Visuality as Paradigm: Art History and Visual Culture Studies

The project analyses and compares concepts of visuality, their application and effects in the practices of art history and visual culture studies. Visuality as a paradigm for both disciplines serves as focus for a structural analysis of the difficult dialogue between Art History and Visual Culture Studies. Since the early 1990s a highly conflictual debate over the disciplinary legitimation to interprete visual culture in the age of global migration and economy, new media cultures and identity politics has formed this dialogue. The project has a comparatistic approach and positions itself within the discursive history of (cultural) science. It central questions are: Does Art History integrate the relational and performative concept of visuality which Visual Culture Studies adopted as central paradigm into its object-centered formation? What are or could be the theoretical and methodological consequences? What are or could be the effects on the definition of the art object as central paradigm of Art History? Visual Culture Studies on the other hand will be analysed on its practices of dealing with the objects of visual culture in relation to its concepts of visuality.