Completed PhD

Between 1880 and 1930 paradisiacal aspirations and colonial interests caused strong involvement with „the other“. Images of black women were widely shown in popular culture as well as in science and reached heavy impact through mass media circulation. But it's less known that many artistic works arised out of this context, too. The present project focuses on that and approaches the topic exemplarily by use of five image groups. It deals with works of Anton Ažbe and Otto Ubbelohde, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Ernst Vollbehr, Georg Tappert as well as Hannah Höch. Following a gender and race orientated difference approach which is linked to Foucaults discourse analysis and Butlers concept of performativity the study of the visual construction of black feminity leads to several questions concerning the function of the works: How far have fine artists portrayed „ein weißes gedicht auf ein dunkles gesicht“ ( a white poem on a dark face) and what does that tell about themselves and their surroundings? Did they stay within the limits of normative beliefs with their works or were they also shifted or even crossed?