OSK PhD seminar Paradigms in the History of Art
Dates: November 20 & 27, 2020
Time: 14:00-17:00
Venue: Universiteit Utrecht
ECTS: The course represents a course load of 2.5 ECTS. A certificate will be provided by the OSK after successful participation
Convenors: Prof. dr. Hanneke Grootenboer (Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen) and Dr. Victor M. Schmidt (Universiteit Utrecht)
Open to: This course is for OSK PhD researchers only
Instruction language: All discussions and presentations will be in English
Registration: Deadline for applications: 1 November 2020
Art out of Time: Transhistorical Approaches
Does an artwork only belong to the period in which it is created, or should it be interpreted in our present today’s context? To what extent are there formal and conceptual links between contemporary art and works from the past? Are combined presentations of past and present art works, as is increasingly done in current museum exhibitions, meaningful or even necessary? How do works from the past inform our present modes of looking and interpretation?
This seminar will address these and related issues (including anachronism, period eye, and reception theory) by examining current debates on the relationship of historical to modern art and looking at recent transhistorical museum exhibitions (Base in the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; The Shape of Time, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien, 2018 and all exhibitions in the Frans Hals Museum). Contemporary art based on masterpieces of the past (such as of Fiona Tan, Francis Alÿs and Kara Walker) will also be discussed.
Literature
Amy Powell, ‘Preface’ to Depositions: Scenes from the Later Medieval Church and the Modern Museum (MIT Press, 2012), 9-19.
Alexander Nagel, Medieval Modern: Art Out of Time (Thames & Hudson, 2014), chapters 1-6 (pp. 7-68).
Jean-Hubert Martin, “Visual Thinking: ‘Carambolages’ at Grand Palais Paris”, The Transhistorical Museum: Mapping the Field, E. Wittocx, Ann Demeester, eds., (Valiz, 2018), 146-157.
(Preferably in combination with the exhibition catalogue Carambolages, ed. Jean-Hubert Martin, 2 vols. and leporello, Paris : Réunion des musées nationaux, 2016)
Further reading
- Wittocx, Ann Demeester, eds., The Transhistorical Museum: Mapping the Field, (Valiz, 2018).
Hal Foster ‘Preposterous Timing’, review of Medieval Modern: Art out of Time by Alexander Nagel and Depositions: Scenes from the Late Medieval Church and the Modern Museum by Amy Knight Powell in: The London Review of Books, Vol. 34 No. 21 · 8 November 2012.
‘Interview with Alexander Nagel’ & ‘Interview with Hanneke Grootenboer’ in: The Transhistorical Museum: Mapping the Field, E. Wittocx, Ann Demeester, eds., (Valiz, 2018), 38-47 and 82-95.
Keith Moxey & Dan Karlholm, “Introduction: Telling Art’s Time” in Time in the History of Art: Temporality, Chronology and Anachronology (Routledge, 2018), 1-10.
Christopher Wood & Alexander Nagel, “Toward a New Model of Renaissance Anachronism” in The Art Bulletin, 87:3 (September 2005): 403-32.
Keith Moxey, Visual Time: The Image in History (Duke University Press, 2013).
Paul Good, Hermes oder die Philosophie der Insel Hombroich = Hermes, or the philosophy of the Island Hombroich, Neuss : Insel Hombroich “Kunst parallel zur Natur”, Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Musik, Poesie mbH, 1987.
Hanneke Grootenboer, “Every Period Gets the Medievalism it Deserves”, review of Alexander Nagel, Medieval Modern: Art out of Time (2012), and Amy Knight Powell, Depositions: Scenes from the Later Medieval Church and the Modern Museum (2012), Oxford Art Journal, Volume 36, Issue 1, 1 March 2013, Pages 137–142, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxartj/kcs041