Angst in der Kunst: Ikonografie einer Grundemotion

Fear & a feeling that is normal and is even necessary for survival. Fear protects us against dangers, it lends us wings, it is the thrill you get on the ghost train. But fear and anxiety can also lead to torment and can become pathological. The author has brought together around 70 paintings and sculptures, photographs and installations that were explicitly placed by their artists in the context of fear, dread, or terror. It is a picture-book of fear, as it were, illustrating and reflecting on fear and anxiety as reflected in art. The selected works & by artists including for example Wilhelm Busch, Edvard Munch, Louise Bourgeois, Andy Warhol, Arnulf Rainer, Markus Lüpertz, Monica Bonvicini and Anne Imhof & represent various epochs and styles. The colour illustrations are accompanied by free associations from the viewpoint of psychiatry, psychology and psychotherapy, with excursions into art history, cultural studies, sociology, politics, literature, music, philosophy and theology. The discussions of the works are prefaced with an overall conceptual introduction that covers the spectrum of the selected works & ranging from fear as a basic emotion, as a real feeling, via physical and cognitive symptoms of anxiety and anxiety diseases to psychotherapeutic and pharmacological treatment for fear & supplemented with aspects of prevention, public information provision, and de-stigmatization of fear in society. An essay by Dr. Martina Padberg of the Institute of Art History at the University of Bonn adds an expert art-historical perspective to the book.