene Young Investigator, Postdoktorandin der Kunstgeschichte und wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Arbeitsbereich Mode & Ästhetik der Technischen Universität Darmstadt. Außerdem war sie wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin im Forschungsprojekt Worlding Public Cultures – The Arts and Social Innovation an der Universität Heidelberg und ist dort weiterhin assoziiert. Zurzeit forscht sie zu den globalen Verflechtungen des mexikanischen Indigenismus als avantgardistische Kunstpraxis. In ihrer Dissertation arbeitete sie die Inszenierungen ‚exotischer‘ Körper in früher Bildreklame,1880-1914 für die Kunstgeschichte auf. Sie studierte an den Universitäten in Heidelberg, Havanna (Kuba), Valencia (Spanien) und an der Freien Universität Berlin Kunstgeschichte, Romanistik und Altamerikanistik. 2016 war sie Fellow an der Transregionalen Akademie Modernisms – Concepts, Contexts, and Circulation in São Paulo, 2017 an der Transregionalen Akademie Mobility – Objects, Materials, Concepts, Actors in Buenos Aires. Für ihr laufendes Habilitationsprojekt zum mexikanischen Indigenismus erhielt sie den Fachbereichsforschungspreis der TU Darmstadt; 2019 war sie Ansel-Adams-Fellow des Center for Creative Photography an der University of Arizona. Sie ist Co-Herausgeberin der Zeitschrift Miradas - Journal for the Arts and Culture of the Américas and the Iberian Peninsula. Sie ist Ko-Leiterin des durch die DFG geförderten Forschungsprojekts „A Critical Art History of International and World Expositions - Decentering Fashion and Modernities" (2022-2025). Ihre Forschungsschwerpunkte liegen in der Lateinamerikanischen Kunstgeschichte, Indigenismus und Modernekonzeptionen, transkulturellen Transferprozessen künstlerischer Praktiken, der Kunst im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Verflechtungen von Kunst und Populärkultur, Design und Mode, Körperkonstruktionen und Gender.
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In der Analyse von Inszenierungen ›exotischer‹ Körper in früher Bildwerbung wird der Frage nachgegangen, wie exotistische Werbebilder um 1900 gefasst werden können. Kunsthistorische Traditionslinien der Imagination des ›Exotischen‹ spielen dabei ebenso eine Rolle wie die Frage nach der zeitgenössischen Rezeption der Bilder im Kontext einer radikalen Veränderung der Sehkultur im 19. Jahrhundert.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/riha.2024.2.92572
Die Geschichte der Bekleidung in den Amérikas ist dabei ebenso wie das
Körperverständnis geprägt von einer globalen Verflechtungsgeschichte, die mit andinen Webtechniken visuell sichtbar wird und mit aktuellen Fashion Blogs oder Ikonen in sozialen Netzwerken nicht zu Ende ist. Hybriden Überlagerungen europäischer und indigener Traditionen, afro-amérikanische
und asiatische Bezugnahmen und weltweite Handels- und Vertriebsnetzwerke in sich wandelnden politischen und historischen
Kontexten haben je spezifische Kleidungs- und Körpermoden hervorgebracht,
differenzierte Semantisierungen begünstigt und in ein oft spannungsvolles
Verhältnis zueinander gesetzt. Visuell werden diese in Bildmedien und Kunstwerken im je spezifischen Kontext erfahrbar.
El número doble Miradas 5 y 6 aborda los cuerpos y las modas en las Américas desde diversas perspectivas y analiza tanto los conceptos del cuerpo que se han transmitido artísticamente, como las reflexiones artísticas sobre ellas. La historia de la vestimenta en las Américas,
al igual que el entendimiento del cuerpo, están marcados por una historia
de interdependencias globales que se hace visible en las técnicas andinas
de tejido y no termina con los actuales blogs de fashion o los iconos en las redes sociales. Los traslapes híbridos de tradiciones europeas e indígenas, las referencias afroamericanas y asiáticas, así como las redes globales de comercio y distribución de mercancías en contextos políticos e históricos cambiantes hicieron surgir modas específicas del vestir y del cuerpo, facilitaron semantizaciones diferenciadas y las pusieron en una relación muchas veces llena de tensiones. Éstas se pueden apreciar en los medios visuales y en las obras artísticas, en cada contexto específico.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/mira.2022.1.87783
In 1940, two major events displaying “the Mexican” took place in New York. The Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art served the construction of national continuities across two millennia, emphasizing historical moments deemed especially relevant. Cultural mestizaje, the artistic development of the country, was highlighted alongside a constructed history of progress from archaic times to modernity. Mexico was also represented that year at New York World’s Fair, held under the motto of “Building the World of Tomorrow”, with a pavilion curated by the photographer Luis Márquez. He, too, aimed to bring together indigenous past and contemporary, even futuristic modernity, presenting the indigenous, also commercially and touristically, in a modernist and future-oriented mode as the country’s unique selling point. This chapter discusses the display of what is understood as “Mexican”, in the contexts of an art exhibition and of the World Fair, in terms of various mid-twentieth-century discourses on modernity, including Indigenism. Connotations of the modern and the traditional are negotiated in discourses on nationality and its social implications and representations.
modernism and delineating alternative histories of art in the twentieth century. Examples include Postwar: Art between the Pacific and the Atlantic 1945-1965 (2016-2017), Art in Europe 1945-1968 (2016-2017), and The Other Trans-Atlantic: Kinetic and Op Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America 1950s-1970s (2017): three large-scale exhibitions of mid-twentieth century modern art aiming both to unify an appeal to a wide audience with a research-based approach, and to establish a global focus, moving beyond the fixation with the West.
Drawing on the case studies of the presentation of Latin American and Eastern European art in the aforementioned exhibitions, our aim is to discuss how current art historical canons are defined and by whom, how a new interest in rethinking the traditionally perceived centres and peripheries is finding expression in the museum landscape, and how newly shaped, ‘alter-modern’ canons are integrated into these processes. While recent curatorial initiatives have stimulated an understanding of the modernist art world that focusses on the fragmentary and ruptured, enabling a re-positioning of ‘peripheral’ art production within the latter, we propose that these initiatives nevertheless contain mechanisms for re-formations of canons, albeit in an all-inclusive global form. Our article will include a revision of the traditionally attributed roles of Latin American and Eastern European art, comparative analysis of the three recently-held exhibitions (2016-2018) and a discussion of models for alter-canonizations.
The paper seeks to problematize the relationship between the cultural reevaluation of the rural and indigenous with modernist art practices. The goal is to critically review the appropriation practices and authentication strategies of modernist artists involved in a nationalist discourse.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/mira.2018.0.76068
DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/mira.2018.0.76070
DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/riha.2018.2.70251
Hence, the essay makes the case that in this context high and popular culture are frequently not clearly distinct from one another in the nineteenth century: the scientific and scholarly literature served an extremely broad circle of interested persons in a bourgeoisie hungry for knowledge. The oil paintings of the academic Gottfried Lindauer, for example, were shown at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886 in London side by side with ethnographic artefacts and a recreated Māori habitat in the New Zealand Court. Thus, the overall image of the islands conveyed in the Exhibition matched the contemporary taste of indulging in excessive impressions at such expositions. Textual descriptions and interpretations of what was seen also heavily featured in the press, while a few successful novels painted a picture of the typical ‘New Zealander’.
The picture Europe had got of the British colony New Zealand in the nineteenth century was richly faceted, albeit not particularly differentiated. The essay aims to describe these various facets and, moreover, identify how they depended on their popularity in the different media.
frst time massively advertised with pictures. Hence, stereotypical images of ‘exotic’
people circulate within Europe and beyond to an extent hitherto unknown. The spec-
tacularized ‘exotic bodies’ refer to a contemporary collective visual memory adapted
from other genres such as baroque allegories or Orientalist painting, among others.
In the process of these - here analysed - complex transfers and transgressions of
media, time and modes, questions about gender and ethnic conceptions are raised.
In der Analyse von Inszenierungen ›exotischer‹ Körper in früher Bildwerbung wird der Frage nachgegangen, wie exotistische Werbebilder um 1900 gefasst werden können. Kunsthistorische Traditionslinien der Imagination des ›Exotischen‹ spielen dabei ebenso eine Rolle wie die Frage nach der zeitgenössischen Rezeption der Bilder im Kontext einer radikalen Veränderung der Sehkultur im 19. Jahrhundert.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/riha.2024.2.92572
Die Geschichte der Bekleidung in den Amérikas ist dabei ebenso wie das
Körperverständnis geprägt von einer globalen Verflechtungsgeschichte, die mit andinen Webtechniken visuell sichtbar wird und mit aktuellen Fashion Blogs oder Ikonen in sozialen Netzwerken nicht zu Ende ist. Hybriden Überlagerungen europäischer und indigener Traditionen, afro-amérikanische
und asiatische Bezugnahmen und weltweite Handels- und Vertriebsnetzwerke in sich wandelnden politischen und historischen
Kontexten haben je spezifische Kleidungs- und Körpermoden hervorgebracht,
differenzierte Semantisierungen begünstigt und in ein oft spannungsvolles
Verhältnis zueinander gesetzt. Visuell werden diese in Bildmedien und Kunstwerken im je spezifischen Kontext erfahrbar.
El número doble Miradas 5 y 6 aborda los cuerpos y las modas en las Américas desde diversas perspectivas y analiza tanto los conceptos del cuerpo que se han transmitido artísticamente, como las reflexiones artísticas sobre ellas. La historia de la vestimenta en las Américas,
al igual que el entendimiento del cuerpo, están marcados por una historia
de interdependencias globales que se hace visible en las técnicas andinas
de tejido y no termina con los actuales blogs de fashion o los iconos en las redes sociales. Los traslapes híbridos de tradiciones europeas e indígenas, las referencias afroamericanas y asiáticas, así como las redes globales de comercio y distribución de mercancías en contextos políticos e históricos cambiantes hicieron surgir modas específicas del vestir y del cuerpo, facilitaron semantizaciones diferenciadas y las pusieron en una relación muchas veces llena de tensiones. Éstas se pueden apreciar en los medios visuales y en las obras artísticas, en cada contexto específico.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/mira.2022.1.87783
In 1940, two major events displaying “the Mexican” took place in New York. The Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art served the construction of national continuities across two millennia, emphasizing historical moments deemed especially relevant. Cultural mestizaje, the artistic development of the country, was highlighted alongside a constructed history of progress from archaic times to modernity. Mexico was also represented that year at New York World’s Fair, held under the motto of “Building the World of Tomorrow”, with a pavilion curated by the photographer Luis Márquez. He, too, aimed to bring together indigenous past and contemporary, even futuristic modernity, presenting the indigenous, also commercially and touristically, in a modernist and future-oriented mode as the country’s unique selling point. This chapter discusses the display of what is understood as “Mexican”, in the contexts of an art exhibition and of the World Fair, in terms of various mid-twentieth-century discourses on modernity, including Indigenism. Connotations of the modern and the traditional are negotiated in discourses on nationality and its social implications and representations.
modernism and delineating alternative histories of art in the twentieth century. Examples include Postwar: Art between the Pacific and the Atlantic 1945-1965 (2016-2017), Art in Europe 1945-1968 (2016-2017), and The Other Trans-Atlantic: Kinetic and Op Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America 1950s-1970s (2017): three large-scale exhibitions of mid-twentieth century modern art aiming both to unify an appeal to a wide audience with a research-based approach, and to establish a global focus, moving beyond the fixation with the West.
Drawing on the case studies of the presentation of Latin American and Eastern European art in the aforementioned exhibitions, our aim is to discuss how current art historical canons are defined and by whom, how a new interest in rethinking the traditionally perceived centres and peripheries is finding expression in the museum landscape, and how newly shaped, ‘alter-modern’ canons are integrated into these processes. While recent curatorial initiatives have stimulated an understanding of the modernist art world that focusses on the fragmentary and ruptured, enabling a re-positioning of ‘peripheral’ art production within the latter, we propose that these initiatives nevertheless contain mechanisms for re-formations of canons, albeit in an all-inclusive global form. Our article will include a revision of the traditionally attributed roles of Latin American and Eastern European art, comparative analysis of the three recently-held exhibitions (2016-2018) and a discussion of models for alter-canonizations.
The paper seeks to problematize the relationship between the cultural reevaluation of the rural and indigenous with modernist art practices. The goal is to critically review the appropriation practices and authentication strategies of modernist artists involved in a nationalist discourse.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/mira.2018.0.76068
DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/mira.2018.0.76070
DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/riha.2018.2.70251
Hence, the essay makes the case that in this context high and popular culture are frequently not clearly distinct from one another in the nineteenth century: the scientific and scholarly literature served an extremely broad circle of interested persons in a bourgeoisie hungry for knowledge. The oil paintings of the academic Gottfried Lindauer, for example, were shown at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886 in London side by side with ethnographic artefacts and a recreated Māori habitat in the New Zealand Court. Thus, the overall image of the islands conveyed in the Exhibition matched the contemporary taste of indulging in excessive impressions at such expositions. Textual descriptions and interpretations of what was seen also heavily featured in the press, while a few successful novels painted a picture of the typical ‘New Zealander’.
The picture Europe had got of the British colony New Zealand in the nineteenth century was richly faceted, albeit not particularly differentiated. The essay aims to describe these various facets and, moreover, identify how they depended on their popularity in the different media.
frst time massively advertised with pictures. Hence, stereotypical images of ‘exotic’
people circulate within Europe and beyond to an extent hitherto unknown. The spec-
tacularized ‘exotic bodies’ refer to a contemporary collective visual memory adapted
from other genres such as baroque allegories or Orientalist painting, among others.
In the process of these - here analysed - complex transfers and transgressions of
media, time and modes, questions about gender and ethnic conceptions are raised.
In the process of these - here analysed - complex transfers and transgressions of media, time and modes, questions about gender and ethnic conceptions are raised.
Since their beginnings in the mid-19th century, world's fairs have sought to summarize knowledge about the world by compiling presentations from a variety of fields: technology, machinery, crafts, fine arts, and ethnography. Conceived as a mass spectacle, the exhibits blended into a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk. At the same time, they became signifiers of a narrative of technological progress, colonial expansion and artistic innovation. Under the headings 'Gesamtkunstwerk and the Assemblage of Things', 'Technology and Art', 'Gender and Fashion', and 'Colonial Entanglements and Postcoloniality', this special issue focuses on four thematic areas that have so far received little attention in the discourse on world's fairs.
DOI: 10.11588/riha.2024.2
"Gottfried Lindauer – Painting New Zealand" breaks new ground in the debate on cultural transfer processes of the 19th century. It generates new perspectives on past as well as present exhibition regimes, addressing questions of colonial self-presentation and representation, both of which are intellectually intriguing and currently the subject of politically-charged controversy. The dissonance between how the Māori used and valued portraiture and how the West viewed and reflected on the pictorial is discussed, as are negotiations over the documentary and the pictorial.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/riha.2018.2
Alexandra Karentzos and Miriam Oesterreich, Editorial, RIHA Journal 0189, 20 July 2018, URL: http://www.riha-journal.org/articles/2018/0189-0197-special-issue-gottfried-lindauer/0189-karentzos-oesterreich
In order to challenge such holistic models in the context of world’s fairs and the globalization processes they prompted the study day critically analyzes these expositions from a variety of fashion, design and art historical perspectives. By adopting post-colonial and gender approaches, questioning styles, canons, and artistic ‘progress,’ these entangled art and fashion histories provide the backdrop for a new and critical discussion of the terms of Art Nouveau, fashion, globalization, and ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’.
More info: https://www.udk-berlin.de/universitaet/fakultaet-gestaltung/institute/institut-fuer-geschichte-und-theorie-der-gestaltung/veranstaltungen-am-igtg/de-centering-worlds-fairs-representing-latin-american-peripheries-in-arts-and-fashion/
Konzeption und Leitung: Alma-Elisa Kittner, Kerstin Meincke, Miriam Oesterreich
24./25. November 2022, Berlin, Universität der Künste