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the title Figurenkunst und Künstlerfigur turns to the art-critical writings on the Gates of Hell (1880). In this chapter, famous art critics and writers such as Edmond de Goncourt, Gustave Geffroy, Anatole France and Arthur Symons are at the centerof interest. For the generation of the symbolist art critics, for example, the Gates of Hell became an icon of their own melancholic art doctrine insofar as the art work seemed to stage a temporality of deferral and hesitation which could be understood as a counter-image to an all-too-optimistic belief in historical progress. At the same time, Rodin’s apparent inability to bring this work to an end seemed to betray a very similar understanding of time. Rilke’s and Simmel’s interpretations of Rodin’s work, which are at the core of the following chapter, are described as theoretically ambitious attempts of emulating the art-critical debate at the turn of the century by using innovative narrative strategies of coalescing biographical patterns and reflections on art (Rilke) or by declaring Rodin’s work to be the ideal object for an analysis of modernity in the context of contemporary sociology (Simmel). The sixth chapter, entitled Verlust und Wiederbelebung, turns to two interpretations by German-speaking authors in the years around 1950: the philosopher Günther Anders and the art historian Josef Schmoll. gen. Eisenwerth. Anders, who was also a student of Edmund Husserl, described Rodin’s sculptural images of the human body as artistic expressions of an historical experience of loss and isolation, as objects which could stimulate a deepened reflection about modernity as crises. Josef Schmoll gen. Eisenwerth’s investigations of the motif of the torso, which emerged in the 1950s, rather tried to describe the fragmented body as the »symbol« of an aesthetic experience of totality and holism. Obviously, the art historian’s strategy of emphatically denying the disturbing aesthetic effects of some of Rodin’s torsos can be – at least from today’s perspective – conceived as a way of dealing with the historical experience of the collapse of civilization. The last chapter of the study is entitled Auf dem Weg in die Postmoderne. It focuses on the writings of Leo Steinberg and Rosalind Krauss since the 1960s. While Steinberg was mostly interested in the diverse ways of how Rodin constructed and deconstructed the meanings of his sculptures with the help of the art forms of the »montage« and the »assemblage«, thereby ostentatiously demonstrating the sculptural »semiosis«, Krauss emphatically turned to the problem of ›reading‹ Rodin’s images of the human body. For her, Rodin’s sculptures became emblems of an ›opaque‹ subjectivity and therefore the first artistic realizations of a radically new paradigm of aesthetic reception: Instead of clinging to the traditional notions of psychological and hermeneutical depth in the beholding of sculptures, in her view Rodin’s sculptures emphasize the material surface as the original site of the production of meaning."

postmodernity --- auguste rodin --- sculpture --- modernity --- naturalism --- esthetic --- art criticism

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In the Project P16901-G06 sponsored by the FWF, Camillo Sittes writings will be published for the first time in a „critical comprehensive edition“, scheduled for six volumes. The basis for this edition is provided by the “Sitte Nachlass-Archiv” which is owned by the Technical University, Vienna. The writings of volume one consist of Sittes publications in the field of art criticism and the applied arts. Those writings have been, in most cases, shorter publications in newspapers and journals which are difficult to access today. The unpublished and undated autograph “Faust, Fliegender Holländer und Meistersinger” as well as one letter to Richard Wagner from 1873, which is not contained in the Sitte archive, supplement his writings in the field of art criticism. The writings in the field of applied arts throw a new light onto the work of Camillo Sitte as director of vocational schools (i.e. Kunstgewerbeschulen), who elsewise is predominantly known as urban theorist and urban planner only. Those wrintigs give testimony to the political ambitions to foster the applied arts in the k. u. k. monarchy around Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg. They comprise almost all areas of arts and craft, ranging from traditional and local trades to the beginnings of industrial production. The writings in the field of art criticism derive mainly from Sittes early time in Vienna and document the vivid debates on the question of art between historism and emerging modern currents like secession, impressionism and expressionism. Furthermore, this thematic field contains a series of writings on Richard Wagner’s conception of art which illustrate Sittes own apprehension of art, as it will have impact especially on his chief work, "City Planning According to Its Artistic Principles" from 1889 (vol. 3 of this edition). Michael Mönninger and Wolfgang Sonne / Ruth Hanisch put these texts into context, inform about the current state of research and establish connections to others of Camillo Sitte’s fields of activity, which will be documented in the volumes of this edition to come. Furthermore, there is an extensive essay on the biography of Camillo Sitte by Michael Mönninger. Editorial work is done by Sonja Hnilica and Bernhard Langer. The Editors are Klaus Semsroth, Michael Mönninger and Christiane C. Collins.

Camillo Sitte --- Arts and Craft --- Urban Planning --- Art Criticism --- Vienna late 19th Century

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In A Fragile Inheritance Saloni Mathur investigates the work of two seminal figures from the global South: the New Delhi-based critic and curator Geeta Kapur and contemporary multimedia artist Vivan Sundaram. Examining their written and visual works over the past fifty years, Mathur illuminates how her protagonists’ political and aesthetic commitments intersect and foreground uncertainty, difficulty, conflict, and contradiction. This book presents new understandings of the culture and politics of decolonization and the role of non-Western aesthetic avant-gardes within the discourses of contemporary art. Through skillful interpretation of Sundaram's and Kapur’s practices, Mathur demonstrates how received notions of mainstream art history may be investigated and subjected to creative redefinition. Her scholarly methodology offers an impassioned model of critical aesthetics and advances a radical understanding of art and politics in our time.

Vivan Sundaram --- Geeta Kapur --- South Asian art --- art criticism --- global contemporary art