Die Verfügbarkeit des Teufels und die Kunst

The article demonstrates how art and technique in the patristic discourse of antiquity are interpreted as strategies of making things verfügbar and associating them with the devil: this is shown in two image conceptions of Christian-theological discourse which are embodied in an exemplary way, on the one hand, by the idolater and tyrannical world conqueror Ninus and, on the other, by the dominator of demons, Zoroaster (Zarathustra). A central hypothesis is that those image reflections which are shaped following a Christian model are not determined by the interest in their production: they focus on the receptional level on which art can be effective as the object of a specific perception ad malam or ad bonam parte