#8 The Eventful Photographic History of Lehmbruck's Die Kniende. Lecture by Kathryn Floyd
Thursday, February 7, 2019, 6:30 pm
Venue: Fridericianum, Friedrichsplatz 18, 34117 Kassel
Admission free
Address of Welcome: Birgit Jooss, director of the documenta archiv
The lecture will be in English.
Günther Becker: Installationview of the Rotunda at the Museum Fridericianum with Wilhelm Lehmbrucks „Kniende“ (1911), first documenta, 1955, Inventory Number: docA, MS, d1, 10011675
Günther Becker’s familiar 1955 photograph of Wilhelm Lehmbruck’s Die Kniende (1911) in the rotunda of the Museum Fridericianum serves as an important record of documenta’s beginnings. But the image also tracks a moment in the ongoing “life” of an unusual sculpture and its own fraught and dynamic exhibition history. Caught between movement and stasis and fragment and whole, both Die Kniende and Becker’s installation photograph share a set of characteristics and meanings that allow us to see “installation shots” and other photographs of exhibitions in new and different ways.
Through a series of photographs of Lehmbruck’s sculpture at important German and American exhibitions from 1913 to 1955, as well as other examples from the broader genre of “installation shots,” this lecture will explore the complex narratives and histories that can be gleaned from exhibition photographs when we see them as independent images in their own right, as well as historical documents of other artworks and art events.
Dr. Kathryn M. Floyd is Associate Professor of Art History at Auburn University (Auburn, Alabama, USA) where she specializes in modern and contemporary art history, as well as the history of photography. She regularly researches the history of documenta and other twentieth-century art exhibitions. She is currently writing a book on the histories, functions, and meanings of exhibition photography.