Horst Bredekamp

Bredekamp studied art history, archeology, philosophy and sociology in Kiel, Munich, Berlin and Marburg. In 1974 he received his doctorate at the Philipps-Universität Marburg with a thesis on art as a medium of social conflicts, especially the "Bilderkämpfe" of late antiquity to the Hussite revolution. He worked first as a volunteer at the Liebieghaus in Frankfurt am Main, from 1976 as assistant in the division of Art History at the University of Hamburg.

In 1982 he was appointed professor of art history at the University of Hamburg, in 1993 he moved to the Humboldt University Berlin. Since 2003 he has been a Permanent Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin, in 2005 the Gadamer-endowed chair.[1] Bredekamp visited the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (1991), Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin (1992), Getty Center, Los Angeles (1995 and 1998) and the Collegium Budapest (1999).

The research foci of Horst Bredekamp are Iconoclastic Fury, sculpture of the Romanesque, art of the Renaissance and Mannerism, political iconography, art and technology, new media. In the course of his move to Berlin, Bredekamp successfully supported the incorporation of the Census research project into the Humboldt University.[2] In 2000 he founded the project "The Technical Image" at the Hermann von Helmholtz-Centre for Cultural Techniques (HZK) of the Humboldt University Berlin, which developed under his leadership visually critical methods, a theory of pictorial knowledge in the fields of science and technology and medical visualizations. Since 2008 Bredekamp has directed the newly established DFG-Kolleg research group "Picture Act and embodiment" at the Humboldt University Berlin.

Bredekamp is known for his work in the field of Bildwissenschaft ("image-science"), which considered the cognitive functions performed by the image, the question of a stylistic history of scientific imagery, and the role played by visual argumentation during the Scientific Revolution.[3] Focusing primarily on images that fall outside of art proper, such as those used in the works of the philosophers Thomas Hobbes and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and the scientists Charles Darwin and Galileo Galilei, Bredekamp argues that images inculcate a particular kind of understanding that could not be formed in their absence.[4] Bredekamp criticises the idea, associated with Klaus Sachs-Hombach, that Bildwissenschaft might be constructed by amassing the pre-existing insights of various disciplines, arguing that a new science cannot be straightforwardly established through the adding together of existing disciplines.[5] Against Sachs-Hombach's argument that art history is one of many disciplines on which Bildwissenschaft should draw, and Hans Belting's argument that art history is outdated or obsolescent, Bredekamp argues that (Austro-German) art history has always contained an incipiently universal orientation and a focus on non-art images.[6]

In June 2012, he successfully supported the funding application of the Cluster of Excellence Image Knowledge Gestaltung. An Interdisciplinary laboratory. at the Humboldt University in the second phase of the German Universities Excellence Initiative.[7]

In the spring of 2015, he was appointed, next to the British museum director Neil MacGregor (director) and the archaeologist Hermann Parzinger, founding director of the future Humboldt Forum in the walls of the reconstructed Berliner Stadtschloss.[8]

In 2007 appeared Horst Bredekamp's in German newspapers much celebrated monograph "Galilei der Künstler" ("Galilei the artist", see below) which was based on a sensational discovery of an edition of Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius including unknown Galileo attributed ink drawings. After a thorough inspection including material technical studies this issue was found to be genuine by Horst Bredekamp et al.[9][10] In 2012, the historian Nick Wilding discovered, that this proved copy was a complete forgery which had been brought by the Italian antiquarian Marino Massimo De Caro in the U.S. antique trade.[11][12]

Bredekamp is a member of the board of the Schering Foundation and member of Foundation for Sports History Museums.

Monographs:

• Kunst als Medium sozialer Konflikte. Bilderkämpfe von der Spätantike bis zur Hussitenrevolution, Frankfurt am Main (Suhrkamp) 1975.
• Kunst am Mittelrhein um 1400 (mit Herbert Beck und Wolfgang Beeh), Frankfurt am Main (Liebieghaus) 1975.
• Vicino Orsini und der heilige Wald von Bomarzo. Ein Fürst als Künstler und Anarchist, Worms (Werner) 1985; 2., überarb. Aufl. 1991.
• Botticelli: Primavera. Florenz als Garten der Venus, Frankfurt am Main (Fischer) 1988; New edition Berlin (Wagenbach) 2002.
• Antikensehnsucht und Maschinenglauben. Die Geschichte der Kunstkammer und die Zukunft der Kunstgeschichte, Berlin (Berlin) 1992.
• Florentiner Fußball. Die Renaissance der Spiele. Calcio als Fest der Medici, Frankfurt am Main (Campus) 1993; revised edition Berlin (Wagenbach) 2001.
• Repräsentation und Bildmagie der Renaissance als Formproblem, München (Carl Friedrich von Siemens-Stiftung) 1995.
• Sankt Peter in Rom und das Prinzip der produktiven Zerstörung. Bau und Abbau von Bramante bis Bernini, Berlin (Wagenbach) 2000.
• Thomas Hobbes visuelle Strategien. Der Leviathan: Urbild des modernen Staates. Werkillustrationen und Portraits, Berlin (Akademie) 1999. New edition under the title Thomas Hobbes: Der Leviathan. Das Urbild des modernen Staates und seine Gegenbilder. 1651-2001, Berlin (Akademie) 2003.
• Die Fenster der Monade. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz' Theater der Natur und Kunst, Berlin (Akademie) 2004.
• Darwins Korallen. Die frühen Evolutionsdiagramme und die Tradition der Naturgeschichte, Berlin (Wagenbach) 2005.
• Bilder bewegen. Von der Kunstkammer zum Endspiel, Berlin (Wagenbach) 2007.
• Galilei der Künstler. Der Mond, die Sonne, die Hand, Berlin (Akademie) 2007.
• Der Künstler als Verbrecher. Ein Element der frühmodernen Rechts- und Staatstheorie, München (Carl Friedrich von Siemens-Stiftung) 2008.
• Michelangelo. Fünf Essays, Berlin (Wagenbach) 2009.
• Theorie des Bildakts. Frankfurter Adorno-Vorlesungen 2007, Berlin (Suhrkamp) 2010.
• Leibniz und die Revolution der Gartenkunst. Herrenhausen, Versailles und die Philosophie der Blätter, Berlin (Wagenbach) 2012. ISBN 978-3-8031-5183-4.[28][29][30]
• Der schwimmende Souverän. Karl der Große und die Bildpolitik des Körpers, Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-8031-5186-5.[31]
• Galileis denkende Hand. Form und Forschung um 1600, Berlin, Boston (de Gruyter) 2015. ISBN 978-3-11-041457-8.
• mit Claudia Wedepohl: Warburg, Cassirer und Einstein im Gespräch. Kepler als Schlüssel der Moderne, Berlin (Wagenbach) 2015. ISBN 978-3-8031-5188-9.
• Das Beispiel Palmyra, Köln 2016.
• Der Behemoth. Metamorphosen des Anti-Leviathan (Carl-Schmitt-Vorlesungen), Berlin 2016.

As editor(selection):

• (as coeditor): Aby Warburg. Akten des internationalen Symposions, Berlin (Akademie) 1990.
• (as coeditor): Edgar Wind. Kunsthistoriker und Philosoph, Berlin (Akademie) 1998.
• (as coeditor): Theater der Natur und Kunst. Wunderkammern des Wissens, 2 Bände, Berlin (Henschel) 2000.
• (as guesteditor): Jahrbuch für Universitätsgeschichte Bd. 5 (2002): Themenband „Universität und Kunst“, Stuttgart (Steiner) 2002.
• (as coeditor) Visuelle Argumentationen. Die Mysterien der Repräsentation und die Berechenbarkeit der Welt, München (Fink) 2006.
• (as coeditor) Klassizismus/Gotik. Karl Friedrich Schinkel und die patriotische Baukunst. München/Berlin (Dt. Kunstverlag) 2007.
• (as coeditor): Das Technische Bild. Kompendium zu einer Stilgeschichte wissenschaftlicher Bilder, Berlin (Akademie) 2008.
• (as coeditor): In der Mitte Berlins. 200 Jahre Kunstgeschichte an der Humboldt-Universität, Berlin (Gebr. Mann) 2010.
• (as editor of the series): Bildwelten des Wissens. Kunsthistorisches Jahrbuch für Bildkritik, Berlin (Akademie), halbjährlich seit 2003. Bd. 1.1: Bilder in Prozessen - Band 1.2: Oberflächen der Theorie - Band 2.1: Bildtechniken des Ausnahmezustandes - Band 2.2: Instrumente des Sehens - Band 3.1: Bildtextile Ordnungen - Band 3.2: Digitale Form - Band 4.1: Farbstrategien - Band 4.2: Bilder ohne Betrachter - Band 5.1: Systemische Räume - Band 5.2: Imagination des Himmels - Band 6.1: Ikonographie des Gehirns - Band 6.2: Grenzbilder - Band 7.1: Bildendes Sehen - Band 7.2: Erscheinende Mathematik - Band 8.1: Kontaktbilder – Band 8.2: Graustufen
• (as editor of the series): Actus et Imago. Berliner Schriften für Bildaktforschung und Verkörperungsphilosophie (Hg; Horst Bredekamp, John Michael Krois und Jürgen Trabant, Berlin (de Gruyter) seit 2011.
• (as coeditor): IMAGE WORD ACTION. IMAGO SERMO ACTIO. BILD WORT AKTION (Hg.: Horst Bredekamp, David Freedberg, Sabine Marienberg, Marion Lauschke, Jürgen Trabant) seit 2017. * (as coeditor): +ultra knowledge & gestaltung (Hg.: Nikola Doll, Horst Bredekamp and Wolfgang Schäffner for the Cluster of Excellence Image Knowledge Gestaltung. An Interdisciplinary Laboratory at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin), Leipzig 2017.

• 2001: Sigmund Freud Prize for scientific prose of the German Academy for Language and Poetry, Darmstadt
• 2004: Aby-M.-Warburg-Prize of the City of Hamburg
• 2006: Max-Planck-Science Prize of the Max Planck Society and the Humboldt Foundation
• 2009: Richard Hamann Prize of the Philipps-Universität Marburg for outstanding scientific achievements in the history of art
• 2010: Meyer-Struckmann Prize for Human and Social Science Research
• 2010: Full member of the Academia Europaea
• 2012: Fritz Winter Prize of the Fritz Winter Foundation
• 2012: Berlin Science Prize
• 2014: Pour le Mérite
• 2015: Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany with star
• 2016: Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 2017: Schiller Prize of the city Marbach