Head: Univ.-Prof. Mag.phil.
Dr.phil. Eva Kernbauer
Visiting professor: Dr.phil. Maria Bremer
Today, more than ever, artistic work demands profound historical knowledge, visual analysis
competence, theoretical reflective capacity and linguistic communications skills. Art and visual media affect every aspect
of social-cultural activities such as economics, politics, media, high and pop culture, as well as ethnic cultures, sexuality
and gender relations, psychology, medicine and natural sciences, and philosophy. Like art, as a discipline, art history is
part of these discourses and social practices and therefore in addition to its classical methods of style and work analysis,
also furnishes methods for the scrutiny of these interdependencies.
One focal point of art historical teaching
and research at the “Angewandte” is contemporary art. The view of art history is evolved from current questions, in order
to render acquired historical knowledge fertile for a critical and creative approach to the present.
Current research
focal points involve the relationship between text and image, the formation of early modern subjectivity models in contemporary
painting, historical and current transformation of the self- and role image of artists, gender issues, the ambiguity of modern
and contemporary art, methodological questions relating to the historicising of contemporary art, surrealism and avant-garde
research, as well as aspects of video art and film history. Conferences, lecture series and exhibitions are organised for
this purpose along with the publication of books.
