Speaking Images of Humanity. »The Family of Man« Exhibition as an Exemplary Model of Relational Aesthetic and Pictorial Practice


Autoren: Jochen Krautz, Madeline Ferretti-Theilig
[erschienen in: IMAGE 26 (Ausgabe Juli 2017)]

Schlagwörter: [Schlagwörter]

Disziplinen: [Disziplinen]


This essay employs a relational anthropological model developed by systematic art education scholarship to exemplify its art historical applicability in the interpretation of a work of art. To this end the photo exhibition »The Family of Man« has been chosen, which in its intention and structure represents an anthropological study of humanity, seen as social beings inexorably embedded in relations to the reflexive self, co-existing others and a shared cosmos. The following analysis seeks to illustrate what a relational understanding of art and a corresponding relational pictorial practice means. At the same time it makes a substantial contribution to art historical scholarship on »The Family of Man« by clarifying methodological premises which have been overlooked in the decades-long debate on this legendary exhibition.

[Artikeltext]