More than one picture : an art history of the hyperimage

Abstract

In the English edition of his monograph published in 2013 (Mehr al sein Bild. Für eine Kunstgeschichte des hyperimage, Munich, Wilhelm Fink, 2013), Felix Thürlemann proposes to focus on a specific practice of the display of images, which he terms ‘hyperimage’. Inspired by the concept of hypertext used in literary theory, ‘Hyperimage designates that a calculated grouping of selected image objects – paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculptures – forms a new, overarching unit’ (p. 1). As a counterpart to an art history traditionally conceived as the study of influences, where images are consequently gathered from a diachronic perspective, the approach of the hyperimage aims at investigating the synchronic display of images in a given space at a given time in history.