From January 17 to 18, 2025, the workshop Kunst zwischen Konservatismus, Rechtskonservatismus und der neuen Rechten (Art between conservatism, right-wing conservatism and the new right) will take place. On Friday, January 17, Maria Neumann from the documenta Institute will give a lecture entitled Die Unschuld des Gestalters: Der Landschaftsarchitekt Hermann Mattern.
Lots of 'creative processes' by great male 'geniuses' that are misunderstood and canceled by the 'woke art world', an allegedly acute threat to artistic freedom from the left, a collectivism condemned to irresponsibility, too little traditional German art in museums and a lot of fervent worship of Ernst Jünger - it still exists: conservative art criticism. Conservative currents are also present in other areas of art and culture, be it in monument protection, in professional associations, in museums and in art history. It becomes explosive when conservatism shifts to the right and, in its “radicalized” (Natascha Strobl 2021) or right-wing conservative format, hardly differs from the New Right, while at the same time the New Right places itself in a conservative tradition. Since the 2010s, conservative movements have increasingly used (new) right-wing constructions of the enemy, for example when it comes to proclaiming alleged crises, catastrophes and threatening situations, where everyone who does not side with them is counted as the cause. Right-wing and fascist actors such as Armin Mohler, Alain de Benoist and Götz Kubitschek, on the other hand, have relied since the 1960s on the retroactively invented 'conservative revolution' around figures such as Jünger, Oswald Spengler, Carl Schmitt and Paul Schultze-Naumburg as a central reference for their definition of the 'right'. But what does this mean for art and art history?
The workshop will focus on the question of how conservatism in art and art history manifests itself and can be captured, where thresholds to right-wing conservatism and the New Right can be identified, at what point conservatism becomes a staging post or catalyst for right-wing practices and which (infra)structures of art promote or facilitate this. The aim is to discuss which narratives, practices and aesthetics need to be examined in this regard and which methods are needed to analyze them. Since there has been no systematic research on the New Right or on conservatism in art history after 1945, the workshop aims at an initial mapping and the joint development of methods and thematic fields.
All lectures:
Friday, January 17, 2025
Friederike Sigler, Bochum: Kunstkritik als rechte Metapolitik? Feuilletonistische Steilvorlagen und protofaschistische Männlichkeiten
Maria Neumann, Kassel: Die Unschuld des Gestalters. Der Landschaftsarchitekt Hermann Mattern
Elke Gaugele, Wien: Aktuelle Appropriationen konservativer Geschlechterkonzepte, Stile und Moden
Julia Bee, Bochum: Rechte Metapolitik kontern?! Antifaschistische Formate auf Youtube und TikTok
Saturday, January 18, 2025
Christian Drobe, Halle: Konservative Nobilitierungsstrategien in der Kunst? Wahrnehmung und Bildpräsenz bei Ernst Jünger, Gottfried Boehm und Max Imdahl
Thorsten Schneider, Bochum: „Die Sofaecke enthält ein langfristiges Programm“. Zum Konservatismus kritischer Kunstgeschichte
Jonas Meurer, Bamberg: Kunst > Nicht-Kunst. Zwei Schlaglichter auf die Rhetorik und Normativität des ‚neurechten‘ Kunstdiskurses Mitte der 1990er Jahre
Registration by January 15, 2025 at: friederike.sigler@rub.de