Output details

Ich bin das bild der welt

The essay by Kugler in this co-edited book explores Steiner’s blackboard drawings in relation to their status as distinctive realities rather than illustrations. The apprehension of this status has influenced the curatorial selections made for the exhibition such that the blackboards chosen relate specifically to the body and the human being. Kugler’s approach in his essay and curatorial choices engage with the philosophical discourse of the Bildakt interdisciplinary laboratory at Humboldt University (Bredekamp).

The book was published as a catalogue for the exhibition Ich bin das bild der welt that took place at Museum Liner, Appenzell (2011).

Since the early nineties when Kugler first decided to present Steiner’s blackboard drawings within the context of contemporary art, he has been actively involved in major exhibitions of the blackboards, alongside curators including Harald Szeeman. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of Steiner’s entire oeuvre and having worked with Joseph Beuys in the late sixties, Kugler is one of the first curators to make explicit important links between Beuys and Steiner through a series of major exhibitions, where he proposed Steiner and Beuys blackboards be exhibited together including the National Gallery of Victoria 2007; and the Vitra Design Museum 2011. Through insights into the connections between Steiner and Beuys, and Steiner and the C20th avant-garde, Kugler has introduced new language into the reception of Steiner’s work and new perspectives on the drawing. Kugler has contributed to the understanding of the blackboard drawings not simply as illustrations to the more than five thousand lectures that Steiner gave, but of images as realities, that also highlight how they arose from a lecture-performance approach not dissimilar from Beuys and Cage. This essay thus provides material for the rethinking of the nature of the image and of the blackboard drawings as art.

This output is catalogue co-edited with Roland Scotti from the exhibition Ich bin das bild der welt (Liner Appenzel 2011). Kugler’s introductory essay deals with Steiner’s new concept of science and especially how science can be extended using methodologies from Art. Kugler uses the Steiner blackboards as examples to explain Steiner’s thought regarding this new concept of Art, or extension of Science. The exhibition for which this is catalogue deals with the blackboard drawings and the role that they play in Steiner’s work in general and the role that they have played in contemporary arts practice.