Pieces of a Bigger Puzzle: Tracing the Evolution of Artworks and Conceptual Ideas in Artists’ Notebooks

Artist’s notes are a rich source for understanding the motivations behind an artwork, but have been largely neglected by both art history researchers and in scholarly editing. Using the digital edition of the notebooks of the Austrian artist Hartmut Skerbisch as a case study, this article discusses the various methodological approaches to versions in different disciplines—(digital) scholarly editing, musicology, and art history—and their transferability to artists’ notes. It explores where versions can be found in a single autograph, in contrast to multiple witnesses, and how they can be represented digitally. Special attention is given to the versioning of graphics—prominently used as form of expression in the relevant notebooks—proposing a model for their formal description which makes them more comparable and reveals different versions and, consequently, the artistic development process.