In her dissertation, art historian Anne Simone Kiesiel introduced the term “field of dialog” („Dialogfeld“) to art history in order to describe an unusual pictorial phenomenon in Franz Erhard Walther’s early work. During the event, the scope of meaning of fields of dialog will be explained in the historical context of the 1950s. For Franz Erhard Walther is by no means the only artist who successively emptied his pictures – but he is an exceptional case in the stringency of his break with traditional pictorial concepts.

How can it be that an entire artistic generation has discovered formal-aesthetic emptiness for itself? What are the aesthetics of reception associated with this productive form of “iconoclasm”? How is emptiness used, especially in politicized and activist-motivated art? The openness of the work created by the formal or content-related empty spaces leads to specific aesthetic processes of reception – can these be used to positively manipulate the viewer? Can the viewer even be called upon to take socio-political action with the help of the appeal function of the blank space, as already diagnosed in texts at the end of the 1960s by the literary scholar Wolfgang Iser? And to what extent does a democratic, anti-elitist understanding of art manifest itself in the formal fields of dialog?

The publication “Das Bild entsteht im Betrachter. Leerstellen und rezeptionsästhetisches Konzept im Frühwerk von Franz Erhard Walther” (Imhof Verlag) will be available for purchase at the event.

Related Show: DIALOGFELDER. BILDER ALS APPELL, 15 March – 29 March 2025