O.K. Werckmeister (1934-2023) taught art history in the Department of Art, Design, and Art History from 1965 until 1984. Having studied art history, philosophy, and modern literature at the Freie Universität Berlin in the 1950s, he received his doctorate in 1958 with a dissertation on Romanesque manuscript illumination. He would work on both medieval and modern art and mass culture, with a special interest in the work of twentieth-century artist Paul Klee. Indeed, as summarized by one recent colleague, “his areas of interest were immensely broad, encompassing not only fine art and architecture, but also philosophy, literature, theater, film, photography, comics, modern music, and electronic rock music.”
Prof. Werckmeister led the department after 1971, becoming the driving force behind UCLA Art History’s association with the project of what Werckmeister called “radical art history,” the Marxist and social histories of art. In 1976, along with David Kunzle and T.J. Clark who had joined the department under his leadership, Werckmeister “organized a session on Marxism and Art History at the annual meeting of the College Art Association in Chicago. In the aftermath, a group of self-declared Marxists organized a Marxist Caucus as an affiliate organization which ran sessions at the CAA’s annual meetings from 1977-1980.” (See Andrew Benjamin’s obituary essay on Prof. Werckmeister, accessible online at https://www.historicalmaterialism.org/figure/otto-karl-werckmeister-1934-2023/).
Werckmeister’s now-canonical 1976 essay, “The Political Ideology of the Bayeux Tapestry” most clearly embodied his methodological and political commitments in the social history of art. His many publications include Der Deckel des Codex aureus von St. Emmeram, 1963; Irisch-northumbrische Buchmalerei des 8. Jahrhunderts und monastische Spiritualität, 1967; Ende der Ästhetik: Essays über Adorno, Bloch, das gelbe Unterseeboot und der eindimensionale Mensch, 1971; Ideologie und Kunst bei Marx und andere Essays, 1974; Versuche über Paul Klee, 1981; The Making of Paul Klee’s career, 1914–1920, 1989; Citadel Culture: The Beautiful Art of Decline in the Culture of the Eighties . 1989/1991; Icons of the Left: Benjamin and Eisenstein, Picasso and Kafka After the Fall of Communisim, 1997/1999; Das surrealistische Kriegsbild bei Max von Moos, 2005; Der Medusa-Effekt: Politische Bildstrategien seit dem 11 September 2001, 2005; and The Political Confrontation of the Arts in Europe from the Great Depression to the Second World War, 2020.
