1) Introduction: a jurisdiction of art (and the false hopes of those who do art)

2) Giotto. The image as a prayer and a revelation

3) Renessaince Space: Reason, Beauty and Faith (so far not on the warpath)

4) Flay them, slay them: Titian and the cannibalism of art

5) Mannerism(s) of the imagination: From Michelangelo to cancer

6) Academy, the forever enemy: Drawing, Blindness and the Discipline

7) To romantize the world (is to miss it): the case of Caspar David Friedrich

8) Why impressionism never worked: Monet, Cézanne and the (self)destructive force of the instant

9) Why abstraction never worked: From Kandinsky and Malevich to Abstract Expressionism and American Minimalism

10) Objects from the outer space: Duchamp and the logic of the ready-made

11) Surrealistic visions of the past (feeding on the classicism)

12) The limits of irony: the role of the concept in art

13) Theoretical summary and general discussion

Recommended Introductory Literature:

Ernst Gombrich: Art and Illusion. A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (1960)

Georges Didi-Huberman: Confronting Images (2005)

Erwin Panofsky: Idea: A Concept in Art Theory (1924)