Flyer THE ART OF HANS ARP AFTER 1945

in: Maike Steinkamp, Marta Smolinska (ed.): A-Geometry. Hans Arp and Poland, Ausst. Kat., Poznań, 2017

A-Geometry: Hans Arp and Poland, 2017

This is a translation of Maike Steinkamp's essay from the exhibition catalogue A-Geometry: Hans Arp and Poland (National Museum Poznan, 2017). I translate from German to English.

Visual Engagements. Image Practices and Falconry, ed. by Yannis Hadjinicolaou, Boston/Berlin 2020, pp. 241-254., 2020

For most of mankind's history, flying was something that took place almost exclusively in the imagination and in the production of images. This did not change fundamentally until the end of the 19th century. A careful observer of this development was Aby Warburg, who was fascinated by both flying itself and its visual culture throughout his life. This text deals first with the visual culture of flying at the beginning of the 20th century and here also with airmail. Then follows an analysis of Warburg's thoughts on the design of airmail stamps. In doing so, he reflected above all on the modernity of this visual medium as well as on its design principles. This shows that Warburg was a key figure in a phase of history when flying was moving from the realm of dreams to reality.

This paper looks at the relationship between Hans Arp and the New York Galerie Chalette. It shows how this gallery positioned itself in relationship to Arps art, French discussions, the US market and the emergence of a secondary market for modern art.

MA Assessed Essay

A formal analysis of "Glider" (1962), by Robert Rauschenberg from an art historical perspective.

Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2012

The origins of archaeological methods are often surprising, revealing unexpected connections between science, art and entertainment. This article explores aerial survey, a visual method commonly represented as distancing or objective. We show how aerial survey's visualizing practices embody subjective notions of vision emerging throughout the nineteenth century. Aerial survey smashes linear perspective, fragments time-space, and places radical doubt at the root of claims to truth. Its techniques involve hallucination, and its affinities are with stop-motion photography and cinema. Exposing the juvenile dementia of aerial survey's infancy releases practitioners and critics from the impulse to defend or demolish its ‘enlightenment’ credentials.

Academia, 2019

The spring of 1942 forecast the start of a promising career for the 22-year-old Eugene Larrabee, but for the 61-year-old Charles Olmsted (pl. 1) 1942 held many disappointments. Both men were engineers who worked at the Curtiss-Wright plant in Buffalo: Olmsted as a consultant and Larrabee as a newly-hired graduate of Worcester Polytech. Although 1942 marked the end of Charles Olmsted’s striving as a scientist and engineer, the younger man would learn from the older man how to design the perfect propeller. From this transfer of knowledge Larrabee later became famous for the minimum-induced-loss propeller, while Olmsted, the originator of the idea, has been forgotten. In Larrabee’s hands in 1979, some 70 years after Olmsted had first patented the design, the perfect propeller enabled man to fly self-propelled across the English Channel as well as to fly under his own power, like Daedalus, from Crete to an island off the coast of Greece. Between 1909 and 1912 Olmsted had completed the design of the perfect plane to be propelled by his perfect propellers (pl. 2). He had nearly completed constructing it as well. Olmsted had formed a syndicate with the Buffalo Pitts Company and some of Buffalo’s most prominent businessmen to develop a plane of solid construction, as opposed to the ultra-light type craft of the day. In his plane, which he called the Bird, every component part was constructed of wood and metal. The design of the plane was focused on achieving strength, low weight, and streamlining. The wings, fuselage, and tail, as well as their final assemblage were perfected by thorough testing of models in the wind-tunnel to achieve maximum efficiency, safety, and stability. The plane was years ahead of its time. The Buffalo Pitts Company, the country’s largest manufacturer of steam traction engines, wished to soar into the twentieth century rather than plod along at the cumbersome rate of their heavy steam engines.