E02

The project of the first funding phase reconstructed practice formations of the comparative viewing of pictures as these were developed during the 18th century as part of the discourse of connoisseurship and in the dealing with pairs of pictures. Drawing on this approach, the project examines how incomparability is produced and experienced by specific practices of comparing exemplified by the sublime. Taking Kant’s definition of the sublime as a starting point, the project enquires into the way in which art theory and artistic practice around 1800 undertook to solve the problem of a pictorial representation or evocation of the sublime by resorting to rehearsed practices of comparing with pictures.