Neuerscheinung Images featuring Apes
After 1859
by Ulrich Blanché
Blanché's book uses a cultural studies approach to examine how images of apes and monkeys changed and migrated massively between 1859 and 2014 in art, caricature, film, pop culture, etc. It shows that apes do not appear as “animals per se,” but rather as different projection surfaces for human ideas—earlier as devils, sinners, or fools, and then, during the period under investigation, as mirrors, threats, or positive alter egos of humans. Works by Frémiet, Picabia, Kahlo, Bacon, Koons, Fairhurst, Banksy, Huyghe, and others are analyzed, as well as films and music videos. Images featuring apes negotiate boundaries between nature and culture, humans and animals, as well as power, gender, and identity, the West and the rest, etc.
Heidelberg: arthistoricum.net, 2026
Ulrich Blanché has been researching and teaching at the Institute for European Art History at Heidelberg University since 2012, and as a private lecturer there since 2021. He is an expert on street art history, consumption and art, and the motif of apes.
