Max Imdahl (September 6, 1925 in Aachen – October 11, 1988 in Bochum)^[1] was a German art historian specialized in art historical methodology and the interpretation of modern art after World War II.

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (July 2013) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the German article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 9,092 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Max Imdahl]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|de|Max Imdahl}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Imdahl studied studio painting, art history, archaeology and German literature at the University of Münster. For his paintings he won the Blevins Davis Prize, the most prestigious art contest of the postwar period in Germany,^[2] in 1950. In 1951 he completed his Ph.D. dissertation on the treatment of color in late Carolingian book illustration under Werner Hager. He worked as an assistant professor at the University of Münster for some years and wrote his Habilitationsschrift on Ottonian Art in 1961. In 1965, he was appointed professor of art history at the newly founded Ruhr Universität Bochum, where he was engaged in promoting modern art and in advising the university's modern art collection. From 1986 until his death, he was also a member of the German Academy of Arts.

Imdahl formulated a methodology he called "the Iconic," using an artwork's structure to determine its significance.^[3] His color analyses are characteristic of his approach. Furthermore, he primarily focused on examinations of the work of individual painters. Marxist interpreters accused him of using analytical methods that lacked historical awareness. They also criticized his preference for concrete (object-free) Western Art. In contrast, he found support for his ideas among philosophers and Catholic theologians.

• Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: Zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 185–187.
• Hans Robert Jauß, "In Memoriam Max Imdahl." In Max Imdahl: Gesammelte Schriften. vol. 3. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996, pp. 644–52.
• Gottfried Boehm, Karlheinz Stierle and Gundolf Winter, eds., Modernität und Tradition: Festschrift für Max Imdahl zum 60. Geburtstag. Munich: W. Fink, 1985.
• Hubertus Kohle, "Max Imdahl". In Ulrich Pfisterer, ed., Klassiker der Kunstgeschichte, vol. 2, Munich: C. H. Beck, 2008, pp. 217–225.

• Angeli Janhsen-Vukicevic, Gundolf Winter and Gottfried Boehm, eds., Max Imdahl: Gesammelte Schriften. 3 vols. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996.
• Picassos Guernica. Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1995.
• "Die Zeitstruktur in Poussins 'Mannalese'." In Clemens Fruh, Raphael Rosenberg and Hans-Peter Rosinski, eds., Kunstgeschichte, aber wie? Zehn Themen und Beispiele. Berlin: Reimer, 1989.
• Farbe: Kunsttheoretische Reflexionen in Frankreich. Munich: W. Fink, 1987.
• Giotto: Arenafresken: Ikonographie, Ikonologie, Ikonik. Munich: W. Fink, 1980.
• (with Gustav Vriesen), Robert Delaunay: Light and Color. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1969.
• (with Werner Hager and Günther Fiensch), Studien zur Kunstform. Munster: Böhlau, 1955.