The aim of the proposed paper is to show that the founding of art history as a discipline is based on a certain blindness. When art historians write, the image disappears. The knowledge about the image is not the knowledge of the image, but rather the knwoledge of the text which constitutes the image as an object of art history. Digital media make this displacement obvious.

In a first step the paper tries to show that the separation of "exact" and "human" sciences is a result of the development of technical media and experimental psychology in the nineteenth century. According to Dilthey, hermeneutics are concerned with what is big and slow enough for human senses. In a second step (and referring to Foucault's concept of "archaeology") I will show which function images possess in art historical discourse. The third (and main) part will present fractal image-compression algorithms as art historic tools. Fractal image compression makes the traditional criteria of classification (iconography, gestalt, history) seem obsolete. In a conclusion I will stress Aby Warburg to show that some digital procedures are able to produce a knowledge out of the images themselves to which art history is not able to formulate a question.

Computers are able to "see" (a) what is too complex for human senses, and (b) what remains invisible for the established methodology of art history. Digital media obtain the chance for a critique of the fundamental suggestions of our discipline which suddenly become obvious.