by Jon Lackman | 21 April 2006 | Books, Modern
The project on Franco-German art relations led by Thomas Gaehtgens continues to bear fruit. First, Alexandre Kostka and François Lucberts edited a volume covering 1870-1945 that reached two surprising conclusions: that textual discourse played the most important role in shaping the reception of art during this period (Marc Schalenberg, H-Arthist), and that the German art establishment gave the late 19th-century French avant-garde a better reception than it got at home (Nico la Hille, Portal Kunstgeschichte). Then another study by Martin Schieder showed how the French occupation’s promotion of representational painting in Germany after 1945 indirectly aided the rise of abstraction (Holger Stunz, H-Soz-u-Kult). Now Schieder’s broader study of the German-French art relationship from 1945 to 1959 (reviewed by Andrea Meyer in Kunstform) is shortly due to receive a 10,000-Euro prize jointly bestowed by the German and French parliaments.
