EMasters Title Page


i 

      
    
    
 
 
 
 

A Thesis 
Submitted to 

the Temple University Graduate Board 
 
 
 
 
 

In Partial Fulfillment 
of the Requirements for the Degree 

      
 
 
 
 
 

by 
      
      

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Thesis Approvals: 
 
      
      
      
      
      

CAUGHT IN ACTION: A STUDY OF CHRISTIANE BAUMGARTNER'S
 TREATMENT OF TECHNIQUE, MOVEMENT, AND

SELF-REFLECTION

MASTER OF ARTS

Catherine E. Sirizzotti
August 2012

Dr. Gerald Silk, Thesis Advisor, Department of Art History
Dr. Ashley West, Thesis Advisor, Department of Art History



ii 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 

© 2012 
by 

Catherine E. Sirizzotti 
 

All Rights Reserved 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 



iii 
ABSTRACT 

 

In my master’s thesis, I examine Baumgartner’s work in regards to her treatment 

of technique, movement, and self-reflection. This research demonstrates how she has 

mastered early, traditional German woodcuts and introduced them into a new, 

contemporary context by combining them with video and photography. I begin with a 

discussion of Baumgartner’s use of materials and techniques. I focus especially on her 

emulation of Albrecht Dürer and adherence to many early fifteenth-century rules and 

standards for creating prints, while also exploring the print history of Leipzig where 

Baumgartner received her foundational training. Through a study of works such as 

Dürer’s large-scale woodcut titled Triumphal Arch of Maximilian I (1515) and 

Baumgartner’s Transall (2002-04), I examine how her methods also differ 

from traditional approaches and the ways in which she places particular value on how the 

labor of producing the print fits into its creation. I then focus on how Baumgartner unites 

the slow process of woodcut with the fast paced mediums of video and photography in 

order to produce distinctive physical and visual encapsulations of movement. This 

includes an exploration of French author Paul Virilio’s influence and the ways in which 

she captures motion through images of transportation, cutting techniques, and optical 

illusions. I also consider the role that her personal history plays in her works, as well as 

her Russian influences such as the writings of the Russian-American poet and essayist 

Joseph Brodsky. This is displayed by an examination of how Baumgartner’s prints 

illustrate the significance of introspection by demonstrating its relation to one’s 

background, physical surroundings, and connection to the past and memory, as well as 

the significance of reassessing one’s perspective of the modern experience. 



iv 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

 

Thanks to my advisors, Dr. Gerald Silk and Dr. Ashley West, for their intellectually 

stimulating guidance. I also want to thank Julien Robson for introducing me to Christiane 

Baumgartner, as well as our talks about the artist. I also appreciate the generous 

assistance of Caitlin Perkins.  

 

To Anthony, Diane and Ariane Sirizzotti and Kevin Mattesky, I am grateful for your love 

and tremendous support.   

 

And of course, a sincere thanks to Christiane Baumgartner for taking the time to talk with 

me about her beautiful works.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



v 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 

 

Page 
ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………….. iii 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………... iv 
LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………………... vi 
INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………..…. viii 
 
CHAPTERS 
 

1. DECIPHERING THE MATRIX: THE PRINT HISTORY OF A RENAISSANCE 
REVIVALIST……………….…………………………………………………… 1 

Notes…………………………………………………………...……….. 18 
 
2. AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT: MOVEMENT IN PRINT…………………...….. 22 

Notes…………………………………………….….….……………….. 35 
 

3. “TWISTS OF LANGUAGE”: SELF-REFLECTION FILTERED THROUGH 
THE MATRIX OF A PRINTMAKER…………………………………...…….. 37 

Notes……………………………………………………………………. 51 
 
CONCLUSION…………………………………...……….…...……………………….. 53 
BIBLIOGRAPHY………...……...……………………………………...……………… 55 
FIGURES………….…………………………………………………...……………….. 58 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



vi 
LIST OF FIGURES 

 

Page 
 
Figure 1.1 Attrib. Albrecht Dürer, The Creation of Eve from the Nuremberg Chronicle,  

Woodcut, 1493.  ……………………………………………..………………..... 58 
 
Figure 1.2 Dürer, Self portrait, Silver point, 1484. Vienna, Albertina.  ….…………… 58 
 
Figure 1.3 Dürer, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the series Apocalypse,  

Woodcut, 1498.  …………………………………………,…………………….. 59 
 
Figure 1.4 Christiane Baumgartner, Klassenkameraden (Classmates), Three silkscreens  

on paper, 1999.  ……………………………………………....….……………... 60 
 
Figure 1.5 Gerhard Richter, Matrosen (Sailors), Oil on canvas, 1966.  ……..….…….. 60 
 
Figure 1.6 Christiane Baumgartner, Lisbon I-IV, Four woodcuts on Japanese paper,  

2001. ……………………………………………….…………………………... 61 
 
Figure 1.7 Albrecht Dürer et al., Triumphal Arch of Maximilian I, Woodcut, 1515.  

British Museum, London.  ……………………….…………………………….. 61 
 
Figure 1.8 Christiane Baumgartner, Transall, Woodcut on Kozo paper, 2002. Museum  

of Modern Art, New York, NY.  ………………..………….…………………... 62 
 
Figures 2.1-4 Christiane Baumgartner, Schkeuditz I-IV, Series of four woodcuts, 2005.  

Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY.  ………………….…………..…… 62-4 
 
Figure 2.5 Schkeuditz III (detail)  ……………………………………………………… 64 
 
Figure 2.6 Étienne-Jules Marey, “Bird Flight, Pelican,” Chronophotograph, 1886.  .… 65 
 
Figure 2.7 Emil Nolde, Fischdampfer (Fishing Steamer), Woodcut, 1910. Museum of  

Modern Art, New York, NY.  ……………….….……………………………… 65 
 
Figure 2.8 Baumgartner, Manhattan Transfer, Woodcut on Kozo paper, 2010.  …..…. 66 
 
Figure 2.9 Baumgartner, Deutscher Wald, From a series of nine woodcuts, 2007.  ….. 66 
 
Figure 2.10 Baumgartner, Luftbild, Woodcut on Kozo paper, 2008-09.  .…..………… 67 
 
Figure 2.11 Carlos Cruz-Diez, Induction Chromatique 63, Silkscreen, 1974.  ……..… 68 
 
Figure 2.12 Victor Vasarely, Zèbre, Oil on canvas, 1944.  …………………………… 68 



vii 
 
Figures 2.13-14 Baumgartner, Allee I + II, Woodcut diptych on Kozo paper, 2008. … 69 
 
Figure 2.15 Gerhard Richter, Seestück (Seascape), Oil on canvas, 1975.  …….……… 70 
 
Figure 2.16 Richter, Great Sphinx of Gizeh, Oil on canvas, 1964.  ……….…………... 70 
 
Figure 2.17 Baumgartner, Gelände, Woodcut on Atsukuchi Japanese paper, 2010.  .… 71 
 
Figures 3.1-2 Christiane Baumgartner, Trails I + II, Woodcut diptych on Kozo paper,  

2008. ………………………………………………….………………………... 72 
 
Figure 3.3 Baumgartner, Less Than One I, Part of a series of five woodcuts on Japanese  

paper, 2002.  ………………………………………………………….………… 73 
 
Figure 3.4 Baumgartner, Less Than One III, Part of a series of five woodcuts on Japanese  

paper, 2002.  …………………………………………….……………………… 73 
 
Figures 3.5-8 Baumgartner, Solaris I-IV, A series of four woodcuts on Kozo paper,  

2008. ………………………………………………………………………… 74-5 
 
Figure 3.9 Martha Rosler, “Beauty Rest,” from the series Bringing the War Home:  

House Beautiful, Photomontage, printed as a color photograph, 1967-1972.  … 76 
 
Figure 3.10 Rosler, “Photo-Op,” from the series Bringing the War Home: House  

Beautiful, New series, Photomontage, 2004.  ………………………………….. 76 
 
Figure 3.11 Baumgartner, 1 Sekunde. Cream cloth covered box containing title page,  

colophon, and twenty-five woodcuts on Zerkall paper, 2004.  ………….……... 77 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 



viii 
INTRODUCTION 

 

Capturing international attention, German artist Christiane Baumgartner has 

produced impressive artworks that blend two rather divergent forms of media: the 

woodcut and video. In my master’s thesis, I examine Baumgartner’s work in regards to 

her treatment of technique, movement, and self-reflection. This research demonstrates 

how she has mastered early, traditional German woodcuts and introduced them into a 

new, contemporary context.  

This project grew from my introduction to Baumgartner’s work at Philagrafika’s 

The Graphic Unconscious exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 

early 2010. I soon became interested in the Philadelphia-wide project and its influence on 

the Temple University gallery, which led me into a deeper study of Philagrafika’s 

objectives and artists. Throughout my research, Baumgartner continually caught my 

attention, and I soon began speaking with Philagrafika about her work in particular. I then 

realized the lack of in-depth research on this important artist and recognized this topic’s 

potential as a Master’s thesis.  

This thesis is structured into three chapters. Chapter One discusses Baumgartner’s 

use of materials and techniques. I focus especially on her emulation of Albrecht Dürer 

and adherence to many early fifteenth-century rules and standards for creating prints, 

while also exploring the print history of Leipzig where Baumgartner received her 

foundational training. This includes the study of Dürer’s educational background in 

relation to Baumgartner’s traditional training, as well as the development of her 

printmaking process. I investigate how Dürer produced his works and the ways in which 

Baumgartner has incorporated these influences into her output. Beyond these technical 



ix 
influences, I also discuss Dürer’s large-scale woodcut titled Triumphal Arch of 

Maximilian I (1515) (fig. 1.7) in regards to Baumgartner’s Transall (2002-04) (fig. 1.8), 

demonstrating that her use of monumentally sized prints is not that far removed from 

Dürer’s practice. However, Dürer’s work was a large collaborative project, and 

Baumgartner has the advantage of new technologies and processes that allow her to have 

a different approach to producing these grand-scale compositions. This opens the door to 

a conversation of how her methods also differ from traditional approaches and the ways 

in which she places particular value on how the labor of producing the print fits into its 

creation. Especially important is Baumgartner’s exclusive role as designer, cutter, and 

printer of her works, which—as Dürer shows—differs greatly from the tradition of 

making woodcuts. This leads me into Chapter Two, in which I investigate how she 

blends aspects of an old style with that of the new in order to depict images filled with 

speed and movement.  

Chapter Two focuses on how Baumgartner unites the slow process of woodcut 

with the fast paced mediums of video and photography in order to produce distinctive 

physical and visual encapsulations of movement. French author Paul Virilio’s writings on 

the concept of motion played a significant part in amplifying her interest in this subject, 

helping to shape her view of speed in relation to communication and technology. 

Through an exploration of Virilio’s influence and an examination of Baumgartner’s 

works, I will analyze the ways in which she captures motion through images of 

transportation, cutting techniques, and optical illusions.  

I begin with a study of her Schkeuditz series (2005) (figs. 2.1-4), examining her 

implementation of process and technique in each print in the series in order to convey 



x 
movement and the rush of modern communication and ideas. This series also assists in 

demonstrating her use of familiar imagery, making them not only personal to 

Baumgartner, but lending themselves to multiple reactions and interpretations, allowing a 

wide range of viewers to both share the artist’s vision of the world as well as contemplate 

their own perspectives. This conversation leads to how Baumgartner not only suggests 

movement through subject matter, but also generates optical illusions, such as in Luftbild 

(2009) (fig. 2.10), that both cause the print to appear in motion and force viewers to 

participate, prompting them to move around the space, in turn shifting their perspective 

of the woodcut. These two aspects of her prints are then united in a discussion that 

establishes how her universally relatable images seek to produce visually stimulating 

experiences that prompt a viewer to take a moment for self-reflection, the main message 

hidden within her prints.  

Chapter Three is a deeper exploration of how her prints encourage introspection. 

In a rushed world of instantaneous communication and oversaturation with media 

imagery, the time for one’s personal thoughts can often be interrupted or neglected. 

Baumgartner aims to give viewers a chance to reclaim this action of self-reflection and be 

reminded of its importance. By considering the role that her personal history plays in her 

works, as well as her Russian influences such as the writings of the Russian-American 

poet and essayist Joseph Brodsky, I will examine how Baumgartner’s prints illustrate the 

significance of personal meditative thought by demonstrating its relation to one’s 

background, physical surroundings, and connection to the past and memory, as well as 

the significance of reassessing one’s perspective of the modern experience. 



xi 
This chapter begins with an introduction to the link between Baumgartner and 

Brodsky’s artistic processes, followed by an examination of how their artistic output is 

affected by their background—his childhood in World War II Russia and her youth under 

the German Democratic Republic. This notion is established by a discussion of his 1986 

collection of essays titled Less Than One, of which Baumgartner made a woodcut 

illustrated reprint of his essay “Less Than One” in 2004 (see figs. 3.3-4). These essays, 

like Baumgartner’s prints, capture moments of self-reflection and history in a poetic 

manner that allows the reader/viewer to participate in the meditative action, which 

Baumgartner herself exemplifies. This discourse moves into the ways in which one’s 

background influences perspective (both spatially and in regards to point of view), 

especially in relation to how one view’s his or her surroundings. Baumgartner displays 

this concept in her print series Solaris (2008) (figs. 3.5-8), which originated from her 

reaction to the placement of tunnels in Birmingham, England, and having read Brodsky’s 

recollections of Leningrad’s city layout. This acts as a lead into her interpretations of past 

events, and how by revisiting images of the past and personal memories, she is able to 

reassess her relationship and interaction with modern society and how she is affected by 

its changes and technological advancements. This is displayed by her inspiration for and 

engineering of both Luftbild and Transall, as well as her perspective altering works 1 

Sekunde (2004) (fig. 3.11) and Detour (2004).  

Baumgartner has an experimental and inquisitive approach to printmaking, most 

especially in the medium of woodcut. She uses it as both a personal outlet for meditation 

and as a way of reaching out to fellow individuals. Throughout my thesis, I investigate 

the manner in which Baumgartner seeks to unite her traditional and contemporary 



xii 
training into a unique style that highlights the speed of modern society, while attempting 

to remind viewers of the importance of introspection. I aim to determine the various ways 

in which Baumgartner has succeeded in reaching these objectives, analyzing her 

innovative techniques and breakthroughs that make these works possible. 



1 
CHAPTER 1 

DECIPHERING THE MATRIX: THE PRINT HISTORY OF A  

RENAISSANCE REVIVALIST 

 

The art of printmaking has long, rich origins in German history. For centuries, 

German artists such as Martin Schongauer (c.1450-1491), Albrecht Altdorfer (c.1480-

1538), and Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) have been acclaimed as true innovators of this 

medium. Many young contemporary artists look back to these masters for inspiration, and 

the prints of Leipzig artist Christiane Baumgartner (b. 1967) unite the techniques of these 

past greats with the modern through her emulation of Dürer, diversely structured 

education, and use of the oldest method of reproduction to depict modern images.1 

Dürer’s influence is reflected in her adherence to many early sixteenth-century rules and 

standards for creating prints, while her training introduced her to the advantages of 

certain modern processes. The extensive print history of Leipzig is also important to 

investigate in relation to technique, since Baumgartner received her foundational training 

at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig from 1988 to 1996, which was 

founded in the mid-eighteenth century. This chapter will explore Baumgartner's training 

and formative history and the ways it has shaped her artistic expression through woodcut. 

I will begin with a discussion of the print legacy from which she descended, followed by 

a demonstration of how she has mastered early, traditional German woodcuts and 

introduced them into a new, contemporary context by combining this medium with 

photography and video. 

 Beginning with the history that comprises Baumgartner’s foundation, fifteenth-

century artists that wanted to master printmaking learned by apprenticing in a workshop. 



2 
Dürer began his professional studies in the Nuremburg workshop of Michael Wolgemut 

(1434–1519) in 1486.2 While working under Wolgemut for at least four years, Dürer 

would have practiced by copying the drawings and prints of the Italians, the engravings 

of Schongauer, and the drawings of Wolgemut and Hans Pleydenwurff (c.1420-1472), 

presumably Wolgemut’s former employer. His studies would not have been limited 

solely to woodcuts, but he would have also been trained in book illustration and book 

production, drawing, painting, and engraving. Since he was employed in a workshop, 

commissions and other business projects also would have determined many of his tasks. 

Dürer’s ability to produce an impressive image was nurtured through the model of 

Wolgemut, who first introduced Dürer to the medium of woodcut, especially as book 

illustration, such as in his profusely illustrated Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493.3 Wolgemut 

was a highly contemporary and experimental artist in the field of woodcutting, and both 

he and the groundwork laid by Pleydenwurff “widened the scope and raised the 

ambitions of what had been a secondary medium, and thereby paved the way for Dürer.”4 

Their influences appeared in Dürer’s uses of bold foreshortenings, strong contrasts in 

size, suggestions of aerial perspective, dramatic use of repoussoirs, and “depictions of 

metal, glass and velvet … rendered by making the lines merge into frayed masses of 

black” (see fig. 1.1).5 These are all techniques that can be found in Baumgartner’s works: 

I will explore these in greater detail in the following chapters through an examination of 

movement and perspective, both major themes in her art.  

Baumgartner’s training, although quite different from Dürer’s, still retained many 

similarities. Trained at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig (HGB) from 

1988 to 1996, she received extensive and exceedingly traditional teachings in various 



3 
print mediums, with a focus on woodcut.6 As a student of the Book Art and Graphic 

department, her studies began with “a two year foundation course (four semester) and an 

additional three year (six semester) special class [with] one teacher.”7 The foundation 

semesters consisted of printmaking courses: “the first year once a week woodcut, for four 

hours, and the second year once a week litho[graphy] and after half a year once a week 

etching. … Also we had classes in silkscreen and repro-photography.”8 In addition, 

drawing and handwriting were also major foci, including an assignment to “design two 

alphabets just with black and white ink.”9 These exercises, just like the copies and tasks 

Dürer would have performed, aided in the development of eye-hand coordination and an 

understanding of composition.  

Once the foundational semesters were completed, one chose a specialized course; 

Baumgartner selected one that permitted her to work more freely in graphic and print, 

rather than in typography. When she attended the HGB, the courses were set up in an 

even more traditional sense than they are today. One professor—a master printmaker—

was in charge of each specialized workshop, much like Wolgemut’s role. Only the 

professor gave assignments and taught the proper techniques. As Baumgartner recalled, 

“those courses were quite stiff and every year of students had to do the same lessons. For 

instance, in woodcut we started with a tube/triangle light and shadow composition, later 

had to work with structures and a very thin spiral, and the last piece (after a landscape 

and a self-portrait) was a copy of a medieval wood engraving.”10 The last two exercises 

mentioned are clearly related to Dürer’s training. Perhaps his earliest known work is a 

self-portrait (fig. 1.2), made while apprenticing under his father, a goldsmith. It is a 

silverpoint drawing dated to 1484 and is a fine example of his early experimental nature 



4 
and bold ambitions as an artist.11 As Panofsky points out, self-portraiture was not an 

accepted genre at this time, and for a thirteen year old to choose this is rather 

distinctive.12 Secondly, HGB students’ assignment to copy the techniques of medieval 

masters, directly from their prints, provided the best way to understand the mechanics of 

traditional woodcut design. It was through this same act that Dürer learned from his 

contemporary masters, as well as later joined and even surpassed their ranks. He proved 

his expertise and innovative nature in the medium of woodcut with his Apocalypse cycle 

of 1498.13 In this series, he has translated lines from the Book of Revelation into detailed 

and skillful woodcuts. This act of translating textual imagery—and rather dark subject 

matter at that—into a print is a process that Baumgartner will later share with Dürer, and 

it will be examined in greater detail in the last chapter. Also important is Dürer’s 

departure from the typical priority of text over illustration in printed books.14 It is clear 

that the focus of this publication was on his images, the text (heavily abridged) more 

likely added to add depth to his woodcuts. One of Dürer’s most well-known illustrations 

for this cycle is The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (fig. 1.3), which shows four 

horsemen sweeping across the print, each representing one element of the catastrophic 

event: pestilence, war, famine, and death. Each figure displays his strong command of 

line and innovative use of technique to suggest depth, movement, and raw, agonizing 

emotion in the faces and contortions of the figures, revealing his ability to build upon his 

foundational lessons and push the limits of the medium. Dürer’s oeuvre provides a model 

of study based on the importance and benefits of an intimate understanding of materials 

and printing techniques, which enables the artist to then increase their compositional 

potential and explore new and unexpected artistic terrain. The HGB cultivates this 



5 
position with its pedagogical mission to pass on these unique teaching methods to its 

students.  

 The level of traditional instruction that the Leipzig academy successfully 

encourages is unique among schools of its kind.15 After World War II, those working in 

East Germany were not easily influenced by current western European trends. As Arthur 

Lubow described, “the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall were effective windscreens, 

blocking artistic change from ruffling the German Democratic Republic [GDR].”16 Arno 

Rink, a retired professor of painting and former director of the HGB, concurred: “If you 

want to talk of an advantage, you can say it allowed us to continue in the tradition of 

[Lucas] Cranach and [Max] Beckmann. It protected the art against the influence of 

Joseph Beuys.”17 These conservative conditions provided students with the opportunity to 

work and study in an almost lost structure of discipline. Upon the removal of these 

government blockades, there was a merging of this rather unique artistic vocabulary and 

training with contemporary movements, leading to innovative approaches that 

characterized what was termed the New Leipzig School.18  

 The destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the eradication of the Iron Curtain 

provided this previously monitored region with the freedom to travel and to participate in 

world conversations. Until then, Baumgartner, born in 1967, only knew life under the 

restrictions of the GDR. A glimpse into this period of her formative years was shared in a 

silkscreen work titled Klassenkameraden (Classmates) (1999) (fig. 1.4), which she made 

while studying at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London from 1997 to 1999. It also 

demonstrated her interest in new mediums and experimental approaches that would later 

lead her to a major breakthrough in her work as a printmaker.19 As she stated in an 



6 
interview, “I wanted to be in London and I had heard that Printmaking at the RCA was 

similar to my school in Leipzig, the Hochschule. I had already studied printmaking and 

book art for eight years in Leipzig, and when I came to the RCA I realized I had done all 

the technical courses. That’s why I suddenly became interested in video and 

photography.”20 This new interest in digital medias would help to expand her artistic 

vocabulary and challenge her creativity in exploring new methods of printing.  

Klassenkameraden is composed of a manipulated childhood photograph 

displaying fellow classmates from her Class 7.21 In addition to herself, she chose several 

classmates from the original photograph and then digitally overlaid the figures, creating a 

blurred and distorted compilation with three prominent figures in the foreground that are 

each flanked by and transparently layered with three other spectral schoolmates. The 

image was then divided into three sections—a prominent figure at the center of each—

and was silkscreen printed onto paper at an almost life-sized scale. Baumgartner noted: “I 

was interested in individuality and loss of individuality in masses … I felt like I had to 

give a statement of my East German background compared to the circumstances in 

London.”22 The notion of blurring the subject is a theme that appears throughout her 

oeuvre, as she seeks to disrupt the viewer’s quick recognition of the focus in her prints. 

This particular work also demonstrates her unification of her traditional Leipzig and 

modernized London training, as well as the fusing of established techniques with 

groundbreaking technology.  

This print brings to mind the painting Matrosen (Sailors) (1966) (fig. 1.5) by 

Gerhard Richter, a fellow German artist, born in 1932 in Dresden, who Baumgartner 

appreciates for his ability to “deal with both the abstract and the figurative.”23 This work 



7 
is based on a photograph and, also like Baumgartner’s altered class picture, is “not a one-

to-one copy of the source image … as Richter altered the composition somewhat and two 

of the men in the photograph do not appear in the final work.”24 This painting invites 

comparison to Baumgartner’s Classmates since it also uses a blurring technique to revoke 

individual identities and fuse the figures into an abstractly unified collective. Richter’s 

sailors, devoid of distinct features, were refashioned to represent any naval officer 

serving during World War II, and convey his memory of “how strange and mysterious 

these men and their world seemed to me back then.”25 I will explore more fully 

Baumgartner’s relationship to the paintings of Richter in the next chapter. 

The process used in designing Classmates was a crucial turning point for several 

reasons. Firstly, it was the initial use of photography in her work. While studying at the 

RCA, Baumgartner probed different photography techniques and application methods. 

For instance, she “experimented with how to print a photograph with printmaking 

techniques using cold surfaces … [such as] plate litho onto aluminum, or silkscreen onto 

glass.”26 She also developed an interest in video, which gradually achieved “the status of 

sketchbook, making paper and pencil unnecessary.”27 Secondly, this first use of a 

photograph was on a large scale. This choice began her continued exploration of 

monumentality and its powerful emotional and physical impact on both the subject and 

the viewer. How size forces involvement on the viewer will be discussed in greater detail 

in the next chapter. Thirdly, although this work’s subject is rather distinctive in her 

oeuvre, in that most are strictly non-figurative, the objective to depict loss of 

individuality is a concept that endured. Her future works use landscapes to make similar 

critiques, employing distortion and manipulation to demonstrate “the relation between 



8 
materiality and immateriality.”28 Scenes are often so far removed from their original 

contexts that they take on a sense of universality, enabling a wide and varied audience to 

connect with her images. Finally, the most important change was how she manipulated 

the photograph. Up until this point, Baumgartner altered her patterns and images by hand. 

Klassenkameraden was the first time she utilized digital editing software to achieve her 

final composition. The use of a computer was the first step towards her innovative new 

process, and today it plays an integral role in her unique line compositions.29 

Shortly after graduating from the RCA in 1999, Baumgartner moved back to 

Leipzig, which presented both challenges and advantages. One such advantage was that 

upon her return to the city, the New Leipzig School had been recently established. 

Although she is not a direct member of the movement, Baumgartner admitted “it made 

things easier … as my studio is at the Spinnerei in a big complex with other artists [such 

as Neo Rauch] and we had a lot of international attention.”30 However, the first year back 

also included cultural transitions, leading her to make unexpected shifts in her artistic 

approach. During her time in London, she worked almost exclusively in digital media. As 

she remarked, “The first year I was back here it was difficult. I didn’t have video editing 

facilities. Studying in Leipzig in East German times, we weren't even allowed to use 

photographs. It was a totally different way of thinking.”31 The distance that 

Baumgartner’s studies at the RCA had put between her and the German tradition quickly 

became apparent, prompting her “to find a way to reconcile these two traditions.”32 To 

her it seemed only logical to combine the two mediums, noting “digital information 

provides the means by which to order and to simplify and enables the production of 

endless identical images in different mediums. Woodcut is the earliest technique to 



9 
reproduce an image. … By creating woodcuts of digital video stills I simulate this 

standardized information by cutting a line grain by hand on a plate of wood.”33 In 2001, 

the series Lisbon I-IV (fig. 1.6), consisting of four woodcuts on Japanese paper, would be 

her first demonstration of a groundbreaking development in the art of woodcut design.  

= = = 

 The concept began with video footage Baumgartner had taken a few years earlier 

while studying in Lisbon. As she recounted, “Every morning I crossed a bridge over a 

highway to reach the city centre. I was attracted by the endless flow of cars in both 

directions. It was nearly the same amount of cars on each lane, and for a curious reason I 

thought why can’t those cars just make an exchange with each other? I saw them as 

single objects and not as transport containers for people. One day I decided to make a 

video of the scene.”34 At the time of filming, Baumgartner did not have her end result in 

mind, but rather performed the act unconsciously. It was not until she had the video back 

in her studio that the work began to fall into place.35 This shelved material from Lisbon 

was ideal subject matter for her first coalescent composition. It contained vehicles 

lacking individuality, ripe for manipulation into a vision of anonymity, speed, and 

standstill.  

Baumgartner stated that she likes “using woodcut as it used to be in Dürer’s time, 

[meaning a] really traditional German woodcut, with handmade paper, and in a proper 

wooden frame, but the images are from new media.”36 This causes her process to act as a 

time machine, starting in the present and returning to the Renaissance. Her method begins 

by slowly reviewing her footage, breaking it down into thousands of stills.37 She spends 

much time with these images, waiting to answer the question: “which single video 



10 
attracts me so much that I want to give it so much time and attention”?38 Many of her 

woodcuts are at such a large scale that they can take more than ten months to cut; that this 

image will be reproduced more than once factors into her selection. The next step is to 

load the chosen image into Photoshop, where she strips it of its color, converting it to 

grayscale. At this point, the size of the image and frequency of the lines have not yet been 

determined; “In a way the image is not there yet. It is still unreal, but already is digitally 

calculable.”39 The image is then translated into a grid of rippling horizontal lines, all of 

which Baumgartner designs and manipulates individually.40 She came to this design 

decision after searching for a way to “print a grayscale photograph just in two 

components, in black and white.”41 The line grid was the perfect solution due to its 

“on/off” arrangement, much like binary code. She likes to view her process as a way of 

“building an analogue image out of digital information.”42 It will become ever more 

apparent how incorporating the idea of duality is a theme in her work.  

Baumgartner plays with the image on her computer for some time, allowing it to 

slowly take form. A number of images remain on the computer for several years before 

moving on to the next phase. In her eyes, an image is not meant to be read as a narrative, 

but instead she looks “at it just as an image, at the colours and texture and if it works in 

and for itself and for me.”43 For example, at the RCA she did a few video projects that 

involved filming the windows of a building opposite from the college at night. Sections 

of this footage would be used to make woodcuts. She was sure to erase all evidence of 

any incidents that may have occurred within the stills, returning these once imposing 

images back into impersonal observations of time.44 She recognizes that for some artists 

the journey to create an image involves “bringing an image to life on the canvas.”45 



11 
However, for her the work is all accomplished prior to the block, noting, “the cutting of 

the plate is simply the realization of something I have already completed in my mind.”46 

Once settled on a final composition, Baumgartner determines the scale at which 

the image should be produced. Often, the scale is chosen based on its relationship to 

one’s body; usually the more forceful the image the larger the matrix.47 For the Lisbon 

series, she chose to make each image roughly 35.4 x 47 inches. The next step is to print 

out the image at full size. This is when her process begins to travel back towards her 

traditional roots. The image is laid face down on her chosen sheet of plywood. Thinner is 

then rubbed along the back of the image, transferring the printer ink to the wood, making 

a perfect outline from which she will engrave her matrix. The image lines are 

meticulously cut out with a specially sharpened old kitchen knife, made to resemble a 

modeling knife.48 At this point in the process, Baumgartner has accomplished what she 

sees as the more calculated elements. The act of cutting out the image is a much more 

meditative action for the artist. It is the first time she can reflect on her work as a whole 

and enjoy the slow, handmade movements of the carving. This is a time when she retreats 

to her landline and Internet free studio, granting herself freedom from all outside 

concerns; “Some people go to church, others do yoga, I’ve got my cutting.”49  

Baumgartner already differs from Renaissance printmakers because she works 

alone and is involved in every step of her process. Traditionally, a separate master would 

step in to cut the design, and then yet another to perform the printing. In Baumgartner’s 

work, there are advantages to being the sole artist. There is a strong connection to the 

design that can be readily distinguished by the way the matrix is carved. This intimate 

understanding of the movement and strategy necessary to produce such a seamless 



12 
transfer of the image appears only possible if done by the creator’s own hand. Although a 

model of tradition, it is often debated whether Dürer himself cut most of his designs or if 

another artist in the workshop would have been given this task, for changes in cutting 

quality have been observed across his oeuvre.50 Panofsky suggests an example of this 

notion in respect to Marquart von Steyn’s Ritter vom Turn von den Exempeln der 

Gottsforcht und Erberkeit, printed by Michael Furter in 1493 and of which Dürer is 

accredited about four-fifths of the collective forty-five woodcuts: 

In the “Ritter vom Turn” the woodcuts attributable to Dürer show a slight 
disparity in style which is accounted for by the individualities of the 
cutters. One of these is obviously the same skillful but somewhat 
mechanical craftsman who cut [Dürer’s] Saint Jerome. Other woodcuts are 
rather mediocre from a technical point of view. A few, however, are cut 
with so much understanding for the intentions of the designer and with so 
intense a feeling for plastic values that Dürer himself has been credited 
with the cutting—which is, at least, a plausible conjecture. The publication 
proceeding according to schedule, Dürer would have wished to set a 
standard for the cutting as well as for the design.51  

 
Baumgartner has the same drive to take control over the final realization of the work, but 

perhaps places even more value on the labor aspects of the production than Dürer, since 

she would never delegate tasks to another craftsperson. The handmade aspect of her 

woodcuts is particularly important to the artist. She has expressed her disinterest in 

having a workshop mentality operate in her studio, claiming, “I am not like Jeff Koons, I 

am not running a factory, I need the cutting time for reflection. … I also like the 

handmade aspect of cutting with all its inaccuracies and mistakes—this is an important 

aspect of the final print.”52 This drive to perform every step of the creation process sets 

Baumgartner apart, and her constant involvement lends uniqueness to her woodcuts and 

separates her from a strictly traditional genealogy of printmakers.  



13 
 When printing a woodcut, the surface upon which it will be transferred is the next 

crucial element in planning its design. Baumgartner always chooses handmade papers, 

often rice or mulberry or cotton. Interestingly she frequently uses paper-shops that to this 

day function much like a traditional German paper mill, one of which, in Zerkall, has 

roots dating back to the sixteenth century.53 Having access to modernized yet traditional 

mills immediately puts her in a different position in regards to production than Dürer 

could ever have imagined. During the early fifteenth century, paper availability was not 

what it is today. Between 1470 and 1550, paper production was a trade that was steadily 

expanding across the European continent.54 This made obtaining paper an easier task in 

many areas, if not through a local mill then at least through shipment. However, as David 

Landau and Peter Parshall pointed out in their survey of the Renaissance print, “Printers 

continued to complain about unevenness of quality, short supply, high costs, and transit 

taxes. Therefore it must be assumed that in most towns the ready availability of good 

paper for printing could not be taken absolutely for granted at any time during the 

Renaissance.”55 Baumgartner benefits from the modern ease of readily acquiring paper 

from anywhere in the world, both in large quantities and at a high level of quality. In 

Dürer’s time, the uniformity in paper size was not necessarily a well-regulated attribute. 

It is known that “in 1398 the measurements for individual sheets of paper were set for the 

Bologna mills officially regulating paper sizes and their corresponding weights by statute. 

In descending order of scale, these dimensions in centimeters were: carta imperiale (50.0 

x 74.0); carta reale (44.5 x 61.5); carta mezzana (34.5 x 51.5); and carta reçute (31.5 x 

45.0).”56 Prints were often “referred to by conventional paper sizes as a means of 

assessing their value. … In German the two largest tended to be grouped under 



14 
Großformat (large), then Median (medium) and Kanzlei (official or chancellery) 

format.”57 During his journey to the Netherlands in 1520, Dürer even made a note that 

when he distributed, traded, or sold his prints that “he identified them not only by subject 

matter but as quarter, half, or full sheets.”58 That these regulations would be followed in 

every locale was in no way certain, and instead, each area most likely held to its own set 

of standards.  

 Because of the often-oversized dimensions of Baumgartner’s prints, working 

under these limited regulations would have dramatically hindered the advancement of her 

process. In Dürer’s time, the production of prints at Baumgartner’s scale was possible 

and did occur, though it was not all that common. There is, however, one prominent 

example in the history of Renaissance printmaking that references the use of paper that 

widely exceeded the maximum size known to have been regularly available at the time. 

The famous woodcut titled View of Venice (1500), by Jacopo de’ Barbari (1440-1516), 

was originally printed on six sheets of paper measuring on average 70 x 100 cm, roughly 

double the width of an imperial folio. In order to wield the large tray and mold necessary 

to create these oversized sheets, at least two vatmen and two couchers working together 

would have been required.59 Multiple sheets were still a necessity in order to print such a 

large image. As the demand for larger sheets of paper increased, mills over time began 

offering this commodity, but “in its earlier stages the paper market served only average 

needs and required others to improvise by sticking sheets together.”60 

 This leads to a discussion of one of the largest prints ever created in which Dürer 

is a main author: the Triumphal Arch of Maximilian I (1515) (fig. 1.7). It provides an 

interesting juxtaposition to Baumgartner’s Transall (2002-04) (fig. 1.8), based not only 



15 
on sheer size, but also on printing. The Triumphal Arch was a large project commissioned 

by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (1459-1519). Many were involved in its 

creation including: Johannes Stabius (1450–1522), the program’s organizer and the 

Emperor’s astronomer, poet and historiographer; Architect Jörg Kölderer (c.1470-1540); 

Hieronymus Andreae’s (d. 1556) workshop, hired to cut the blocks; and Dürer, supported 

by the members of his workshop and assisted by [Willibald] Pirckheimer (1470-1530) in 

iconographical matters, acted as designer-in-chief.61 That its design was such a group 

endeavor is different from Baumgartner, who invariably works alone. This is not to say 

that Dürer operated exclusively in ambitious collaboration, but there was always someone 

else involved in the final production of his works, either in cutting and printing the work, 

or at least just printing. Once completed, the imperial woodcut comprised of 192 separate 

woodblocks, measuring approximately 11.5 by 9.75 feet when united. Printing this 

intricate work using Renaissance materials, most likely a press, was a substantial 

challenge. It was also necessary to print the individual works on separate sheets of paper, 

which required reassembly like a puzzle.  

 Transall was also a hugely complex undertaking. However, Baumgartner 

implemented certain modern advancements to more efficiently construct this traditional 

work of art. Already of benefit was the ability to use just two solid blocks of wood.62 She 

chose the largest sheets of plywood that she could find, measuring collectively at roughly 

3 by 13 feet. An impressively sized work surface for any medium, it is especially so for a 

woodcut because of printing challenges. In order to print such a large matrix, the artist 

needed an even larger piece of handmade paper, commissioning one of Kozo paper from 

the German paper mill Gangolf Ulbricht Papierwerkstatt in Berlin.63 In order to have a 



16 
proper border, the sheet was custom made at an impressive 5 by 14 feet. Of course her 

test prints were done on multiple sheets of lower quality paper, most likely something in 

the family of newsprint. Not until she built up the right amount of oil based black ink on 

the surface of the block, after copious runs with a large brayer and multiple test prints, 

did she advance to the final print. The printing was done entirely by hand, which 

involved the act of burnishing the back of the paper with a smooth object, such as the 

back of a spoon. This is the oldest technique ever used to make a woodcut, and it must be 

approached systematically since different amounts of pressure can produce dissimilar ink 

tonalities in the final piece. This challenging yet rudimentary system of printing acts as a 

metaphor for Baumgartner’s entire process, and the juxtaposition of the Triumphal Arch 

and Transall operates as a stark depiction of Baumgartner’s shared characteristics with 

Dürer and Renaissance printmaking and the ways in which she applied contemporary 

developments to take this tradition to a new level.  

 As Hans Belting proposed in his study into the inner-psyche of the German artist 

in relation to his or her art, historical themes have always been present, which may 

explain why the “search for identity has not only been a search for personal identity 

within contemporary culture, but also a search for national identity anchored in the 

past.”64 Baumgartner’s art is undeniably affected by the pre- and post-reunification of 

Germany, as seen in early works like Classmates, the more recent Transall, and through 

to the present day. Her choices in subject, dismantled of their identities and individuality, 

echo the repression of her youth, yet her contemporary works have an air of personal 

growth and convey the importance and advantages of self-reflection on one’s past. Her 

rigorous traditional academy training paired with her introduction to digital media further 



17 
influenced her ability to develop a breakthrough process that seamlessly ties the 

Renaissance style of Albrecht Dürer to the innovative developments in contemporary 

printmaking. These ideas inform a deeper exploration of her prints and how she utilizes 

her personal history to construct works that exude dizzying movement and engage 

concepts of time, materiality, memory, and technology in relation to today’s society. The 

next two chapters will examine more deeply how the techniques in Baumgartner’s prints 

convey a sense of movement and introspection and strive to share her experiences and 

impressions with her viewers.  

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



18 
Notes 

                                                 
1 For the most comprehensive monographic publication on Baumgartner thus far see Christiane 
Baumgartner, Nigel Prince, ed. (Birmingham: Ikon Gallery, 2005). For the most recent collection 
of her works see Reel Time (London: Alan Cristea Gallery, 2011). 

 
2 For early development of Dürer, see Erwin Panofsky, The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer 
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955). See also a renewed and revised look at the young 
Dürer in Der frühe Dürer, Daniel Hess ed. (Nürnberg: Germanisches Nationalmuseum, 2012).  

 
3 See Adrian Wilson, The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle (Amsterdam: Nico Israel, 1976). 

 
4 Ibid., 20. 
 
5 Ibid., 19.  
 
6 This chapter focuses on her first degree from the HGB, but she would also receive a three-year 
master’s degree from this academy, continuing her focus in printmaking.  
 
7 Christiane Baumgartner, email correspondence with the author, March 26, 2012. 

 
8 Ibid. 

 
9 Ibid. 

 
10 Ibid. 

 
11 See Joseph Leo Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art 
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 34-51. 

 
12 Panofsky, The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer, 15; and Koerner, The Moment of Self-
Portraiture, 35-37. 

 
13 For a discussion of this cycle see David Landau and Peter Parshall, The Renaissance Print 
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); and Cynthia Hall, “Before the Apocalypse: German 
Prints and Illustrated Books, 1450-1500,” Harvard University Art Museums Bulletin 4/2 (Spring, 
1996): 8-29. 

 
14 Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, 42. 

 
15 See Sophie Gerlach, “From Shamed to Famed – The Transition of a Former Eastern German 
Arts Academy to the Talent Hotbed of a Contemporary Painters’ School. The Hochschule für 
Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig,” in Art and Theory After Socialism, Mel Jordan and Malcolm 
Miles, eds. (Chicago: Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press, 2008) 9-20. 

 
16 Arthur Lubow, “The New Leipzig School,” New York Times, January 8, 2006, 
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/08/magazine/08leipzig.html.  

 
17 Ibid. 

 



19 
                                                                                                                                                 
18 Although the New Leipzig School is a term related to painters, Baumgartner is connected to 
this movement. She has stated, “Not that I am a figurative painter of course—I was always 
viewed as a counterpart to that movement—but it gave me opportunities.” Jeannette Stoschek, 
“Visualizing Time,” in Reel Time (London: Alan Cristea Gallery, 2011), 11. Painters such as Neo 
Rauch, David Schnell, Tim Eitel, and Tilo Baumgärtel are seen as the pioneers of this movement, 
and “although the work of these painters … varies in content, style and quality, they share a 
technical skill, a devotion to figurative art and a predilection for dry-eyed, melancholy subject 
matter.” Lubow, “The New Leipzig School.” Shared by both Baumgartner and the New Leipzig 
School is a sense of detachment in their work.  

 
19 When talking about Klassenkameraden she also noted, “I would have never done this work if I 
had not been abroad.” Nicholas James, Interviews-Artists (London: Cv Publications, 2010), 21. 
This is an interesting factor in relation to Dürer, due to the fact that he too made the decision to 
travel abroad in search of furthering his education. His time in Italy would greatly influence his 
technique and approach by developing his understanding of the classical statuesque figure, 
geometrical methods of proportion, and movement. For more on this topic, see Panofsky, 
“Apprenticeship and Early Years of Travel, 1484-1495,” in The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer.  

 
20 Baumgartner quoted in Hannah Murgatroyd, “‘You Need to Show Work in the Right Place’: 
Christiane Baumgartner,” FuelRCA, November 15, 2010, http://fuel.rca.ac.uk/articles/you-need-
to-show-work-in-the-right-place-christiane-baumgartner.  

 
21 For process information for Klassenkameraden, see Stoschek, “Visualizing Time,” 23. 

 
22 Baumgartner quoted in James, Interviews-Artists, 21.  

 
23 Ibid.  

 
24 Composed by the editorial team for gerhard-richter.com, located at http://www.gerhard-
richter.com/art/search/detail.php?5764.   

 
25 Richter, translated by the editorial team for gerhard-richter.com. For the original quote see 
Cornelius Tittel, “Gerhard Richter – Die Hälfte im Museum ist Müll,” Welt Online, September 
24, 2010, http://www.welt.de/kultur/article9843144/Gerhard-Richter-Die-Haelfte-im-Museum-
ist-Muell.html.  

 
26 Baumgartner quoted in Murgatroyd, “‘You Need to Show Work in the Right Place’: Christiane 
Baumgartner.” 

 
27 Stoschek, “Visualizing Time,” 22. 

 
28 Baumgartner quoted in José Roca, “Interview: Christiane Baumgartner,” Philagrafika Blog, 
May 12, 2009, http://philagrafika.blogspot.com/2009/05/interview-christiane-baumgartner.html. 

 
29 In October of 2002, an "Audiovisuelle Labor" (audio-video lab) was established at the HGB. 
The university’s website states “the AV-Labor marks the progress towards education with a 
transparent and interdisciplinary orientation in a working environment which becomes overall 
more and more digital.” 

 



20 
                                                                                                                                                 
30 Baumgartner quoted in Stoschek, “Visualizing Time,” 11. 
 
31 Baumgartner quoted in Murgatroyd, “‘You Need to Show Work in the Right Place’: Christiane 
Baumgartner.” 

 
32 Baumgartner quoted in Roca, “Interview: Christiane Baumgartner.” 

 
33 Ibid. 

 
34 Baumgartner quoted in James, Interviews-Artists, 21-22. 

 
35 It should be noted that when filming, Baumgartner never has a certain project in mind. It is 
always done “unconsciously.” It is not until she returns to her studio that plans for a work will 
begin. 

 
36 Baumgartner quoted from video, “Christiane Baumgartner: Screen Shot,” Alan Cristea Gallery, 
http://www.alancristea.com/artist-Christiane-Baumgartner.  

 
37 Process information from Jeremy Lewison, “At the Still Point of the Turning World. The Prints 
of Christiane Baumgartner,” in Christiane Baumgartner (Heemstede: Johan Deumens Gallery, 
2007), 40. 

 
38 Baumgartner quoted in James, Interviews-Artists, 22. 

 
39 Ibid., 22. 

 
40 It has often been thought that these lines were a byproduct of preexisting monitor lines. 
However, this is not the case. Baumgartner creates her own raster.  

 
41 Baumgartner quoted in Roca, “Interview: Christiane Baumgartner.” 

 
42 Baumgartner quoted in James, Interviews-Artists, 23. 

 
43 Baumgartner quoted in Stoschek, “Visualizing Time,” 11.  

 
44 For the discussion of these videos, see Lewison, “At the Still Point of the Turning World. The 
Prints of Christiane Baumgartner,” 34-35.  

 
45 Baumgartner quoted in Stoschek, “Visualizing Time,” 11. 

 
46 Ibid., 11. 

 
47 Ibid., 10. 

 
48 Roca, “Interview: Christiane Baumgartner.” 

 
49 Baumgartner quoted in Stoschek, “Visualizing Time,” 9. 

 



21 
                                                                                                                                                 
50 For the debate on whether Dürer cut his own blocks see the foundational essay by William 
Ivins, Jr., “Notes on Three Dürer Woodblocks,” Metropolitan Museum Studies 2/1 (Nov. 1929): 
102-11; and Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, 170-176. 

 
51 For discussion and quote, see Panofsky, The life and art of Albrecht Dürer, 28-29. 

 
52 Baumgartner quoted in Stoschek, “Visualizing Time,” 9. 

 
53 Paper information from “Catalogue of works,” in Nigel Prince, ed., Christiane Baumgartner 
(Birmingham: Ikon Gallery, 2005), 74. 

 
54 For discussion of paper, see David Landau and Peter Parshall, The Renaissance Print, 15-21. 

 
55 Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, 15. 

 
56 Ibid., 16. 

 
57 Ibid., 16; For information about German paper terminology, see Gerhard Piccard, “Carta 
bombycina, carta papyri, pergamena graeca,” in Archivalische Zeitschrift 61 (1965), 58.  

 
58 Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, 16. 

 
59 Ibid., 16. 

 
60 Ibid., 17. 

 
61 Panofsky, The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer, 175. On the unique phenomenon of sixteenth-
century oversize prints see Grand Scale: Monumental Prints in the Age of Dürer and Titian, 
Larry Silver and Elizabeth Wyckoff, eds. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).  

 
62 “Christiane Baumgartner: Transall,” Museum of Modern Art, 
http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/audios/32/771.  

 
63 See endnote 53. 

 
64 Hans Belting, The Germans and their Art: A Troublesome Relationship (New Haven: Yale 
University Press, 1998), 5.   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



22 
CHAPTER 2 

AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT: MOVEMENT IN PRINT 

 

 The convergence of speed and standstill1 is a key motif in Baumgartner’s 

woodcuts. Rather than appearing forcefully in the active lines and rush of apocalyptic 

horsemen cantering across a sheet, as in Dürer’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse 

(1498) (fig. 1.3), motion is conveyed by Baumgartner in multiple modern and 

technologically driven ways, including images of transportation, cutting techniques, 

optical illusions, and the combination of the oldest, slowest form of print—the 

woodcut—and the quickest, most modern forms, video and photography. Her inspiration 

to explore this theme, as displayed in the last chapter, emerged from her studies at the 

Royal College of Art in London, where film became a main tool. However, French author 

Paul Virilio’s writings on the concept of motion intensified her interest in this subject, 

helped shape her view of speed in relation to communication and technology, and 

affected her image choices and compositions. Through a discussion of Virilio’s influence 

and a deeper examination of Baumgartner’s works, this chapter will demonstrate the 

artist’s unique physical and visual encapsulation of movement.  

 Paul Virilio, born in Paris in 1932, is a world-renowned philosopher, urbanist, and 

cultural theorist. Growing up in France during World War II, he was “profoundly 

impacted by the blitzkrieg and total war; however, these early experiences shaped his 

understanding of the movement and speed which structures modern society.”2 His work 

focuses on “urban spaces and the development of technology in relation to power and 

speed.”3 These studies led him to question the relationship held between humans and 

technology and how it affects our communication and perception of the world. He stated, 



23 
“Two attitudes are possible with respect to these new technologies: one declares them a 

miracle; the other—mine—recognizes that they are interesting while maintaining a 

critical attitude.”4 Baumgartner shares this second attitude, and her personal experiences 

as a citizen of the German Democratic Republic lends her to have a similar viewpoint to 

Virilio about movement. Living in a wartime climate, she was restricted from traveling, 

making her trips down the freeway as an adult—while filming from the passenger seat—

symbolize her liberation. While she embraces technological advancements—especially 

their aid in her international reputation and the development of digital programs—she 

finds it important to limit their dominance over her lifestyle. This need to separate from 

the speed of society derives from her reading of Virilio, whose influence she repeatedly 

acknowledges: 

[Virilio] said once that, in the third millennium, we will have the ability to 
stay here and be in the same moment somewhere else. He was talking 
about the Internet and the fact that a bomb can be dropped anywhere in the 
world, for example, and we will know immediately who and what has 
been hit. It used to take weeks to hear about this kind of event and now 
everything has been speeded up—not just our bodies, but our brains and 
the information we process as well. … Our forms of communication have 
speeded up and it is important to me to try and slow things down again.5 

 
This notion proposed by Virilio continues to be an element of Baumgartner’s artistic 

thought process, to the extent that she makes a conscious effort to slow down by isolating 

herself in a communication “free” studio when working. It is an underlying theme that 

quietly runs in the background of all her prints, embodied in the laborious years it takes 

to convert a digital image to a woodcut. Not only are Virilio’s words apparent in how she 

constructs an image, but also they are visible in her chosen subject matter. Virilio wrote, 

“The speed of light does not merely transform the world. It becomes the world. Globali-

sation is the speed of light.”6 This quote introduces three major ways Baumgartner 



24 
approaches movement visually in her work: transportation, participation, and the 

universality of fast-paced globalization.  

 The woodcut series Schkeuditz I-IV (2005) (figs. 2.1-4), title of which refers to a 

town in Germany, depicts four seemingly consecutive video stills, no more than seconds 

apart, of vehicles on a freeway moving towards and under an overpass. Each print 

follows a lane of traffic acting out the literal and metaphorical travel of communication, 

spreading from exit to exit. Within four images, the viewer (placed in the passenger’s 

seat) is drawn deep into the space and pushed through what at the beginning was simply a 

slit of light across the horizon. Depth perception is one of Baumgartner’s strongest tools 

in suggesting movement. Schkeuditz I immediately halts the eye across the top, forcing 

the viewer to pass underneath this flattened space and follow the solid white traffic line 

into the open road. The large vehicle emerging from the lower left corner contrasted 

against the smaller, middle car exaggerates their distance, pulling the viewer towards the 

next checkpoint. Schkeuditz II inverts this forced perspective, drawing the viewer to a 

centralized rectangle of light that is emphasized by the dark, angled edges of the 

pavement, channeling the eye to the vanishing point. Obstructive rectangles, like storm 

clouds on a bright sky, demonstrate a dramatic use of repoussoirs, sinking the glowing 

passageway deeper into the composition.  

Schkeuditz III uses cutting techniques to accent the receding columns that line the 

bridge’s underbelly. On the right, diamond shaped cuts in the wood (see detail in fig. 2.5) 

simulate the three-dimensional arc of the stone pillars. As the columns near the viewer, 

they are stretched thinner, making the deeper columns appear to radiate more light and 

thereby claim focus. As vehicles reach the opposite end of the passageway, the horizontal 



25 
lines are cut extra thin, forming a block of blinding light with just enough information left 

to indicate hazy, upcoming road signs. The last print of the series illustrates a car 

changing lanes. This shift is suggested by marking out the bulk of the car with thick 

horizontal lines, fraying into a mass of black containing notches of white to represent 

light glistening off the windshields. The right side of the car contains deep gouges that 

highlight its angled position as it merges before the viewer’s vehicle. While the car is 

suspended in four moments of transit, its velocity through darkness into sunlight is 

methodically relayed. As Anne Hamlyn stated, “We are able to watch ourselves watching 

our own perpetual motion—our speed.”7 While this series appears to follow the trajectory 

of a single vehicle, or specific collection of vehicles, it also represents everyday traffic 

patterns and the ubiquitous nature of such an image. However, I will explore this concept 

of universality and its relation to movement in her prints in a later section.  

The layout of this print series echoes the studies of chronophotography. In 1882, 

French scientist Étienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904) invented a chronophotographic gun 

that was capable of taking twelve consecutive frames per second, recorded on the same 

picture.8 It was used to study figures in motion, such as the gallop of horses, the flight of 

birds, and the gait of running humans. In his 1886 study of pelicans in flight (fig. 2.6), the 

descent of a bird is captured, yet key moments of transition are missing, most notably in 

the center of the image when the pelican brings its wings downward. Much like in 

Schkeuditz, a disjointed series of steps captures a moment of motion. However, 

Baumgartner is in control of which moments are recorded into woodcut and which are 

dismissed, unlike chronophotography where the timing of the camera is responsible for 



26 
the images documented by the photographer. This notion of abridged progression will 

reappear in the discussion of her print series 1 Sekunde (fig. 3.11) in the next chapter.  

Another element of movement is introduced through the presence of the wood 

grain in Baumgartner’s final prints. Ink soaked knots and imperfections in the wood 

imprint themselves on the paper, creating grayscale waves that swell across the dark 

expansions of tightly cut lines. The collision of the grain with Baumgartner’s grid 

accentuates the shifting black tones that simulate cooler spots of “gray,” reminding the 

viewer that this work is handmade. These subtle shifts in tone also enhance the dizzying 

movement already activated by the vibrating black and white horizontals. This technique 

of printing the grain and raw imperfections of the material is also seen in German 

Expressionism woodcuts.9 For example, German painter and printmaker Emil Nolde 

(1867-1956) used this added texture in his print Fischdampfer (Fishing Steamer) (1910) 

(fig. 2.7) in order to capture the swelling movement of the water in his composition. 

Similar to Baumgartner, Nolde recognized and used the inherent movement of the wood 

block in order to magnify the visual effects of the final piece. 

Captured in Baumgartner’s binary coded grooves, her images remain just out of 

focus. Hovering above one another like heat rising off sun-baked pavement, the 

horizontal lines take the form of mirages, conjured up from the artist’s mind. This optical 

illusion is an important aspect of her work, and is the main technique used to encourage 

the viewer’s participation. Her illusions are reached in three ways: the first is through 

untouched images that are only abstracted by her grid, such as in the Schkeuditz series. 

The remaining two include images with innate illusionary structures and those pre-

distorted by digital disturbance. I will discuss the second method in an analysis of 



27 
Manhattan Transfer (2010) (fig. 2.8), which depicts a helicopter in midair obstructed by a 

chain-link fence in the foreground. The third method will be demonstrated through the 

works Deutscher Wald (German Forest) (2007) (fig. 2.9) and Luftbild (aerial image) 

(2009) (fig. 2.10), followed by an explanation of how the works force viewers into 

motion.  

In Manhattan Transfer, Baumgartner allowed for the natural disturbances in the 

original image to confuse the eye. While porous, the fence hinders the viewer’s ability to 

enter the action of the image. Its large holes on the left side of the print flatten the surface 

and subtly shrink as your eye moves across the image, allowing for the suggestion of 

depth and a receding barrier. However, the solid poles on the right once again establish 

the viewer’s boundaries. The fence serves as protection from the whirling helicopter in 

flight. The angled landing gear is in a state of either deployment or retraction, and the 

blurred propellers suggest speed that even Baumgartner’s prints cannot suspend. Clashing 

with the distortion of her grid, the fence brings the body of the helicopter to life, as the 

expanding and shrinking coils manipulate her line density. The viewer is forced to 

constantly re-adjust his or her position in order to focus on each element of the scene. 

This print brings to light her connection to the history of optical art, such as 

Carlos Cruz-Diez’s (b. 1923) Induction Chromatique 63 (1974) (fig. 2.11).10 Another 

significant comparison is with claimed father of Op-Art Victor Vasarely’s (1906-1997) 

Zèbre (1944) (fig. 2.12), a painting that shares the binary technique of using parallel 

black and white lines to form an illusionary, recognizable image. Vasarely’s stripes run 

slanted across the canvas, remaining unbroken and only varying in width. Similar to 

Baumgartner’s grid, these fluctuations in girth are what allow for the suggestion of depth, 



28 
volume, and shape. The zebra appears trapped just below the surface, its body shifting 

beneath a net of paint, much like the helicopter hovering behind an ink fence. 

Beginning the discussion of the third method of creating illusion is Deutscher 

Wald (fig. 2.9), a series of nine woodcuts based on digital images “taken at an incredibly 

low resolution—only 3 dpi”11 and presents multiple views of a dense line of thin, leafless 

tree trunks. The movement in this work is generated by the extra layer of abstraction 

introduced by the poor quality of the original image. The horizontal distortion of the 

original image further accents the horizontal grid, forcing the trees to appear as a series of 

stacked rectangles of varying lengths and opacity. This jagged disruption of the surface 

creates fluctuating movement that undulates up and down the print like sound waves. 

Only distance, a viewing component explained below, permits access to the familiar 

scene that lies hidden before viewers.  

In Luftbild (fig. 2.10), which depicts World War II footage of bomber airplanes, 

many patterns are colliding at once. This work not only utilizes the natural movement of 

her grid, but also incorporates the image distortion that occurs when a video camera 

records straight from a television screen. This media union generates a moiré effect in the 

form of a checkerboard rippling upward like a paper fan. The optical illusions in Luftbild 

are well representative of her process, where scenes begin as crisp and audible video 

images, but then as they are translated into a woodcut, they become abstracted and one’s 

eye begins to wander over the work and “you almost have to squint to make sense of 

it.”12  

Video and sound artists explore similar issues, such as composer Alvin Lucier (b. 

1931) in his audio piece I Am Sitting in a Room (1970). Lucier recorded himself narrating 



29 
a text, which was repeatedly played back and re-recorded, reinforcing the resonant 

frequencies of the room. This process caused the sentences to overlap until distinct words 

became muddled and eventually transformed into pure sound. While Baumgartner’s 

process does not involve the overlapping of information, Lucier’s work similarly uses an 

original source, which is re-formatted until it takes on a new configuration. In both 

methods, the initial work is still present in the final composition, but its identity is no 

longer readily recognizable. This reductive quality of the audio work is shared by 

Baumgartner’s woodcuts in that, as she removes wood from the block, she is breaking 

down the material in order to alter the wood’s surface, allowing the block to take on a 

new appearance. Reduction also happens to her source image, as the cutting of the wavy, 

horizontal grid breaks down the clarity of the composition, making it as distorted a mess 

up close as Lucier’s final recording.  

As demonstrated by these three methods, various optical illusions and the large 

scale of her prints essentially force the viewer to think about various kinds of movement, 

as well as initiating actual bodily movement. Her works promote the desire to shift 

viewing positions, to step close to the surface in order to see the individual lines, and then 

to step back to decipher the overall image. Baumgartner explained, “The scale draws you 

backwards and forwards. If you want to see how it is made, you need to get very close 

but in order to create an image, you have to get some distance. So you have to move your 

body to read the work and that’s why I make certain images so monumental.”13 

Luftbild was a step forward in bringing this concept to fruition. When asked to 

participate in Philagrafika 2010, Baumgartner decided to submit this work, which had 

never before been exhibited. Luftbild was displayed in the Samuel M. V. Hamilton 



30 
Building of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA). This structure was 

originally an automobile showroom, and therefore, the first floor has a large gallery with 

exceptionally high ceilings and a wide width.14 This somewhat unusually generous space 

was an ideal locale for Baumgartner’s monumental print because it allowed viewers to 

drastically vary their perspective and proximity to the work. It was also a unique 

experience for Baumgartner, who had yet to view one of her works in such a large space. 

She noted that even in her studio her ability to step back from her works is limited. It was 

not until Luftbild was on the wall at PAFA that she was able to view the work from a 

much farther distance, and she enjoyed the added detail and clarity that emerged.15  

Baumgartner’s prints encourage spectator movement, which creates different 

readings and experiences based on the viewer’s constant changes in perspective. As 

viewers move around the space, the composition’s appearance is noticeably altered since 

the frozen image shifts into focus from afar but fragments with each nearer step. 

Baumgartner states, “I brought speed into the static medium and at the beginning I was 

not sure how far the human eye and brain would be able to follow. I like it when the eye 

loses its fixed point and when an image becomes general.”16 Paul Virilio stated, 

“locomotive illusion allows the voyeur-voyager to project beyond the screen of the 

windshield his own fantasies.”17 Baumgartner constructs her own fantasies by composing 

visions that are universally recognizable, which allows for the viewer to join her in 

projecting beyond the car window in Schkeuditz and Deutscher Wald, the fence in 

Manhattan Transfer, and the television screen in Luftbild. How these works both enforce 

contemplation about the speed of society in which they capture and channel self-



31 
reflection will be addressed in the next chapter. First, I will examine how Baumgartner 

uses familiar imagery to convey movement.  

The speed of modern communication is so powerful that images and ideas can 

become internationally recognized within seconds. Depictions of this concept appear 

repeatedly in Baumgartner’s work, especially through demonstrations of how the swift 

spread of these images lends them a universal context. Similar to Schkeuditz, the print 

series titled Allee18 (2008) (figs. 2.13-14) puts the viewer in the driver’s seat for another 

road trip through common scenery. It could be anyone driving on any road in the world. 

She has stripped the scene of any identifiers that may provide clues about its true 

location. Baumgartner remarked, “Everybody who sees [Allee] thinks it's around his own 

corner. People told me 'Ah, this is in Leipzig near the airport,' and someone else said 'I 

went again to the place, I'm sure it's this place,' but it's not, it could be all over the place. 

So it's just so exchangeable.”19 These associations are examples of how the velocity of 

modern communication is captured in her prints. While this occurrence is undetectable to 

the naked eye, this extreme transfer of information is revealed in a simple, literal image 

of speeding along a tree-lined, ambiguous curve. She has taken a large, invisible concept 

of motion and re-contextualized it in a metaphorical composition that makes it accessible 

to a wide audience.   

As introduced in the first chapter, Baumgartner has an affinity for the works of 

Gerhard Richter. She is especially drawn to how he “finds” an image. His landscape 

works, which also depict movement and recognizable imagery, are particularly relevant 

to Baumgartner’s art. Richter’s source images, however, are from photographs instead of 

videos.20 Still, both artists choose specific stills to transfer into their chosen medium: oil 



32 
paint and woodcut, respectively. They each begin with a clear image of a natural 

landscape or manmade structure and then filter it through their manipulated matrix, 

blurring what was once instantly discernable.21 Whereas Baumgartner uses her horizontal 

grid, Richter covers his canvas with a patchwork of paint. In his work Seestück 

(Seascape) (1975) (fig. 2.15), movement from the viewer is once again important because 

up close, Richter’s painting appears as an abstract surface of blues and grays and browns 

swirling in a unified dance. Once distance has been placed between the work and viewer, 

the image reconstructs into a misty ocean vista. Both of these artists determined how to 

harness the potential that comes from obscuring the familiar, forcing a viewer to work 

and take time to comprehend the image instead of getting it via a quick glance.  

Richter’s Great Sphinx of Gizeh (1964) (fig. 2.16) shares the whizzing movement 

used in Baumgartner’s Gelände (Field) (2010) (fig. 2.17), where she displays a field as 

seen from the side window of a speeding car. Rushed past the monument, the viewer is 

denied access to details and absorption of the full landscape. The blurring effect of the 

rock structure creates striated lines akin to Baumgartner’s grid, disrupting a smooth 

reading of the image. Playing with perspective, parts of the image stay in focus, while 

others are barely recognizable. Richter has taken a familiar object and shrouded it in 

mystery (in this instance an object that also personifies mystery in and of itself). The face 

of the famous Sphinx is in slight profile and shadow, masking its features and forcing it 

to appear more akin to its surrounding rock formations. Its main signifier is the pyramid 

in the background, which has also been flattened and therefore pulled closer to the 

foreground, making it appear connected to the Sphinx. Like Baumgartner, Richter is 

consciously choosing to “blur things to make everything equally important and equally 



33 
unimportant.”22 Their methodologies focus on the visual experience and sense of a space 

that can be conveyed through an artwork, not the capturing of a specific moment in time.  

Both Baumgartner and Richter work with images of tangible objects in known 

locales and filter them through a slow and methodical process that allows the images to 

exist unencumbered by circumstantial restraints. Dietmar Elger wrote of Richter’s 

landscape paintings, “[they] work precisely because they transfer the fixed moment in the 

photograph into the timelessness of painting. The situation documented in the 

photographic original and bound to a topographical situation thus transcends the painting 

to become a placeless experience of Nature.”23 This same idea is true in Baumgartner’s 

prints, perhaps even more so due to the repetitious nature of the woodcut. For example, 

most blocks are printed in editions, unlike a painting, which is an individual work. While 

Baumgartner’s printed editions are meant to last, they do come from a long history of 

ephemera, where a constant redistribution of prints was common, and therefore, they 

often spread across a wide range, making them familiar and available to a large group of 

people.24 This notion of wide dissemination allows the prints to exist in more than one 

place, which also positions them in multiple contexts. Baumgartner’s prints, although 

permanent works, continue to demonstrate this concept because they reside 

simultaneously in multiple collections around the world, permitting a global audience an 

opportunity to spend time with her contemplative works.  

Richter said, “I would like to try to understand what is. We know very little, and I 

am trying to do it by creating analogies. Almost every work of art is an analogy. When I 

make a representation of something, this too is an analogy to what exists; I make an effort 

to get a grip on the thing by depicting it.”25 Baumgartner shares this objective in her 



34 
printed excerpts of reality. She, like Virilio, has opinions about speed, technology, and 

human interaction, and she takes on these issues through the medium of woodcut. While 

these concerns run through each of her works, her prime objective is constructing an 

experience. Baumgartner, when depicting speed, keeps the image literal so that the 

viewer can focus on the physicality of being in front of her prints. Hamlyn noted, “There 

is none of the heroism of the futurist inheritance: the romance of man and machine 

merged in hectic motion.”26 Through tunnels, planes, and freeways, she indicates the 

presence of people without depicting them in the scene. Her prime intention is to 

fabricate a composition that is visually stimulating, using time based media that has been 

diced and distorted yet preserved of its energy and instilled with an air of placelessness. 

Her societal commentary is a secondary component. Her focus is on the act of looking. 

She wants you to observe and sense these concepts of motion and interact with her work, 

but she is not forcefully propagating a single viewpoint. 

It is up to the viewer to decide what to take from Baumgartner’s works. While this 

discussion of movement has demonstrated her drive to display high speeds, she is 

actually commenting on the need to slow down. She is using motion to establish a 

jumping off point for the next main theme to be discussed, introspection. Her dizzying 

prints open a portal into timeless visions of the world around us, allowing for self-

reflection on issues concerning technology, history, and memory. In the next chapter, her 

history and connections to the writings of Russian-American poet and essayist Joseph 

Brodsky (1940-1996) will be used to introduce a guideline for possible readings of her 

works in relation to these ideas.  

 



35 
Notes 

                                                 
1 Standstill is a term repeatedly used by Baumgartner both when titling and speaking of her work. 
It is a translation of the German word Stillstand, which means to “stop” or “halt.” 

 
2 “Paul Virilio,” The European Graduate School, 2012, http://www.egs.edu/faculty/paul-
virilio/biography/.   

 
3 Ibid. 

 
4 Paul Virilio, Interview by Jérôme Sans, “the game of love and chance: a discussion with Paul 
Virilio,” Watson Institute for International Studies, November 1999, 
http://www.watsoninstitute.org/infopeace/vy2k/sans.cfm.  

 
5 Christiane Baumgartner quoted in Jeannette Stoschek, “Visualizing Time,” in Reel Time 
(London: Alan Cristea Gallery, 2011), 8. 

 
6 Virilio, Interview by John Armitage, Translated by Patrice Riemens, “The Kosovo War Took 
Place In Orbital Space,” Ctheory, October 18, 2000, http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=132.  

 
7 Baumgartner quoted in Anne Hamlyn, “Figuring Speed,” in Speed/Standstill (Leipzig: 
Christiane Baumgartner/Carivari, 2003), 26.  

 
8 For more information see Marta Braun, Picturing Time: The Work of Etienne-Jules Marey 
(1830-1904) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).  

 
9 For more information see German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse, Libby Hruska, ed. 
(New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2011). 

 
10 See Op Art, Martina Weinhardt and Max Hollein, eds. (Köln: König, 2007). 

 
11 Baumgartner quoted in Stoschek, “Visualizing Time,” 7.  

 
12 Ibid., 10. 

 
13 Ibid., 10. 

 
14 For more information on the Hamilton Building’s history as an automobile showroom, see 
http://www.pafa.org/Museum/Research-Archives/The-Buildings/Hamilton-Building/64/.   

 
15 Baumgartner, In conversation with the author, November 5, 2011. 

 
16 Baumgartner quoted in Nicholas James, Interviews-Artists (London: Cv Publications, 2010), 
23.  
 
17 Virilio, The Aesthetics of Disappearance, translation by Philip Beitchman (New York: 
Semiotext(e), 1991), 66. 

 
18 Allee is similar to the words “alley” or “boulevard.”  



36 
                                                                                                                                                 
19 Baumgartner quoted from video, “Christiane Baumgartner: Screen Shot,” Alan Cristea Gallery, 
http://www.alancristea.com/artist-Christiane-Baumgartner.  

 
20 For discussions of Richter’s Archive (source images) see Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter: A 
Life in Painting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); and Gerhard Richter: Forty Years 
of Painting, Robert Storr, ed. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2002). 

 
21 For discussions of Richter’s use of the blur see Gerhard Richter: Early Work, 1951-1972, 
Christine Mehring, Jeanne Anne Nugent, and Jon L. Seydl, eds. (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty 
Museum, 2010); and Gerhard Richter, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, ed. (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 
2009). 

 
22 Gerhard Richter quoted in Gerhard Richter: Text. Writings, Interviews and Letters 1961-2007, 
Dietmar Elger and Hans Ulrich Obrist, eds. (London: Thames & Hudson, 2009), 33.  

 
23 Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter: Landscapes (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2011), 27. 

 
24 See Rebecca Zorach and Elizabeth Rodini, “On Imitation and Invention: An Introduction to the 
Reproductive Print,” in Paper Museums: The Reproductive Print in Europe: 1500-1800 
(Chicago: The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, 2005), 1-29. 

 
25 Richter quoted in Gerhard Richter: Text. Writings, Interviews and Letters 1961-2007, 55.   

 
26 Baumgartner quoted in Hamlyn, “Figuring Speed,” 26.   
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



37 
CHAPTER 3 

“TWISTS OF LANGUAGE”: SELF-REFLECTION FILTERED THROUGH  

THE MATRIX OF A PRINTMAKER 

 

As demonstrated in the last chapter, Baumgartner wants her prints to be 

approached as physical and emotional experiences, based on the viewer’s reaction to their 

visual aspects. As displayed by her and Richter’s use of the blur (see figs. 2.16 and 2.17), 

this technique not only creates and suggests movement, but it demonstrates how familiar 

images can be restructured in order to allow viewers to find their own point of reference 

within the work and apply it to their personal circumstances. Discovering their inherent 

commentaries on contemporary lifestyles is not a viewing requirement. However, her 

works lend themselves to multiple inferences, overwhelmingly driven by Baumgartner’s 

interest in giving viewers an opportunity for self-reflection and meditation. By capturing 

her own visually poetic moments of reflection through the use of widely relatable images, 

she inspires viewers to use her prints as templates for considering issues surrounding 

history, memories, and how one interacts with the world. Many of her works focus on 

these subjects due to her experiences in a divided post-war Germany. Additionally, she 

finds influence in Russian history, demonstrated by her Soviet Union inspired guidebook 

titled Detour and, most prominently, her interest in the writings of Joseph Brodsky (the 

Russian-American poet and essayist).1 In 2002, she produced original woodcuts to 

illustrate a reprint of Brodsky’s essay “Less Than One” (1986), which chronicles his 

upbringing in World War II Leningrad, Russia. This publication demonstrates how 

Baumgartner relates to and shares Brodsky’s interest in artistically capturing self-

reflection and recognizing one’s view of the world. Building on this relationship, this 



38 
chapter will examine how Baumgartner’s prints illustrate the importance of personal 

meditative thought by commenting on its relation to one’s background, physical 

surroundings, and connection to the past and notion of time (especially in regards to 

memory), as well as the significance of reevaluating one’s perspective of the modern 

experience.   

Beginning with an introduction of the similarities in their artistic processes, I will 

establish the relationship between Brodsky and Baumgartner. Brodsky often wrote about 

the connection between the poet and society, emphasizing the ability of literature to have 

a positive impact on society and help develop its language and culture. In many ways, 

Baumgartner comments on this same issue, substituting the visual artist for the poet. As 

with poetry, her prints embody messages, but like the lyrical rhythm of the words, the 

beauty is in her matrix. The experience of reading a poem is thought to be provocative 

and emotional, an outcome she aims for with her prints. As the reader must do with lines 

of poetry, the viewer must look beyond the beauty of the woodcut and the rhythm of the 

horizontal lines to decipher the messages within and recognize the print’s meditative and 

thematic properties. 

 In Brodsky’s poem “Lullaby of Cape Cod” (1975), he describes the experience of 

leaving one empire (Russia) for another (United States). The verses are heavy with sullen 

imagery of the physical world around him, as captured in this excerpt pertaining to his 

flight to the U.S.: 

... Below me curled 
serpentine rivers, roads bloomed with dust, ricks yellowed, 
and everywhere in that diminished world, 
in formal opposition, near and far, 
lined up like print in a book about to close, 
 



39 
armies rehearsed their games in balanced rows 
and cities all went dark as caviar. 
 
And then the darkness thickened. All lights fled, 
a turbine droned, a head ached rhythmically, 
and space backed up like a crab, time surged ahead 
into first place, and streaming westwardly, 
seemed to be heading home, void of all light, 
soiling its garments with the tar of night.2 

 
Brodsky captures a straightforward scene of life in this verse, yet his words have elevated 

the experience to a metaphysical state. The cadence of the lines brings beauty and 

familiarity to an otherwise troubling scene of sadness and solitude, as well as provides a 

gateway to the author, so that the reader may participate in processing this memory. This 

interplay between creator and recipient is how one is meant to relate to Baumgartner’s 

prints. Take, for example, her diptych Trails (2008) (figs. 3.1-2), which displays a team 

of planes flying overhead, leaving contrails across the sky, evidence of the passage of 

time. The trails radiate from the planes like a light-beam from a flashlight. They widen at 

the top of the print, suggesting rapid acceleration of the planes into the depths of the 

composition. These vapors are visual representations of the movements of the planes 

through time. They show the exact path taken by the pilots, detailing each turn and 

adjustment throughout this section of their journey. The blurred planes continue the 

suggestion of motion by appearing to vibrate within the print, fighting to break free from 

their suspension in mid-air. Their hazy identities also make them timeless, for they could 

be commercial or military, dating from the early-twentieth century to the present. In 

actuality, the prints depict World War II Allied bombers taken from a German 

propaganda film. Baumgartner’s process fragments the framework of the event and molds 

it into an abstract depiction of time, motion, and place. While examining the poem and 



40 
the woodcuts, the beholder must float between the multiple layers of interpretation, 

considering the groundings of the works in reality, as well as the metaphysical 

perspectives they illuminate. 

The physical and metaphysical aspects of Baumgartner’s prints are fundamental 

in considering the notion of self-reflection and her connection to the works of Brodsky. 

When composing a woodcut, Baumgartner prefers images that are exceptionally 

prevalent. As explored in the last chapter, this approach allows the work to be readily 

accessible to a wide range of viewers. By taking these stills of our physical reality and 

drastically enlarging them, she uses the matrix to transform what were once rather 

ordinary concepts into monumental imagery, and brings “experience and weight to an 

otherwise unexperienced moment.”3 These new metaphysical visions are now open to 

interpretation and contemplation, and as Julia Blume puts it, Baumgartner captures these 

images “voyeuristically and in so doing toys with dramatic tension without there ever 

being any drama—events remain part of the indifference of everyday life.”4 Baumgartner 

possesses her own associations and thought processes when constructing her works, 

which will be examined in this chapter. Yet ultimately, once viewers stand before one of 

her works, it is up to them to decide what to take from their encounter with her prints. 

A person’s background and his or her response to those collective experiences 

play a significant part in shaping their worldview. Baumgartner and Brodsky’s 

perspectives are linked as a result of both maturing under a repressive regime. These 

experiences played a pivotal role in developing how they would later express themselves 

through their chosen mediums and perceive/present the world. As a result of living in 

East Germany since infancy, Baumgartner, for example, took a strong interest in urban 



41 
development and the effects an altered environment has on its inhabitants.5 This idea is 

also reflected in Brodsky’s life. Growing up during World War II, he likewise witnessed 

many hardships and urban transformations as a youth in 1940s Leningrad. In an essay 

titled “A Guide to a Renamed City” (1986), Brodsky commented on the significance of 

his surroundings, writing: “The depiction of both the actual and mental interior of the 

city, of its impact on the people and their inner world, became the main subject of 

Russian literature almost from the very day of this city’s founding.”6 He provided an 

allegory characterizing the dominant influence of Lenin over the city, originally known 

as Saint Petersburg, writing:  

The monument before the Finland Station is unique … for Comrade Lenin 
delivers his oration standing on the top of an armored car. It’s done in the 
style of early Constructivism, so popular nowadays in the West, and in 
general the very idea of carving an armored car out of stone smacks of a 
certain psychological acceleration, of the sculptor being a bit ahead of his 
time. As far as I know, this is the only monument to a man on an armored 
car that exists in the world. In this respect alone, it is a symbol of a new 
society. The old society used to be represented by men on horseback.7  
 

He later added, “On the whole, this Russian execution of the Prussian military ideal of 

society, together with the cumbersome apartment style buildings squeezed between the 

classical ensembles, produces rather a disheartening effect.”8 He further lamented his 

experiences living in this environment in his 1986 essay “Less Than One,” in which 

Brodsky recounts his upbringing in Leningrad and describes his tribulations in school, 

encounters with discrimination, and disgust for the repetitive and centralized nature of his 

home city.  

In 2002, Baumgartner made original woodcuts for a re-print of this essay, a 

publication done in collaboration with book designer Sabine Golde (b. 1964). Notably, 

her act of making book illustrations reflects her Dürer roots, especially in relation to his 



42 
literary inspired Apocalypse cycle as mentioned in chapter one (fig. 1.3). Just as Dürer’s 

Book of Revelation illustrations overshadowed the text in prominence, Baumgartner’s 

illustrations consume two-page spreads each, while also book-ending and directing the 

flow of the essay by interrupting each section of writing. This reprint also relates to 

Dürer’s time, since dating back to the 1490s publishers recognized a market for 

illustrated books. For book illustrations, woodcuts were commercially the obvious 

method, since they could be printed in the same press and simultaneously with type. An 

engraving, on the other hand, would have to be printed separately in a different press, 

making it a more expensive endeavor.9  

Baumgartner’s first illustration for the re-print (fig. 3.3) depicts a rather 

uninhabited looking street, lined with towering, receding streetlights. The looming poles 

form a narrow lane that appears to have no terminus, its farthest point of depth consisting 

of little more than a hazy, engulfing shadow in the distance. Its suggestions of uniformity 

and barrenness evoke the eerie stillness of a tyrannized Leningrad or the darkened streets 

of a regulated Leipzig. In Less Than One III (fig. 3.4), three buildings peek above what 

resembles a wall of bushes or open fencing, permitting ghostly outlines of the buildings 

to bleed through this visual blockade. Each has the same cookie-cutter silhouette, 

monotonously bland and industrial. The structures are also tightly spaced, alluding to the 

urban, “military” specifications that Brodsky observed in his city’s new layout. In this 

series, the printmaker is representing her reactions to Brodsky’s thoughts and memories, 

while also making the illustrations relate to her own associations with these themes of 

repression and bleakness. This printed reaction parallels the suggested role of 



43 
Baumgartner’s viewers, which is to reflect on the imagery depicted in her prints and 

apply their personal impressions to their own lives and surroundings. 

In “A Guide to a Renamed City,” Brodsky also noted, “Sometimes [Leningrad] 

gives the impression of an utter egoist preoccupied solely with its own appearance. It is 

true that in such places you pay more attention to façades than to faces.”10 After a visit to 

Birmingham, England circa 2006, Baumgartner was struck by an example of paying 

“more attention to façades than to faces,” which caused her to reflect on the impact of her 

surroundings. She recalled this memory in an interview:  

I was particularly drawn to the long tunnel called Queensway and 
Spaghetti Junction and to the way the town had been developed in the 
years following the Second World War and the bombings. … For 
example, if you walk from the station to the Ikon [Gallery] along Fletchers 
Walk, by the University library, you have to pass under a bridge and walk 
through a tunnel under the road. It seems that pedestrians were the last 
people to be considered when Birmingham was rebuilt in the 1960s—the 
philosophy was all about the car as a means of getting around.11 

 
Compared to Brodsky’s Leningrad, this is a drastically less invasive example of how a 

city’s layout can affect its citizens. Yet, it highlights this idea of ushering in the future, 

along with its accelerating technologies, often at the expense of the individual and 

culture. It harks back to Brodsky’s statue allegory, with the armored car of the future 

overshadowing its equestrian predecessors.   

Growing up in a restrictive environment herself, Baumgartner is sensitive to this 

type of control, demonstrating the powerful influence of experiences on one’s 

perspective. Representing this observation, she composed the print series Solaris I-IV 

(2008) (figs. 3.5-8), which portrays “the best tunnels I could find and are taken from a 

[Andrei] Tarkovsky film of the same name.”12 Again, she is using a Russian point of 

reference in order to capture her intended composition. Still, her process renders these 



44 
“movie” tunnels ordinary in appearance. These prints are completely devoid of the 

natural landscape. The depicted space is confined and austere, with a rigid design and 

artificial illumination. The structures are completely manmade, yet stripped of even basic 

essentials for inhabitance. While these tunnels are purposefully designed for the sake of 

vehicular travel and convenience, Baumgartner focuses on this opposition of nature 

versus artificiality to encourage awareness of technology’s potential dominance over our 

lives. The series epitomizes the concerns shared by Baumgartner, Brodsky, and also Paul 

Virilio on the need for a society that contemplates its actions and questions how the 

design of the world affects both one’s physical and metaphysical experiences of reality. 

Baumgartner also comments on the importance of introspection and its effect on 

one’s life based on observations of the past. This is represented through numerous 

depictions of history and memory, and these two powerful elements are tightly 

interwoven in her prints. In an interview, Baumgartner recalled watching television and 

coming across a World War II documentary: 

I was really affected by this. I don’t watch TV very often and I was 
zapping through the channels thinking how strange it was that you are 
exposed to so many different ideas and subjects—a soap opera, the news 
on the hijacking of the school in Beslan, and then this documentary. The 
most disturbing thing about this programme, which included live film 
footage, was the voices of the pilots celebrating as they dropped bombs 
onto targets below. But somehow, because it was being shown on the TV, 
many years later, in the comfort of my private home, I was distanced from 
the actual event and lost a sense of conscience and consciousness about 
what was real and what was not.13  
 

She quickly realized how removed she was from that time and how the television screen 

acted as a shield from the reality of the past, protecting her from the harshness and 

violence of those events. She was able to cast a removed eye safe in her house, and be 

less affected emotionally and completely removed physically. This realization inspired 



45 
her to start videotaping the footage right from the screen, and it would later become the 

source of her still for Luftbild (fig. 2.10). She noted, “It was so strange for [this footage] 

to enter my world this way, I wasn’t searching for it, it found me.”14 However, 

Baumgartner is not attempting to make a comment on World War II specifically. Instead, 

she sees this mental detachment, brought on by the desensitization of constant visual 

media, as her interesting and somewhat alarming focus. By keeping the date and 

identities of the planes just out of reach of the viewer, she makes it a general image of 

modern war. It remains a timeless warning as to how technology alters society’s grasp on 

the realities of the present and our past.   

 Other artists, such as the American Martha Rosler (b. 1943), have also used their 

works to highlight how the media can anesthetize experience. Her series Bringing the 

War Home: House Beautiful (1967-1972) combines news photos of the Vietnam War 

with images from contemporary home and design magazines. In Beauty Rest (fig. 3.9), a 

contented American family lays across their clean luxury bed that is situated in a 

bombed-out corner of a room. Oblivious to the destruction surrounding them, the mother 

continues reading and the father and son play with a toy. Rosler revisited this series in 

2004, creating works that unite images of the war in Iraq with the modern living room. In 

Photo-Op (fig. 3.10), a young woman, distracted by her cell phone, poses dramatically in 

the middle of the room, while an injured young girl and seemingly burned woman lay on 

her designer furniture. Explosions and soldiers dominate the view outside her oversized 

windows, yet the model pays no attention. Rosler, like Baumgartner, recognizes the 

separation that technology has caused between the average person and violent realities. 

Her two series force the viewer to contemplate how media influences his or her 



46 
psychological associations to these unsettling images by confronting the viewer with 

extremely exaggerated and constructed situations. Rosler’s heightened works are focused 

on specific events, making them much more direct. This concept runs counter to 

Baumgartner’s works, where a more allusive approach is employed.   

Baumgartner’s works often relate back to issues surrounding war, but since her 

prints are meant to remain flexible in focus and perspective, the role of her process is 

crucial. News on her radio about catastrophes happening around the world made it hard 

for Baumgartner to separate these events from her work. She comments, “I was working 

on subjects such as speed and standstill, cars and planes and it was obvious, in a sense, 

that I would come to military conflicts. But I don’t want to work on this theme in a 

specific way. I want it to be more generalized.”15 This issue came up when first designing 

Transall (2002-04) (fig. 1.8), which she started in 2001, shortly after making the Lisbon 

series (fig. 1.6). Unlike most of her works that begin with home videos, Transall came 

from “a tiny newsprint photograph saved from several years ago when [she] had a 

residency in Ireland.”16 The image remained unused for two years, allowing it to have 

“no particular topicality,”17 her ideal situation. Once her residency was completed, she 

“sent the block back to Leipzig but, unfortunately, it was damaged in transit.”18 Not long 

after her return home, the attack on the World Trade Center occurred, filling this aviation 

image with numerous negative connotations and compelling her to walk away from the 

project.  

Months later, she revisited the woodcut, deciding to try her best at preventing this 

tragic event from infiltrating her thoughts while cutting the block. She also chose to 

produce it at a much larger scale, stating: “This image is so full of menace, power and 



47 
force that I felt it had to be big, as big as I could get the wood and the paper. I like the 

idea of rebuilding such powerful objects of our present time in such an ancient method as 

woodcut.”19 In actuality, to completely remove these influences from the context of the 

print is impossible. Yet at the same time, it’s important to recognize that although this 

woodcut emerged from a photograph taken circa 1999, her matrix gave this image the 

ability to take on new associations and be used as a symbol of conflict in general, as this 

snapshot acquires meaning linked to what plagues our world today. 

Baumgartner is a manipulator of reality, redefining our perspective of the 

ordinary, as is discernable from her body of work. Her alterations are what make her 

prints unique, like glimpses into personal memories. The series 1 Sekunde (1 Second) 

(2004) (fig. 3.11) documents one second of film, taken by Baumgartner while in a 

moving vehicle, segmented into twenty-five separate woodcuts.20 To develop this series, 

she sifted through thousands of stills, selecting only the frames that best suited her overall 

vision. The outcome was a distorted representation of a second’s time rushing past a tree-

lined freeway, summarized by twenty-five selected fragments. Much like a memory, 

certain details of the moment have faded, while others remain strong. As Brodsky 

described, “attempting to recall the past is like trying to grasp the meaning of existence. 

Both make one feel like a baby clutching at a basketball: one’s palms keep sliding off.”21 

By restricting this series to black and white, Baumgartner is further linking 1 Sekunde to 

memory, since often when one tries to recall a distant memory, color details are hazy or 

missing. This can also occur in dreams, where the mind occasionally replays disrupted 

versions of personal experiences, often in grayscale. In this series, the viewer is 

introduced to Baumgartner’s chosen re-telling of this small portion of her drive down a 



48 
freeway. Multiple frames are left in a complete haze with monotone foliage entangled in 

an indecipherable collage, while others contain prominent branches and tree trunks that 

give a sense of focus and depth amidst a speeding landscape. Without these solid beacons 

that move from frame to frame, the conveyance of time would be weakened. These 

powerfully repetitive shapes are what allow the eye to see subtle changes in orientation. 

For each millisecond that passes, the viewer’s perspective of the same location evolves, 

forcing the alignment of the branches in relation to each other and the viewer to 

constantly transform and appear closer, taller, and/or wider with each print. 

Baumgartner’s interest in altered perspective is not exclusive to her prints. In 

2004, she published a book titled Detour with Lucy Harrison, an artist based in London, 

that chronicles their excursions through Tallinn, Estonia, (which they had both visited 

previously) as they searched for the city’s monuments using “two Soviet-era guide books, 

one from 1971 (in Russian), one from 1980 (in English).”22 The book recounts their 

individual observations of the trip, accompanied by text snippets from the Soviet 

guidebooks that introduce the tour locations sought out by the duo. Detour is filled with 

their contemporary images of the monuments, taken as close as possible to the ones in the 

guidebooks. Where monuments were no longer standing or could not be found, 

Baumgartner and Harrison would photograph “their most suitable positions in the 

vicinity.”23 Just as these photographs represent the existence or memory of these 

monuments, Baumgartner’s prints serve as monuments on paper to our evolution and 

history as a society. She captures moments that relate to her personal history, yet they are 

in many ways more closely wedded to documenting the “memory” of society, 

representing and reminding viewers of past events and how, through technological 



49 
advancements, people risk losing their connection with reality. Her prints bring these 

issues to the surface and act as memorials to society’s development and growth, while 

directing viewers to not lose sight of their own perspective and enrichment through 

meditative thought. 

Following her own suggestion of revisiting the past, Baumgartner, who lived in 

Tallinn years prior as an exchange student, returned to the city with the intention of 

revisiting memories, testing her grasp of the older city layout. Baumgartner recalls, 

“When Estonia was still part of the Soviet Union and I lived in East Germany, I stayed in 

a flat which faced the Viru Hotel. Now, 15 years later, I tried to find the flat again, or at 

least its position in relation to the hotel. In my memory the Viru Hotel was rotated 90 

degrees from the position I find it in now.”24 Not only was her orientation in the city 

thrown, but also its appearance had drastically changed.  

When Baumgartner lived in Estonia, the republic was facing a pivotal milestone 

in its campaign to regain independence. It was not until August 20, 1991 that Estonia was 

reestablished to its pre-1940’s status.25 Therefore, Baumgartner lived in what remained 

an oppressively occupied state. Returning years after the republic had regained authority 

gave her the opportunity to become reacquainted with a new Estonia. Baumgartner, 

influenced by her German and Soviet experiences of a restrictive government dynamic, 

was provided a chance to start fresh with a new perspective and explore her fascination 

with history and the notion of temporality. As in 1 Sekunde, time and reflection allowed 

her to look at the city from a fresh vantage point, to see new facets of a landscape once 

hidden from view. Similar to this trip, Baumgartner’s prints offer viewers an opportunity 



50 
to become reacquainted with familiar concepts, ideas, and events and perhaps reflect on 

these subjects with a new perspective. 

As this discussion establishes and as explored in the previous chapters, viewer 

participation, both mentally and physically, is the culminating factor in Baumgartner’s 

art. Her experiences offer a unique viewpoint on the functioning of our world today. 

Influenced by others with similar critical perspectives on life, she succeeds in visually 

conveying a reality often overlooked. Self-reflection and contemplation are her main 

messages, and by displaying universally relatable images, she presents her observations 

without sacrificing the viewer’s personal experience and opportunity to gain insight into 

our society. Baumgartner wants to liberate the mind from the bombardments of rushed, 

technology-driven interaction and the velocity of our lifestyles. Her time-consuming and 

methodical process acts as a metaphor for her prescription to slow down and remain 

open-minded. She wants to share the sensation of her symbolic travels down the freeway, 

trees racing past the car window and long stretches of freedom conveyed in linear form, 

representing the benefits and importance of time.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



51 
Notes 

                                                 
1 Joseph Brodsky was born in 1940, in Leningrad, Russia, and he died in 1996 in Brooklyn, New 
York. He left school at the age of fifteen, and during this time Brodsky taught himself English 
and Polish and began writing poetry. In March 1964 until November 1965, Brodsky lived in exile 
in the Arkhangelsk region of northern Russia, serving eighteen months of a five-year sentence in 
a labor camp for “social parasitism.” In 1972, Joseph Brodsky became an involuntary exile from 
his native country and settled in the United States. In 1987, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for 
Literature.  

 
2 Joseph Brodsky, “Lullaby of Cape Cod,” A Part of Speech, Translated by Anthony Hecht (New 
York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1980), 108.   
 
3 Baumgartner, “Text,” Christiane-Baumgartner, http://www.christiane-
baumgartner.com/text.html.   
 
4 Julia Blume, “Pausing,” in Speed/Standstill (Leipzig: Christiane Baumgartner/Carivari, 2003), 
8.   
 
5 Baumgartner in conversation with Jeannette Stoschek, “Visualizing Time,” in Reel Time 
(London: Alan Cristea Gallery, 2011), 9. 
 
6 Brodsky, “A Guide to a Renamed City,” Less Than One: Selected Essays (New York: Farrar, 
Straus & Giroux, 1986), 78.  
 
7 Ibid., 69.  
 
8 Ibid., 81. 
 
9 For more information on the early use of woodcuts see Antony Griffiths, Prints and 
Printmaking: An introduction to the history and techniques (Los Angeles: University of 
California Press, 1996), 16-22. 
 
10 Brodsky, “A Guide to a Renamed City,” 77.  
 
11 Baumgartner quoted in Stoschek, “Visualizing Time,” 9. 
 
12 Ibid., 9. 
 
13 Ibid., 8. 
 
14 Ibid., 8. 
 
15 Ibid., 8. 
 
16 Baumgartner quoted in Nicholas James, Interviews-Artists (London: Cv Publications, 2010), 
24.   
 
17 Jeremy Lewison, “At the Still Point of the Turning World. The Prints of Christiane 
Baumgartner,” in Christiane Baumgartner (Heemstede: Johan Deumens Gallery, 2007), 39. 



52 
                                                                                                                                                 
 
18 Ibid., 39.  
 
19 Baumgartner quoted in James, Interviews-Artists, 24.  
 
20 See chapter two for a discussion of her works in relation to chronophotography, a technique 
that shares similarities with this series. 
 
21 Brodsky, “Less Than One,” Less Than One: Selected Essays, 3.  
 
22 Christiane Baumgartner and Lucy Harrison, Detour, Artist book, (Leipzig: PögeDruck and 
Mönch OHG, 2004), 3. 
 
23 Ibid., 3. 
 
24 Ibid., 4. 
 
25 For more information about Estonia’s independence, see 
http://www.estonica.org/en/The_August_coup_and_Estonian_independence_1991/.  
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



53 
CONCLUSION 

 

The work of Christiane Baumgartner warrants art historical study because of its 

groundbreaking uses and intermingling of the reproductive mediums of woodcut, video, 

and photography. As I’ve explored, her works comment on art and society today and the 

relationship of new technology to our past. Displayed by the juxtaposition of Transall 

(2002-04) (fig. 1.8) and Dürer’s Triumphal Arch of Maximilian I (1515) (fig. 1.7), 

Baumgartner reveals a keen knowledge of the history of printmaking and seamlessly 

presents an interchange between contemporary and established techniques and the artistic 

treatment of historical events. Baumgartner’s perspective on traditional printmaking 

pushes prints into a fresh territory, asserting its role in contemporary art. 

 By contextualizing the technical and thematic elements of Baumgartner’s prints, 

my thesis offers insight into the process, mindset, and objectives of this contemporary, 

innovative printmaker. Resulting from her introduction to digital media, she unlocked the 

pivotal factor necessary to further examine and convey awareness about societal 

interaction and concerns. Baumgartner’s choices of recognizable and relatable imagery 

allow her to include viewers in her conversation about the importance of introspection, as 

well as provide them with works that engage and challenge through stimulating optical 

experiences. In an interview, Baumgartner said: “It is important for an art work to leave 

space for the audience.”1 Through my analysis of how Baumgartner herself relates to her 

prints in response to her childhood in the German Democratic Republic era of Leipzig, 

relationships with similar-minded individuals, and guidance of traditional training, I have 

demonstrated the ways in which her prints are successful at conveying her unique 

perspective on our world today, while at the same time sustaining her sentiment regarding 



54 
the need for audience engaging art. Above all, she repeatedly achieves her objectives of 

uniting mediums separated by centuries and capturing the rapid speed of both physical 

and metaphysical concepts of motion, communication, and time. 

                                                 
1 Baumgartner quoted in Nicholas James, Interviews-Artists (London: Cv Publications, 2010), 21. 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



55 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

Alan Cristea Gallery. Reel Time. London: Alan Cristea Gallery, 2011. 
 
Baumgartner, Christiane. Eine Sekunde. Leipzig: Carivari, 2004. 
 
——. Speed/Standstill. Leipzig: Christiane Baumgartner/Carivari, 2003. 
 
Baumgartner, and Sabine Golde. Weniger als man = Less than one. Leipzig: Carivari,  

2002. 
 
Baumgartner, and Lucy Harrison. Detour. Artist book. Leipzig: PögeDruck  

and Mönch OHG, 2004.  
 
Belting, Hans. The Germans and their Art: A Troublesome Relationship. New Haven:  

Yale University Press, 1998. 
 
Braun, Marta. Picturing Time: The Work of Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904). Chicago:  

University of Chicago Press, 1992. 
 
Brodsky, Joseph. A Part of Speech. Translated by Anthony Hecht. New York: Farrar,  

Straus, Giroux, 1980.  
 
——. Less than one: selected essays. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986.  
 
——. Interview by Jérôme Sans. “the game of love and chance: a discussion with Paul  

Virilio.” Watson Institute for International Studies, November 1999. 
http://www.watsoninstitute.org/infopeace/vy2k/sans.cfm. 

 
Buchloh, Benjamin H. D., ed. Gerhard Richter. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2009. 
 
“Christiane Baumgartner: Screen Shot.” Alan Cristea Gallery.  

http://www.alancristea.com/artist-Christiane-Baumgartner. 
 
“Christiane Baumgartner: Transall.” Museum of Modern Art.  

http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/audios/32/771. 
 
Elger, Dietmar. Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting. Chicago: University of Chicago  

Press, 2009. 
  
——. Gerhard Richter: Landscapes. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2011.  
 
Elger, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, eds. Gerhard Richter: Text. Writings, Interviews and  

Letters 1961-2007. London: Thames & Hudson, 2009.  
 



56 
Griffiths, Antony. Prints and Printmaking: An introduction to the history and techniques.  

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.  
 
Hall, Cynthia. “Before the Apocalypse: German Prints and Illustrated Books, 1450- 

1500.” Harvard University Art Museums Bulletin 4/2 (Spring, 1996): 8-29. 
 
Hess, Daniel ed. Der frühe Dürer. Nürnberg: Germanisches Nationalmuseum, 2012. 
 
Hruska, Libby, ed. German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse. New York: Museum of  

Modern Art, 2011. 
 
Ivins, William. “Notes on Three Dürer Woodblocks.” Metropolitan Museum Studies 2/1  

(Nov. 1929): 102-11. 
 
James, Nicholas. Interviews-Artists. London: Cv Publications, 2010.  
 
Johan Deumens Gallery. Christiane Baumgartner. Heemstede: Johan Deumens Gallery,  

2007. 
 
Jordan, Mel and Malcolm Miles, eds. Art and Theory After Socialism. Chicago: Intellect  

Books, The University of Chicago Press, 2008. 
 
Koerner, Joseph Leo. The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art.  

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. 
 
Landau, David, and Peter Parshall. The Renaissance Print. New Haven: Yale University  

Press, 1993.  
 
Lubow, Arthur. “The New Leipzig School.” New York Times, January 8, 2006.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/08/magazine/08leipzig.html. 
 
Mehring, Christine, Jeanne Anne Nugent, and Jon L. Seydl, eds. Gerhard Richter: Early  

Work, 1951-1972. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2010. 
 
Murgatroyd, Hannah. “‘You Need to Show Work in the Right Place’: Christiane  

Baumgartner.” FuelRCA, November 15, 2010. http://fuel.rca.ac.uk/articles/you-
need-to-show-work-in-the-right-place-christiane-baumgartner. 

 
Panofsky, Erwin. The life and art of Albrecht Dürer. Princeton: Princeton University  

Press, 1955. 
 
“Paul Virilio.” The European Graduate School, 2012.  

http://www.egs.edu/faculty/paul-virilio/biography/. 
 
Piccard, Gerhard. “Carta bombycina, carta papyri, pergamena graeca.” Archivalische  

Zeitschrift 61 (1965): 46-75. 



57 
Prince, Nigel, ed. Christiane Baumgartner. Birmingham: Ikon Gallery, 2005. 
 
Roca, José. “Interview: Christiane Baumgartner.” Philagrafika Blog, May 12, 2009.  

http://philagrafika.blogspot.com/2009/05/interview-christiane-baumgartner.html. 
 
Silver, Larry, and Elizabeth Wyckoff, eds. Grand Scale: Monumental Prints in the Age of  

Dürer and Titian. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.   
 
Storr, Robert, ed. Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting. New York: Museum of  

Modern Art, 2002.  
 
Tittel, Cornelius. “Gerhard Richter – Die Hälfte im Museum ist Müll.” Welt Online,  

September 24, 2010. http://www.welt.de/kultur/article9843144/Gerhard-Richter-
Die-Haelfte-im-Museum-ist-Muell.html. 

 
Virilio, Paul. The Aesthetics of Disappearance. Translation by Philip Beitchman. New  

York: Semiotext(e), 1991.  
 
——. Interview by John Armitage. Translated by Patrice Riemens. “The Kosovo War  

Took Place In Orbital Space.” Ctheory, October 18, 2000. 
http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=132.  

 
Weinhardt, Martina, and Max Hollein, eds. Op Art. Köln: König, 2007. 
 
Wilson, Adrian. The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle. Amsterdam: Nico Israel, 1976. 
 
Zorach, Rebecca, and Elizabeth Rodini. Paper Museums: The Reproductive Print in  

Europe: 1500-1800. Chicago: The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, 2005. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



58 
FIGURES 

Chapter 1 

 

 
 

Figure 1.1 Attrib. Albrecht Dürer, The Creation of Eve from the Nuremberg Chronicle, 
Woodcut, 1493. 
 

 
Figure 1.2 Dürer, Self portrait, Silver point, 1484. Vienna, Albertina. 



59 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
Figure 1.3 Dürer, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the series Apocalypse, 
Woodcut, 1498.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



60 

 
Figure 1.4 Christiane Baumgartner, Klassenkameraden (Classmates), Three silkscreens 
on paper, 1999.  
 

 
 

Figure 1.5 Gerhard Richter, Matrosen (Sailors), Oil on canvas, 1966.  



61 

 
 

Figure 1.6 Christiane Baumgartner, Lisbon I-IV, Four woodcuts on Japanese paper, 2001.  
 

 
 

Figure 1.7 Albrecht Dürer et al., Triumphal Arch of Maximilian I, Woodcut, 1515. 
British Museum, London. 



62 

 
 

Figure 1.8 Christiane Baumgartner, Transall, Woodcut on Kozo paper, 2002. Museum of 
Modern Art, New York, NY.  
 
 

Chapter 2 
 

 
 
 
 



63 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 



64 

 
 

Figures 2.1-4 Christiane Baumgartner, Schkeuditz I-IV, Series of four woodcuts, 2005. 
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. 
 
 

 
 

Figure 2.5 Schkeuditz III (detail) 
 



65 

 
 

Figure 2.6 Étienne-Jules Marey, “Bird Flight, Pelican,” Chronophotograph, 1886. 
 
 

 
 

Figure 2.7 Emil Nolde, Fischdampfer (Fishing Steamer), Woodcut, 1910. Museum of 
Modern Art, New York, NY. 
 
 



66 

 
 
Figure 2.8 Baumgartner, Manhattan Transfer, Woodcut on Kozo paper, 2010.  
 
 

 
 
Figure 2.9 Baumgartner, Deutscher Wald, From a series of nine woodcuts, 2007. 
 
 
 



67 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 

Figure 2.10 Baumgartner, Luftbild, Woodcut on Kozo paper, 2008-09.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



68 

 
Figure 2.11 Carlos Cruz-Diez, Induction Chromatique 63, Silkscreen, 1974. 
 
 

 
 

Figure 2.12 Victor Vasarely, Zèbre, Oil on canvas, 1944.  
 
 



69 

 
 

 
 

Figures 2.13-14 Baumgartner, Allee I + II, Woodcut diptych on Kozo paper, 2008. 



70 

 
 
Figure 2.15 Gerhard Richter, Seestück (Seascape), Oil on canvas, 1975. 
 
 

 
 
Figure 2.16 Richter, Great Sphinx of Gizeh, Oil on canvas, 1964. 



71 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 

Figure 2.17 Baumgartner, Gelände, Woodcut on Atsukuchi Japanese paper, 2010. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



72 
Chapter 3 

 
 

 
 

Figures 3.1-2 Christiane Baumgartner, Trails I + II, Woodcut diptych on Kozo paper, 
2008.  
 



73 

 
 
Figure 3.3 Baumgartner, Less Than One I, Part of a series of five woodcuts on Japanese 
paper, 2002.  
 
 

 
 

Figure 3.4 Baumgartner, Less Than One III, Part of a series of five woodcuts on Japanese 
paper, 2002.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



74 

 
 
 
 
 

 
 



75 

 
 

 
 
 

 
 
Figures 3.5-8 Baumgartner, Solaris I-IV, A series of four woodcuts on Kozo paper, 2008. 
 
 
 
 
 



76 

 
 
Figure 3.9 Martha Rosler, “Beauty Rest,” from the series Bringing the War Home: 
House Beautiful, Photomontage, printed as a color photograph, 1967-1972.  
 
 

 
 

Figure 3.10 Rosler, “Photo-Op,” from the series Bringing the War Home: House 
Beautiful, New series, Photomontage, 2004.  
 
 
 



77 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 

Figure 3.11 Baumgartner, 1 Sekunde. Cream cloth covered box containing title page, 
colophon, and twenty-five woodcuts on Zerkall paper, 2004.