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Breeding plants has a very long history that is little known. Even less known is its history as the one of an artistic discipline. Edward Steichen is the first artist who creates new organisms and exhibits these as art in the Museum of Modern Art in New York: Bio-art, long before Eduardo Kac in the 1990s coined the term. As a medium of horticulture plants and animals have been modified by aesthetic ideas. Much of this work is not seen as a work of art. Such as Edward Steichen's larkspur 'Connecticut Yankee', which can be purchased by about two dollars at the garden center today. But Edward Steichen is neither first nor the only artist who dealt with the hybridization and selection of ornamental plants: Claude Monet, Cedric Morris, William Caparne or Fernand Denis grow dahlias, poppies or irises, to name just a few examples. Many of these works are now lost. Many breeders, despite the utmost aesthetic awareness, do not position themselves within the reference system of art––an example is Karl Foerster. A comparison of the careers and practices of Steichen and Foerster is also profoundly questioning nowadays assignments to various disciplines. As a manifesto, this article thus follows the history of a heretofore marginalized art form.

type	research exposition
date	25/06/2014
last modified	25/06/2014
status	in progress
share status	public
affiliation	University of Applied Arts Vienna, Landscape Art
license	All rights reserved
url	https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/88036/88037

id	name	copyright	license
88071	Edward Steichen: Delphinium 'Connecticut Yankee'	Hannah Stippl 2013	All rights reserved
88070	Edward Steichen: Delphinium 'Connecticut Yankee'	Hannah Stippl 2013	All rights reserved
88069	Edward Steichen: Delphinium 'Connecticut Yankees'	Hannah Stippl 2013	All rights reserved
88064	Edward Steichen: Delphinium 'Connecticut Yankee'	Hannah Stippl 2013	All rights reserved
88062	Edward Steichen: Delphinium 'Connecticut Yankee'	Hannah Stippl 2013	All rights reserved
88056	Edward Steichen: Delphinium 'Connecticut Yankee'	Hannah Stippl 2013	All rights reserved
88050	Edward Steichen: Delphinium 'Connecticut Yankee'	Hannah Stippl 2013	All rights reserved
88049	Edward Steichen: Delphinium 'Connecticut Yankee'	Hannah Stippl 2013	All rights reserved
88048	Edward Steichen: Delphinium 'Connecticut Yankee'	Hannah Stippl 2013	All rights reserved
88047	Edward Steichen: Delphinium 'Connecticut Yankee'	Hannah Stippl 2013	All rights reserved
88043	Edward Steichen: Delphinium 'Connecticut Yankee'	Hannah Stippl	All rights reserved
88041	Edward Steichen: Delphinium 'Connecticut Yankee'	Hannah Stippl	All rights reserved
88039	Hannah Stippl	Hannah Stippl	All rights reserved

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Delphinium, Delphinium and More Delphinium––Edward Steichen, Karl Foerster and Their Obsession with Blue. About the Conceptual Art of Ornamental Plant Breeding. (last edited: 2014)

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