Les matériaux

Monika Wagner offers here the first comprehensive study of materials in 20th-century art, focusing on their use and significance. Through particularly exemplary works, she considers traditional materials, as well as those that have been newly developed or are foreign to art, placing them beyond the personal mythologies of individual artists in the context of their ordinary uses and attributions. The critical reconstruction of their meaning thus opens up a new avenue for understanding modern art.

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Monika Wagner (1944)  is professor emeritus of art history at the University of Hamburg. Her research focuses on 18th- to 20th-century painting, the history and theory of perception, the design of public spaces and, in particular, the semantics of art materials. Her book Das Material der Kunst. Eine andere Geschichte der Moderne (Munich, Beck, 2001) was a landmark publication; this work is the first French translation of it.

The works in the ‘Passages’ collection are the result of research projects that examine art and architecture from the Middle Ages to the present day from the perspective of European and global artistic relations. They contribute to disseminating and translating scientific knowledge resulting from the fruitful dialogue between French and German-speaking intellectual traditions and international schools of thought. Co-published by the German Centre for Art History / Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte (DFK Paris).