The present is an age of images. But what becomes of a culture in which only very few pictures are still made by hand, in which people no longer draw or paint, in which hardly anyone still works as a sculptor? And how does the individuals power of imagination change when everything is made visible, everything is shown, and nothing is hidden anymore? The book outlines a perspective on studies of image culture based on the question of the mutual dependencies of image and art, which flow into our present in an "artification" of the world. The book examines the influence of art images on exemplary image cultures in a period of time from the beginning of the concept of art in the fourteenth century up to the present.

Christiane Kruse, Muthesius Kunsthochschule Kiel.