To mark the 100th birthday of philosopher Max Bense, the ZKM | Karlsruhe organized an exhibition on his international impact on fine art and literature. The exhibition, which continues the series entitled “Philosophy and the Arts,” introduces Bense as poet and writer, as art and literary theorist as well as exhibition curator and publicist. It shows a polarizing personality who, while closely associated with concrete poetry and concrete art as well as with computer art, was passionately drawn to other tendencies in art.


Technical Existence

In the Germany of the post war era, Bense, who had been active in Stuttgart from 1949 until his death in 1990, propagated an aesthetic of “technical existence” that was to decades earlier anticipate the media theoretical turn in the literature and the humanities of the 1980s. His reflections on literature and art thus constitute a part of a comprehensive philosophical world view as characterized by the scientific and “technical reality” of civilization; an attitude directed against the mythologizing proclivities of German post war culture, namely, against the “metaphysics of complacency.” Max Bense advocated an augmented notion of culture, combining artistic-literary with scientific-technical elements long before C. P. Snow would elaborate a similar formulation: mathematics, physics, and the knowledge of engineering were to constitute both a part of the history of ideas and contemporary philosophical discourse. With his “information-aesthetics” developed as early as the 1950s on the basis of semiotic reflections in which he applied the concepts of communications engineering to questions arising in the field of aesthetics, Bense would not only accompany and inspire experimental literature, concrete art, and computer art, but also delineated a field of media theoretical thought only later to become popular during the 1960s with the respective successes of Marshall McLuhan and Umberto Eco.


1910–1990

Max Bense, born in Strasbourg on February 7, 1910, studied mathematics, physics, chemistry, philosophy, and geology at the universities of Bonn and Cologne. After submitting his thesis entitled “Quantenmechanik und Daseinsrelativität” [Quantum Mechanics and the Relativity of Dasein] for which he received his PhD in 1937, he went on to find initial employment as a physical chemist for the company I.G. Farben in Leverkusen. During World War II, Bense was employed as mathematician and physicist in the laboratory for high-frequency technology and electro-medicine under the directorship of Hans Erich Hollmann in Berlin and Georgenthal/Thuringia from 1942 to 1945. After the war, Bense was appointed “Curator” – Chancellor – of the University of Jena in 1945. In addition to carrying out his administrative tasks at the university, Bense went on to complete his habilitation in Jena, in 1946. However, he was to abscond to West Germany as early as 1948. Bense, who by 1948 had written and edited a total of nineteen books, was very soon offered a new position: he was initially called to the Technical University of Stuttgart (today, the University of Stuttgart) in 1949 as guest professor before being appointed Professor of Philosophy and the Theory of Science at the same university in 1950. In addition to his professorship in Stuttgart, during the 1960s Bense taught at the Ulm School of Design (HfG), the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg, as well as the Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial and the Museo de Arte Modern, in Rio de Janeiro.
Max Bense retired in 1978. He died in Stuttgart on April 29, 1990, a few weeks after his 80th birthday.


Bense as Curator

Bense followed his literary and artistic inclinations already during his student days, drafting reviews, essays, and radio plays. As part of his activities as a professor at the Technical University Stuttgart, he began organizing exhibitions in Stuttgart, in 1957, at the Galerie Gänsheide 26, and later at the Studiengalerie [Stuttgart Universitary Gallery] which he founded as part of the general studies program at the University.
The idea of becoming an exhibition curator arose when Bense became an enthusiastic admirer of Almir Mavignier’s work. He went on to present the Brazilian artist’s paintings in November 1957 at the Galerie Gänsheide 26. In the autumn of 1959, Bense opened his own exhibition forum at the Technichal University Stuttgart: the Studiengalerie of the general studies program.
By 1981, Bense had curated a total of 85 exhibitions there. He was to present works by artists such as Augusto and Haroldo de Campos, Andreas Christen, Lygia Clark, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Bruno Giorgi, Eugen Gomringer, Almir Mavignier, François Morellet, Mira Schendel, Alfredo Volpi, and many others
Works by the Stuttgarter Gruppe [Group/School of Stuttgart], which formed around Max Bense and that was first and foremost committed to visual and concrete poetry, was presented in the Studiengalerie, as in the exhibition Konkrete Poesie International I, for example. It showed works, among others, by Reinhard Döhl, Helmut Heißenbüttel, Ernst Jandl, Gerhard Rühm, Diter Rot, and Timm Ulrichs.Owing to his early interest in computer generated literature and graphics, Bense was to assume an extraordinary role during the pioneering era of computer art: in 1959, in the journal augenblick for which he was editor, he published stochastic poems generated at the computer center of the Technical University Stuttgart on a ZUSE Z22 by Theo Lutz. In 1965, Bense presented Georg Nees’ computer graphics as part of the “Aesthetic Colloquium,” and, in issue no. 19 of the book series rot, published the programmatic text “projects of generative aesthetics”: with respect to the use of the computer as a tool for art and aesthetic research, Bense inspired artists and scientists throughout the world, such as Georg Nees, Frieder Nake, and Manfred Mohr in Germany, as well as Hiroshi Kawano in Japan. Inspired by Bense, the English curator Jasia Reichardt organized a seminal exhibition on computer art and cybernetics for the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) in London, in 1968.

Writings on Art

In addition to his engagement as exhibition curator, Bense wrote over 200 texts about artists and writers ranging from, among others, Max Bill, Lygia Clark, Alberto Giacometti, Almir Mavignier, Henri Michaux, Mira Schendel, and Paul Wunderlich, as well as on Alfred Andersch, Haroldo de Campos, Reinhard Döhl, Eugen Gomringer, Francis Ponge, Nathalie Sarraute, and Gertrude Stein.
Although, as theorist, Bense is foremost associated with concrete poetry, concrete art, and computer art, he did not restrict application of his information aesthetics to art forms which themselves thematize the material (language, color, form, and technology). He also published on representatives of figurative art, such as Paul Wunderlich or Alberto Giacometti.
Besides founding Studiengalerie, Bense set-up additional fora for the arts, namely, by founding the journal augenblick (1955) and initiating the series of publications rot, co-edited by him and Elisabeth Walther (from 1960), in which, among others, Helmut Heißenbüttel, Ernst Jandl, Friederike Mayröcker, and Diter Rot were also to publish their work.


The Exhibition

The exhibition presents publications by Max Bense as well as graphics, paintings, and sculptures by artists either important to him or whom he influenced, and is complemented by manuscripts and photographs as well as recordings of his radio play contributions and of television appearances. The exhibition shows the philosopher and his view of “art in an artificial world” (1956).

List of Artists

Curated by Margit Rosen, Jens Lutz, Miriam Stürner, Peter Weibel