Research Forum Archive

Groys as Curator
Research Forum Visiting Professor programme
Thursday, 18 January 2007
17.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Speaker(s): Boris Groys (Professor of Aesthetics, Art History and Media Theory, Academy for Design/Center for Art and Media Technology (Hfg/ZKM), Karlsruhe, Germany)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Sarah Wilson & Professor Patricia Rubin
Further information: From Fluchtpunkt Moskau, Aachen, 1994, to Dreamfactory Communism, Frankfurt, 2003 and Privatisations, KunstWerke, Berlin, 2004, Groys will discuss the practices of curating.

L'Esprit Nouveau and its objects:
Guillaume Apollinaire, André Breton and Le Corbusier
Research seminar: Modern and Contemporary
Monday, 22 January 2007
17.30, Seminar Room 1
Speaker(s): Caroline Cross (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professor Mignon Nixon

London seminar for Early Modern Visual Culture
Monday 22 January 2007
18.00, Seminar Room 3, History of Art Department, UCL, 39-41 Gordon Square, London WC1
Annibale Carracci and the Matter of Blindness
Speaker(s): Dr Bronwen Wilson (University of British Columbia; also author of The World in Venice: Print, the City and Early Modern Identity, University of Toronto Press, 2006)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Maria Loh, Sarah Monks, Rose Marie San Juan, Katie Scott
Further information: This seminar series has been organised jointly by the Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum and University College London.

Research seminar: Medieval Work in Progress
Thursday, 25 January 2007
17.30, Research Forum South Room
Duccio and devotion to the Virgin’s foot
Speaker(s): Dr Joanna Cannon (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professor John Lowden

Monday, 29 January 2007
17.30 – 18.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Holy Script-Holy Face-Holy Space: The 'Image-Paradigms' in Byzantium and Russia
Speaker(s): Alexei Lidov (founder and director, Research Center for Eastern Christian Culture, Moscow)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Further information: The paper suggests that several phenomena of Christian visual culture require a new notion of 'image-paradigms', which were not connected with the illustration of any specific texts, and from this point of view quite distinct from the iconographic device. At the same time the image-paradigm belonged to visual culture, it was visible and recognizable, but it was not formalized in any fixed state, either in a form of the pictorial scheme or in a mental construction. As an example, the image-paradigm of the Edessa gate will be discussed. Christ's Letter to Abgar (Holy Script), the Mandylion image (Holy Face) were displayed in that Holy Space of the passageway to Edessa. In the consciousness of medieval artists and their beholders these Script, Face and Space were fused in a single image, which influenced a lot not merely Byzantine and Russian iconography, but the entire Christian imagery

2007 London Seminar in Roman Art
Monday, 29 January 2007
17.30, Seminar Room 1
Domestic Dionysos? Telete on later Roman mosaics
Speaker(s): Katherine Dunbabin (McMaster University)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Elizabeth Bartman

Spring 2007 Friends Lecture Series
Tuesday, 30 January 2007
17.30 – 18.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Discoveries in Conservation: Out of the Rubble: a Masterpiece of 13th-century Mural Painting in Siena Cathedral
Speaker(s): Giorgio Bonsanti (Professor, University of Florence)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Aviva Burnstock and Sharon Cather
Further information: In the late 13th century, the lower church of Siena Cathedral was painted with a vast cycle of mural painting, including the Passion of Christ. This extraordinary scheme was a casualty of the ambitious rebuilding of the cathedral begun in the early 14th century, when the entire space was filled with rubble. Rediscovered only a few years ago, the paintings survive in a remarkable state of preservation thanks to their 700-year entombment, and provide major new insights into Sienese painting before Duccio.

Interaction and Isolation in the Art and Architecture of the Middle Ages
12th Annual Medieval Postgraduate Student Colloquium
Saturday, 3 February 2007
10.00 – 17.10, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Speaker(s): Roberta Ballestriero (Complutense University, Madrid); Laura Cleaver (Courtauld Institute); Delphine Hanquiez (Charles de Gaulle-Lille 3); Melena Hope (Courtauld Institute); Liesbet Kusters (Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven); Alicia Miguélez Cavero (University of León & Courtauld Institute); Tom Nickson (Courtauld Institute); Michalis Olympios (Courtauld Institute); Barbara Spanjol-Pandelo (University of Zagreb, Croatia); Géraldine Victoir (Courtauld Institute)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission  (No booking necessary)
Organised by: Dr Joanna Cannon
Further information: The conference will explore all aspects of the concepts of interaction and isolation, both in terms of the way that medieval works of art and architecture were commissioned and created, and with reference to the messages that they were intended to convey.
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Research seminar: Modern and Contemporary
Monday, 5 February 2007
17.30, Seminar Room 1
Wyndham Lewis and Henri Bergson
Speaker(s): Charlotte de Mille (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professor Mignon Nixon

Tuesday, 6 February 2007
16.30 – 17.30, Research Forum South Room
Zofia Kulik presents Kweikulik: Activities with Dobromierz, 1972-4.
Speaker(s): Zofia Kulik
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Sarah Wilson
Further information: Zofia Kulik, who will be showing in the forthcoming Kassel Documenta, is a Polish artist who has moved from performance as Kweikulik, with her husband Kwiek in the early 1970s, to photography and photomontage, including the major installation From Siberia to Cyberia. She has had major retrospectives in Poznan, Bochum and recently Ljubliana, Slovenia. Activities with Dobromierz were created with Kwiek and her baby son Maksio  (Maximilien-Dobromierz), in her apartment from 1972-4. They make an extraordinary comparison with the pyschoanalytically-informed work of Mary Kelly at the same time in the West, yet were, according to Kulik, mathematical and abstract in conception. Despite their inadvertent comedy and pathos – Dobromierz, a name which means `a good measure’, is surrounded with onions, knives and forks, and blocks of ice from the nearby Vistula river – they anticipate KwieKulik's later performance pieces, with devices such as the bucket on the baby boy’s head, and the use of sharp instruments. Overtones of potential sadism held at bay – or at least a disturbing spectacle made of the bewilderment of innocence – mirror KwieKulik’s adult critiques of the political regime at the time.

Spring 2007 Friends Lecture Series
Tuesday, 6 February 2007
17.30 – 18.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Discoveries in Conservation: The Discovery of Oil Sketches on the Reverse of 'Le Bassin de Jas de Bouffan'
Speaker(s): Gillian McMillan (Senior Conservator, Collections, Guggenheim Museum, New York)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Aviva Burnstock and Sharon Cather
Further information: The treatment of a landscape painting long accepted but recently questioned as being a painting by Cezanne is described. An X-radiograph revealed what appeared to be a still-life painting on the reverse of the double-lined original canvas. In an effort to attribute the painting the landscape painting was cleaned but the cleaning revealed insufficient new information to confirm the attribution to Cezanne. After serious consideration, a decision was made to remove the two linings to reveal the image on the reverse. Four small oil sketches were uncovered; a still life, a single bather, a faint landscape and a plant study. The double-sided painting was then re-stretched onto a newly designed double-sided stretcher. While there are many examples of composite sketches in pencil by Cezanne, to our knowledge this would be the only known example of a composite oil painting sketch by the artist.

CANCELLED: this seminar will be rescheduled to a later date
2007 London Seminar in Roman Art
Tuesday, 13 February 2007
17.00, Research Forum South Room
Some thoughts on the organisation of Roman mosaicists
Speaker(s): William Wootton (University College London)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Elizabeth Bartman

Research seminar: Medieval Work in Progress
Thursday, 15 February 2007
17.30, Research Forum South Room
Typology, function and reception of Embriachi altarpieces
Speaker(s): Michele Tomasi (University of Lausanne)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professor John Lowden

Research seminar: Modern and Contemporary
Monday, 19 February 2007
17.30, Seminar Room 1
Imagining Communities: The India Society, the "mystic East", and colonial modernity amongst artistic networks in Britain c. 1900-1914
Speaker(s): Sarah Turner (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professor Mignon Nixon

London seminar for Early Modern Visual Culture
Monday 19 February 2007
18.00, Seminar Room 3, History of Art Department, UCL, 39-41 Gordon Square, London WC1
‘Uomini della nostra età’: Tintoretto's Preposterous Modernity
Speaker(s): Dr Maria Loh (University College London)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Maria Loh, Sarah Monks, Rose Marie San Juan, Katie Scott
Further information: This seminar series has been organised jointly by the Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum and University College London

Spring 2007 Friends Lecture Series
Tuesday, 20 February 2007
17.30 – 18.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Discoveries in Conservation: The Lichfield Angel: a Spectacular Discovery of Anglo-Saxon Painted Sculpture
Speaker(s): Emily Howe (private conservator and Lichfield Angel Project Manager)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Aviva Burnstock and Sharon Cather
Further information: Dating from about the end of the 8th century, the Angel of the Annunciation excavated from the nave of Lichfield Cathedral is the most important example of Anglo-Saxon sculpture to have been discovered for many years. Probably from the shrine of St Chad, it was already broken and reburied by the 10th century, thus ensuring the survival of much of its superb polychromy.

Research Seminar: Renaissance
Wednesday, 21 February 2007
17.30, Research Forum South Room
Luminosity and Visibility: the Marvellous Lives of Jacopo Tintoretto
Speaker(s): Dr Maria Loh (University College, London)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professor Paul Hills

Inaugural lecture
Thursday, 22 February 2007
18.00 – 19.00, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Spero's Curses
Speaker(s): Professor Mignon Nixon (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Further information: “How do we,” asks psychoanalyst Juliet Mitchell, “account for the rampant sexuality of war”—for the fact that “sexual violence seems to ‘automatically’ accompany war violence”? Nancy Spero’s War Series (1966-1970) poses this very question,

2007 London Seminar in Roman Art
Monday, 26 February 2007
17.30, Seminar Room 1
Hadrian or not? The Portrait Type Tivoli Madrid
Speaker(s): Thorsten Opper (the British Museum)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Elizabeth Bartman

Spring 2007 Friends Lecture Series
Tuesday, 27 February 2007
17.30 – 18.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Discoveries in Conservation: Velázquez and technique: thoughts after the exhibition
Speaker(s): Larry Keith (Conservator, The National Gallery)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Aviva Burnstock and Sharon Cather
Further information: The preparation for the National Gallery’s recent Velázquez exhibition allowed the Conservators to look quite closely at his painting methods, particularly so with pictures from the Collection and many of those which were borrowed. The experience of the exhibition itself raised a number of interesting questions, however, many of them deliberately so - and this lecture will explore to what extent it is useful to consider such questions from the perspective of the study of painting technique.

CANCELLED
Research seminar: History of Photography
Wednesday, 28 February 2006
17.30, Research Forum South Room
A Century of Colour Photography, 1907- 2007
Speaker(s): Pamela Roberts (independent researcher, curator and writer; Curator of the Royal Photographic Society, Bath, 1982-2001)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Alexandra Moschovi and Barbara Thompson
Further information: Launched in autumn 2005 under the aegis of the Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum, the new research seminar on the History of Photography aims at becoming a discursive platform for the discussion and dissemination of current research on photography.  From art as photography and early photographic technology to ethnographic photographs and contemporary photography as art, the seminar welcomes contributions from researchers across the board, whether independent or affiliated with museums, galleries, archives, libraries or higher education. We hope that it will provide scholars with a challenging opportunity to present work in progress and test out new ideas.
The seminars will usually take place once a term, on Wednesday evenings at 5.30pm in the Research Forum. The papers, and formal discussion, will be followed by informal discussion over a glass of wine.

MARCH

Research seminar: Modern and Contemporary
Monday, 5 March 2007
17.30, Seminar Room 1
The Absence of Ugly and Incongruous Ornament': Bodley and Garner's Gothic Revival at Oxford
Speaker(s): Ayla Lepine (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professor Mignon Nixon

London seminar for Early Modern Visual Culture
Monday 5 March 2007
18.00, Seminar Room 3, History of Art Department, UCL, 39-41 Gordon Square, London WC1
The Daughter's Seduction: Reading the Greuze Girl
Speaker(s): Dr Emma Barker (Open University)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Maria Loh, Sarah Monks, Rose Marie San Juan, Katie Scott
Further information: This seminar series has been organised jointly by the Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum and University College London

Spring 2007 Friends Lecture Series
Tuesday, 6 March 2007
17.30 – 18.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Discoveries in Conservation: Francis Picabia: Self-Liberation and Reinvention. The Examination of Four Works in the Tate Collection: 'The Fig Leaf'(1922), 'The Handsome Pork Butcher', (c. 1924-6, and c. 1929-35), 'Taiti', (1930) and 'Portrait of a Doctor'
Speaker(s): Annette King (Paintings Conservator, Tate)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Aviva Burnstock and Sharon Cather
Further information: Always an artist to court controversy, Picabia was constantly reinventing himself and his work, actively avoiding developing a distinct style or fitting neatly into an "ism". The four works owned by the Tate bear witness to this philosophy, in their radically different appearance. There is documentary evidence of three of these paintings being exhibited by Picabia, then reworked in reaction to the public's or the "Establishment's" response. These re-workings are what we see today, although rather than obliterating the original, Picabia actively incorporated it into the new work. His reasons for this remain unexplained, but using close examination, X-rays, microscopy and analysis, the hidden works beneath can be related to the surface images, providing some fascinating insights into his materials and techniques, and his relationship with the contemporary Parisian art establishment.

Research seminar: History of Photography
Wednesday, 7 March 2007
17.30, Research Forum South Room
Photographs from Italy in the Writings of Henry James
Speaker(s): Professor Graham Smith (Head of School of Art History, University of St Andrews)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Alexandra Moschovi and Barbara Thompson
Further information: Launched in autumn 2005 under the aegis of the Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum, the new research seminar on the History of Photography aims at becoming a discursive platform for the discussion and dissemination of current research on photography.  From art as photography and early photographic technology to ethnographic photographs and contemporary photography as art, the seminar welcomes contributions from researchers across the board, whether independent or affiliated with museums, galleries, archives, libraries or higher education. We hope that it will provide scholars with a challenging opportunity to present work in progress and test out new ideas.
The seminars will usually take place once a term, on Wednesday evenings at 5.30pm in the Research Forum. The papers, and formal discussion, will be followed by informal discussion over a glass of wine.

2007 London Seminar in Roman Art
Monday, 12 March 2007
17.30, Research Forum South Room (note room change)
Death and Ambition. Sarcophagi and Social Distinction in Roman Culture
Speaker(s): Rita Amedick (independent scholar)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Elizabeth Bartman

Spring 2007 Friends Lecture Series
Tuesday, 13 March 2007
17.30 – 18.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Discoveries in Conservation: Bamiyan after the Taliban: Saving the Wall Paintings of One of the World’s Greatest Buddhist Sites
Speaker(s): Yoko Taniguchi (Research Fellow, Japanese Centre for International Cooperation in Conservation, National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Tokyo)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Aviva Burnstock and Sharon Cather
Further information: Known throughout the world for its monumental Buddhas, tragically destroyed by the Taliban in 2001, the wall paintings of Bamiyan that survive in some 50 caves are less well known but hold a central place in the early diffusion of Buddhist art throughout Central Asia and China. A major international programme to conserve the paintings has resulted in a reevaluation of their chronology (through carbon-14 dating) and their technology.

Visual Translation in Fifteenth-century France:
Laurent de Premierfait and Boccaccio
ICMA at the Courtauld lecture series 2007
Thursday, 15 March 2007
17.30 – 18.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Speaker(s): Professor Anne D. Hedeman (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, admission free. The lecture will be followed by a reception sponsored by Sam Fogg
Organised by: Dr Joanna Cannon
Further information: This lecture is presented by the Courtauld Institute of Art in association with the International Center of Medieval Art, New York and with the support of the Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum. The International Center of Medieval Art promotes the study of the visual arts of the Middle Ages in Europe. Its worldwide membership includes academics, museum professionals, students, and other enthusiasts. The lecture series ICMA at the Courtauld is made possible through the generosity of Dr. William M. Voelkle.
ICMA publishes a scholarly journal Gesta, a newsletter, and sponsors lectures and conference sessions. http://www.medievalart.org.

AAH 2007 Conference Preview
Friday, 16 March 2007
15.00 – 18.00, Research Forum Room South
The Research Forum has awarded travel scholarships to six Courtauld Institute of Art postgraduate students who will be giving research papers at the 2007 Annual Conference of the Association of Art Historians (AAH), in Belfast, 12-14 April. The recipients of the travel awards are Aliya Abykayeva-Tiesenhausen, Laura Cleaver, Patricia Hardy, Antigoni Memou, Rachel Wells and Hannah Williams. This conference preview will provide an opportunity to hear the papers to be given by these postgraduates and other Courtauld Institute fellows.
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Collecting and the Courtauld Collections
Workshop
Monday, 19 March 2007
12.30, Research Forum South Room
Speaker(s): Research Forum Research Assistants: MacKenzie Bennett, Katy Blatt, Sarah Burke, Caitlin Silberman, Vivian Wang
Ticket/entry details: Courtauld Institute of Art research active staff, postgraduate students and Associate Scholars
Further information: The Research Assistants of the Witt Library, Courtauld Gallery and Photographic Survey present their findings, which explore the following topics: Sir Robert Witt and the Witt Collection, 1931 (using the news cuttings volume from 1929-31); Duveen, Witt and the Witt collection, 1931 (using the Duveen archive, available in the Witt and the Witt photographic collection); Gambier-Parry and collecting between ca. 1850-1880 (using the archives in the Courtauld Gallery); aspects of an important English private collection (beginning with the holdings of the Photographic Survey).

CANCELLED: London seminar for Early Modern Visual Culture
Monday 19 March 2007
18.00, Seminar Room 3, History of Art Department, UCL, 39-41 Gordon Square, London WC1
Playing Along the Iconography of Gender: Anne-Louis Girodet’s Anacreon Illustrations
Speaker(s): Dr Mechthild Fend (University College London)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Maria Loh, Sarah Monks, Rose Marie San Juan, Katie Scott
Further information: This seminar series has been organised jointly by the Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum and University College London

Making the Planet Hospitable to Europe
Opening Lecture, London Festival of Europe
Monday, 19 March 2007
18.00 – 19.00, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre (followed by screenings of contemporary video-art from Romania)
Speaker(s): Zygmunt Bauman (Emeritus Professor, University of Leeds)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, admission free.
Organised by: the London Festival of Europe, with the particular collaboration of the Romanian Cultural Institute and the Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum
Further information: Suddenly, the fast globalised (this time, not by us only) planet feels inhospitable to Europe, to Europeans, European notions of good and decent life, European preferences and hopes for the future... Why is this watershed change happening? And must it happen? Can the process be reverted? Having lost its hegemonic position and living in the shadow of an overseas world empire but also in the increasingly polycentric world, Europe hesitates between two strategies: that of retrenchment and the planetary ambition and responsibility. Only the second contains a chance of making the planet hospitable to the values cherished and better or worse practiced by Europe. It so happens that those values rapidly gain in importance in our increasingly conflict-ridden world.
Zygmunt Bauman, the Polish-born sociologist who is best known for his work on modernity, the Holocaust, and post-modern consumer culture, will address these issues in this opening lecture for the London Festival of Europe. Professor Bauman’s many books include Liquid Modernity and Europe: An Unfinished Adventure.

Screenings of contemporary video-art from Romania
London Festival of Europe
Tuesday, 20 March 2007
14.30 – 15.00 and 18.00 – 18.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, admission free.
Organised by: the London Festival of Europe, with the particular collaboration of the Romanian Cultural Institute and the Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum

Looking East: Contemporary Art From Eastern Europe
London Festival of Europe
Tuesday, 20 March 2007
15.00 – 18.00, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Speaker(s): Matei Bejenaru (independent curator, artist and founder of the Vector Association, Iasi, Romania), Tomek Kitlinski (independent curator and author of The Stranger is Ourselves), Pavel Leszkowicz (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland), Olga Mala (curator, Prague City Gallery, Czech Republic), Sarah Wilson (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, admission free.
Organised by: the London Festival of Europe, of which the Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum is a partner
Further information: The accession of former communist states from the Eastern block into the European Union has been the cause of much debate, and one of the most significant events in the European political panorama of the last decade. How are artists from Eastern Europe negotiating their new European identity in the context of their regional political history?
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Lucio Fontana
Panel Discussion
Thursday 22 March 2007
17.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Speaker(s): Sir Nicholas Serota (Director, Tate); Professor Enrico Crispolti (Curator of the Catalogue Raisonne); Dr Luca Massimo Barbero (Associated Curator, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, admission free
Organised by: Deborah Swallow (Marit Rausing Director, Courtauld Institute of Art, London) and Nini Ardemagni Laurini (President, Fondazione Lucio Fontana, Milan)
Further information: A panel discussion on Lucio Fontana and the presentation of the new updated edition of the Catalogue Raisonne of sculptures, paintings, environments by Lucio Fontana, published by Skira. The discussion will be followed by drinks in the Front Hall.