Turning an Old Masters’ Weltlandschaft into a Technological Tableau Vivant. Integrated Principles of Adaptation in the Video Installations of Lech Majewski and Lisa Reihana

Abstract

The boundaries demarcating the separation between painting and literature, as expressed by Lessing, certainly stopped being impermeable, but the question arises whether that old distinction is still useful to understand how visual artists today can employ different approaches to adaptation of a subject matter in their works. Considering time and space, bodies and actions, as necessary variables with which the visual arts are confronted even now, this chapter explores how principles of transmedial adaptation are employed by contemporary practitioners and what Lessing’s reflections can teach us to understand projects in media and installation art that recur to adaptive strategies. To further investigate this issue, this chapter addresses recent examples of transmedial adaptation that took place in the field of visual arts thanks to contemporary artists that resolved to transfer artworks by Old Masters into monumental video installations.