Premium
Seeing is (Dis)Believing: A Reading of Thomas Demand's “Modell/Model” (2000)
Author(s) -
Macarthur David
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
curator: the museum journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.312
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 2151-6952
pISSN - 0011-3069
DOI - 10.1111/cura.12285
Subject(s) - pavilion , nazism , shadow (psychology) , german , photography , reading (process) , skepticism , nazi germany , art history , uncanny , temptation , art , philosophy , aesthetics , psychoanalysis , visual arts , epistemology , psychology , history , linguistics , theology , archaeology
In this commentary I interpret Thomas Demand's photographic work “Modell/Model” (2000) as undermining the strong temptation to think that when we view a photograph – a light‐capturing mechanism – seeing is believing. Demand provides a regress of models of models (recalling Plato's skeptical view of art as unknowing copies of copies) that ultimately proves unfathomable, hence, uncanny. Demand is the Socrates of contemporary art photography: here seeing is not‐knowing. What we do not know is that Demand's photograph is based on a partially erased paper and cardboard model of the scene depicted in a Nazi era photograph of a model of the German Pavilion (Hoffman, 1937) – which recalls the global ambitions of Nazism and the aesthetic connection Hitler wanted to make between neo‐classical fascist architecture and the “new man” of the Third Reich.