Narration im Bild : eine Studie zum malerischen Werk von Neo Rauch

Pictures can evoke mental images, that include far more than what can actually be seen. In art history these kind of pictures are often called “narrative pictures”. However, art history hasn’t theorized the narrativity of pictures well enough. The pictorial work of Neo Rauch is a perfect example for this lack of appropriate theoretical approaches: The German painter is widely known for his unique way to create narrative paintings, whereby the art historical discourse doesn’t provide any scientific justification. The goal of this dissertation is therefore to fill the obvious research gap, in particular to determine the narrativity of Neo Rauch’s pictorial work and to outline a suitable terminology and research method.
The theoretical foundation for this dissertation are considerations in the field of narratology. At first the author gives an insight into the genesis of the problem of visual narration in general (chapter 2) and afterwards an overview of the current status of research in art history as well as in narratology (chapter 3). On this basis a theoretical model for analyzing the narrativity of pictures is proposed. This model mainly relies on Werner Wolf’s thoughts on transmedial narrativity. Additionally, a specific analysis procedure is submitted for the practical narratological study of art historical images and texts (chapter 4).
Later three of Neo Rauch’s paintings, created in 2005 and 2006, are selected as examples. The author discusses in what way they can be considered “narrative paintings” (chapter 5-7). As can be seen, the selected paintings cannot be referred to as being “narrative”, even though they strongly indicate a narrative. Furthermore, all three paintings show a specific way of dealing with pictorial narrativity, in which a certain vagueness of meaning is playing an essential role (chapter 8). In conclusion Werner Wolf’s thoughts on transmedial narrativity are further refined with regard to pictorial narrativity (chapter 8).