Research Forum Visiting Professor programme

Mategna and the Sacred Image

 Thursday, 10 January 2008
17.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre

Speaker(s): Stephen Campbell (Chair, Department of the History of Art, John Hopkins University)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professors Christopher Green and Patricia Rubin
Further information: In this lecture, Professor Campbell explores Mantegna’s religious painting which conceives the relation between viewer and viewed, subject and object, in terms of two kinds of transaction. The first is active vision, the gaze that reaches out to explore and even to re-shape the world, to make a world of its own. Such a power of vision seeks to explore and describe surfaces, to touch, to penetrate, to excavate, and is engaged by the emphatic tactility of Mantegna’s pictorial world. But Mantegna’s perspective structures imply a condition of passive vision, where the viewer is conceived above all as the recipient of visual sense impressions or species: here, it is rather the world that imposes itself upon the beholder. Mantegna’s paintings sometimes imply an embedded gaze, producing the disquieting sense that they look back at their beholder. A well-known case is the “oculus” of the Camera Picta, but the San Zeno altarpiece of circa 1460 offers another instance of a gaze operating from within the painting itself. Here, the sense of a fixed gaze that meets that of the viewer stands in marked contrast to the more general sense that the figures in the altarpiece studiously avoid the beholder’s look. The paper will consider the virtual gaze of the San Zeno altarpiece in terms of Mantegna’s early religious painting, according to the conditions of the site and commission - the ancient Benedictine abbey church of San Zeno in Verona - and according to preoccupations of the Benedictine reform.
His lectures and seminars for the Research Forum in January 2008 explore the rise of artistic self-consciousness about the idea of tradition in the work of several North Italian artists in the period 1450-1550, especially as it is shaped by concerns such as the conflicted relation to Rome and Central Italian art, by initiatives of religious and artistic reform, and by the conception of painting as a form of poetic invention and creative imitation. Lectures will deal with two major early projects of the 1450s by Andrea Mantegna - the San Zeno altarpiece and the Ovetari Chapel. Seminars will explore the impact of Giorgione on Venetian art in terms of a dialectic between two conflicting models of poetry, as well as the rise of a new modern idiom of sacred painting which seeks to turn away from the new artistic canons established in Rome and Venice.
Stephen J. Campbell is Professor and Chair of History of Art at The Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d'Este (Yale, 2006) and Cosmè Tura of Ferrara. Style, Politics and the Renaissance City 1450-1495 (Yale, 1997), as well as articles on Michelangelo, Mantegna, Giorgione, Bronzino and the Carracci.

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London seminar for Early Modern Visual Culture

Dialogues with Enlightenment? Order and Knowledge in Print Culture During the French Restoration

 Monday, 14 January 2008
18.00, Seminar Room 3; Room 124; First floor, History of Art Department, University College London, 39-41 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD

Speaker(s): Susannah Walker (UCL)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Mechthild Fend (m.fend@ucl.ac.uk), Denis Ribouillault (denis.ribouillault@courtauld.ac.uk)
Further information: This seminar series has been organised jointly by the Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum and University College London



Research Forum Visiting Professor programme seminar

Matter, Sensation and the Afterlife of Giorgione in Venetian Painting

 Tuesday, 15 January 2008
17.30, Research Forum South Room

Speaker(s): Stephen Campbell (Chair, Department of the History of Art, John Hopkins University)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professors Christopher Green and Patricia Rubin
Further information: By 1500, in Venice, painting was an art that declared itself to be engaged with sensuous bodies enfolded by a sensory world. The very naturalism of Venetian art - in the hands of Giorgione, Titian, Sebastiano and others - proceeds in large measure from its concern with the interconnectedness of body and physical world, a connectedness that makes itself felt in the body, and one that could be observed and described. This seminar by Professor Campbell will be concerned with the representational possibilities of the body and landscape for rendering the natural life of the body in early sixteenth century Venice, when it was by no means a given in 1500 that a depicted landscape could simply stand for “nature”. In particular, the impact of Giorgione’s painting known as “La Tempesta” will be considered, in the light of its transformation in works by Giulio Campagnola and Titian, and of a contemporary philosophical materialism inspired by Lucretius and largely manifest in poetry.
Professor Stephen J Campbell’s lectures and seminars for the Research Forum in January 2008 explore the rise of artistic self-consciousness about the idea of tradition in the work of several North Italian artists in the period 1450-1550, especially as it is shaped by concerns such as the conflicted relation to Rome and Central Italian art, by initiatives of religious and artistic reform, and by the conception of painting as a form of poetic invention and creative imitation. Lectures will deal with two major early projects of the 1450s by Andrea Mantegna - the San Zeno altarpiece and the Ovetari Chapel. Seminars will explore the impact of Giorgione on Venetian art in terms of a dialectic between two conflicting models of poetry, as well as the rise of a new modern idiom of sacred painting which seeks to turn away from the new artistic canons established in Rome and Venice.
He is Professor and Chair of History of Art at The Johns Hopkins University and is the author of The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d'Este (Yale, 2006) and Cosmè Tura of Ferrara. Style, Politics and the Renaissance City 1450-1495 (Yale, 1997), as well as articles on Michelangelo, Mantegna, Giorgione, Bronzino and the Carracci.



Graduate (PhD) Symposium

Conversations

14.00 – 17.30, Thursday, 17 January 2008
14.00 – 18.00, Friday, 18 January 2008
Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre

Speaker(s): Laura Cleaver, Charlotte De Mille, Robert Hradsky, Nicole Lawrence, Ayla Lepine, Caroline Levitt, Tom Nickson, Michalis Olympios, Edward Payne, Philippa Simpson, Sarah Turner, Esmé Whittaker
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Laura Cleaver, Charlotte de Mille, Caroline Levitt, Edward Payne, Esme Whittaker
Further information: The Courtauld Institute of Art Postgraduate Symposium is an opportunity for third year PhD students to present their work and demonstrate the diverse range of subjects and approaches being explored by current students. This year's theme, Conversations, reflects an element of the research process as well as the possibilities for productive exchanges between students working on varied material from different time periods. For more information contact one of the following: laura.cleaver@courtauld.ac.uk, charlotte.demille@courtauld.ac.uk, caroline.levitt@courtauld.ac.uk, edward.payne@courtauld.ac.uk, esme.whittaker@courtauld.ac.uk
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Research Forum Visiting Professor programme

Mantegna’s Hagiography: Exemplarity and Irony

Monday, 21 January 2008
17.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre

Speaker(s): Stephen Campbell (Chair, Department of the History of Art, John Hopkins University)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professors Christopher Green and Patricia Rubin
Further information: Mantegna’s Paduan mural cycle devoted to the lives of St. Christopher and St. James can be seen as an attempt to reorganize the Legenda tradition of medieval hagiography by submitting it to the requirements of a humanist historiography where episodes are selectively emphasized in accordance with their value as exempla. The stories in the Legenda are characterized more by marvels than by exempla: supernatural healings, exorcisms, repeated recoveries from spectacularly bloody martyrdoms. In earlier Paduan redactions of the lives of the same saints, such moments of wonder are given free rein. Mantegna’s frescoes can be seen as a critical reduction of these earlier series, and they pointedly make visible, through quotation, their own transposition of earlier models. The pictorial organization underscores the exemplary value (piety, charity, fortitude) of the events depicted; at the same time, the stylistic language of classical gravitas, and the evocation of Padua’s classical origins through sculpture, architecture and military paraphenalia, opens an ironic dimension that creates a dilemma for the beholder, who must assume the enterprise of critical reader. The paradox is that while all’antica style is a deployment of signs that allow the legend to be cast in positive exemplary terms, these signs of authority are themselves undermined. The Trial of St. James takes place in a space of the most utopian order and decorum, reinforced by the statuesque bodies of the magistrate and Roman soliders, and before a triumphal arch with reliefs of sacrifice. Yet this imaging of classical order is now counter-exemplary: iustitia, sacrificatio, triumphus demand to be read as their own negative antitypes, against the grain of their exemplary significance.
Professor Stephen J Campbell’s lectures and seminars for the Research Forum in January 2008 explore the rise of artistic self-consciousness about the idea of tradition in the work of several North Italian artists in the period 1450-1550, especially as it is shaped by concerns such as the conflicted relation to Rome and Central Italian art, by initiatives of religious and artistic reform, and by the conception of painting as a form of poetic invention and creative imitation. Lectures will deal with two major early projects of the 1450s by Andrea Mantegna - the San Zeno altarpiece and the Ovetari Chapel. Seminars will explore the impact of Giorgione on Venetian art in terms of a dialectic between two conflicting models of poetry, as well as the rise of a new modern idiom of sacred painting which seeks to turn away from the new artistic canons established in Rome and Venice.
He is Professor and Chair of History of Art at The Johns Hopkins University and is the author of The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d'Este (Yale, 2006) and Cosmè Tura of Ferrara. Style, Politics and the Renaissance City 1450-1495 (Yale, 1997), as well as articles on Michelangelo, Mantegna, Giorgione, Bronzino and the Carracci.



Research Forum Visiting Professor programme seminar

Sacred Naturalism: Devotional Painting and the Modern Manner in Brescia Before the Council of Trent

 Tuesday, 22 January 2008
17.30, Research Forum South Room

Speaker(s): Stephen Campbell (Chair, Department of the History of Art, John Hopkins University)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professors Christopher Green and Patricia Rubin
Further information: From the 1520s onwards there are signs of a growing concern in Italy about the very possibility of a Christian art. On the one hand, the crisis in Western Christianity mandated the creation of a new visual culture, in a range of media, to promulgate doctrinal orthodoxy, whatever that was understood to be. On the other, a rapid transformation in the professionalization of artists had led to the widespread sense that there was something called “art,” which might have its own claims and that these claims would create tension with an increasingly instrumental role assigned to images. Art was increasingly understood in terms of its fictive character, as a process of invention characteristic of poetry. Painting was understood not just to be the act of picturing or illustrating but as a particular discursivity manifest in the systematic imitation of other art, the pursuit of ideal beauty, and a self-conscious command of the resources of style. The focus of the presentation will be a large typological fresco of “the Avenging Crucifix” painted by Garofalo in Ferrara in 1523, and on two Eucharistic chapels decorated with Old and New Testament imagery by the artists Moretto and Romanino in the 1520s and 1540s.
Professor Stephen J Campbell’s lectures and seminars for the Research Forum in January 2008 explore the rise of artistic self-consciousness about the idea of tradition in the work of several North Italian artists in the period 1450-1550, especially as it is shaped by concerns such as the conflicted relation to Rome and Central Italian art, by initiatives of religious and artistic reform, and by the conception of painting as a form of poetic invention and creative imitation. Lectures will deal with two major early projects of the 1450s by Andrea Mantegna - the San Zeno altarpiece and the Ovetari Chapel. Seminars will explore the impact of Giorgione on Venetian art in terms of a dialectic between two conflicting models of poetry, as well as the rise of a new modern idiom of sacred painting which seeks to turn away from the new artistic canons established in Rome and Venice.
He is Professor and Chair of History of Art at The Johns Hopkins University and is the author of The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d'Este (Yale, 2006) and Cosmè Tura of Ferrara. Style, Politics and the Renaissance City 1450-1495 (Yale, 1997), as well as articles on Michelangelo, Mantegna, Giorgione, Bronzino and the Carracci.



Medieval Student Work in Progress Seminar

Geometry in the Art and Architecture of the Middle Ages

Thursday, 24 January 2008
13.30 – 17.00, Research Forum South Room (note timing)

Speaker(s): Laura Cleaver, Heidi Gearhart, Marie-Pierre Gelin, Jane Heinrichs, Tom Nickson, Michalis Olympios, Stuart Whatling
Ticket/entry details: Open to all. However, it is necessary to register for this event as numbers will be limited. To register and for more information please contact Laura Cleaver (laura.cleaver@courtauld.ac.uk)
Organised by: Laura Cleaver
Further information: This round table session will bring together postgraduate students and scholars working on a diverse range of aspects of medieval art and architecture. Speakers will present brief papers on focused topics to facilitate discussion about the role of geometry in medieval artistic practice. If successful, this session will mark the beginning of a series of events on this theme.
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Research seminar: Modern and Contemporary

Rossetti and Burne-Jones: Collectors of Old Master Photographs

Monday, 28 January 2008
17.30, Research Forum South Room

Speaker(s): Venetia Harlow (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Caroline Arscott


2008 London Seminar in Roman Art

And the Arch Marches On: Changing Iconographies on Stone Arches in the Northwest Roman Provinces

Monday, 28 January 2008
17.30, Seminar Room 1

Speaker(s): Stacey McGowen (University of Oxford)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Peter Stewart and Amanda Claridge


courtauld generations

Writing Art History

Tuesday 29 January 2008
17.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre

Speaker(s): Dr Joanna Cannon (Courtauld Institute of Art), Professor Eric Fernie (former Director, Courtauld Institute of Art (1995-2002) and Honorary Fellow), Professor Griselda Pollock (University of Leeds, and Director, Centre CATH (Cultural Analysis, Theory & History), Sarah Whitfield (freelance curator and art historian)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professor Christopher Green
Further information: As part of The Courtauld’s 75th anniversary celebrations this year, The Courtauld has taken as a theme ‘Writing Art History’, which offers a chance critically to reflect on the changing role of the art historian at this moment of celebration; a theme that will continue into the next academic year. One among this diverse programme of events is Courtauld Generations, a series of three public, round-table discussions between Courtauld alumni. Together, these discussions will cover the chronological period from the sixties to the present, and explore the Institute's position within, and contribution to, the discipline and professional field of art history, as well as putting together elements of an oral history of student experience since 1960.
Chaired by Professor Christopher Green (Courtauld Institute of Art), this first panel will explore the period from 1960 to 1975, a period of growth and innovation for the Courtauld and of expansion for the discipline of art history as a whole. These years saw the launching of the Institute’s M.A. in the history of art, as well as the foundation of new faculties in such new universities as Sussex and East Anglia, opening the way to fresh approaches in a still young university subject. It also saw important developments in art publishing and in exhibition making that offered an unprecedented range of opportunities.
This series is supported by the Friends of The Courtauld Institute of Art.


Research seminar: Medieval Work in Progress

Politics and Devotion at Beauvais Cathedral: Two Wall Paintings in Cardinal Cholet's Chapel, ca. 1290 - ca. 1340

Thursday, 31 January 2008
17.30, Research Forum South Room

Speaker(s): Geraldine Victoir (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professor John Lowden


FEBRUARY



 13th Annual Medieval Postgraduate Student Colloquium

Communication and Exchange in the Art and Architecture of the Middle Ages

Saturday, 2 February 2008
09.55 – 18.10, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre (with registration from 9.30am)
Speaker(s): Joanne Allen (University of Warwick), Emily Jane Anderson (University of Glasgow), Eleni Dimitriadou (Courtauld Institute of Art), Stefania Gerevini (Courtauld Institute of Art), Milena Grabacic (Exeter College, University of Oxford), Toby Huitson (University of Kent at Canterbury), Mayumi Ikeda (Courtauld Institute of Art), Emanuele Lugli (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University), Elizabeth Minas (Courtauld Institute of Art), Aude Morelle (Université Lille 3-Charles-de-Gaulle), Maria Paschali (Courtauld Institute of Art), Stuart Whatling (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Joanna Cannon and Laura Cleaver
Further information: The Annual Postgraduate Student Colloquium provides an opportunity for doctoral students to present their research in a professional and friendly setting. The Colloquium welcomes those who are presenting their work for the first time and more experienced speakers. This year twelve speakers will address the theme of Communication and Exchange in the Art and Architecture of the Middle Ages. Topics to be covered include exchanges between geographical areas and in particular places, communications between patrons and artists, and communication (in many forms) by viewers with works of art and architecture. We are pleased to welcome speakers from Britain, Europe and America. The organisers  would like to thank the Research Forum of the Courtauld Institute for their generous sponsorship of this event. For more information please contact Laura Cleaver (laura.cleaver@courtauld.ac.uk)
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London seminar for Early Modern Visual Culture

Playing Along the Iconography of Gender. Anne-Louis Girodet’s Anacreon Illustrations

Monday, 4 February 2008
18.00, Seminar Room 3; Room 124; First floor, History of Art Department, University College London, 39-41 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD

Speaker(s): Dr Mechthild Fend (UCL)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Mechthild Fend (m.fend@ucl.ac.uk), Denis Ribouillault (denis.ribouillault@courtauld.ac.uk)
Further information: This seminar series has been organised jointly by The Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum and University College London


Writing Art History

Neuroarthistory: Present, Past and Future

Tuesday, 5 February 2008
17.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre

Speaker(s): Professor John Onians (Professor Emeritus, University of East Anglia)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Catherine Grant
Further information: Art historians have long tried to get inside the minds of artists, patrons and viewers. Neuroscientists can now help them to do so. Each day we learn more about the neural linkages involved in the making and viewing of art. We also know more about how the brain is formed and how such formation affects an individual’s art-related behaviour. Neuroarthistory is a powerful new tool. In the future it will transform our understanding of art. But neuroarthistory’s past is also important, as is revealed in John Onians’ new book Neuroarthistory. From Alberti and Pliny to Baxandall and Zeki. Onians tells the story of how twenty-five different earlier writers on art already made some use of knowledge of the brain, and even surprisingly anticipated some of the very latest discoveries. The lecture reviews this extraordinary story of two and half thousand years of unfolding insights, before looking forward to neuroarthistory’s promising future.
John Onians is Professor Emeritus in the School of World Art Studies at the University of East Anglia. He has taught at Syracuse University, New York, and UCLA in the United States, as well as at Amsterdam and Leiden universities, the Netherlands, and at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, and was first Director of Research and Academic Programs at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown Mass.
He has been a Getty Scholar and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, Washington D.C., at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Germany, and at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown Mass, and he has lectured at many universities in Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Germany, Holland, India, Japan, New Zealand and the United States.
He was the founding Editor of Art History, and has published several books, including Art and Thought in the Hellenistic Age. The Greek World View 350-50BC, London 1979, Bearers of Meaning. The Classical Orders in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Princeton 1988, and Classical Art and the Cultures of Greece and Rome, Yale 1999. He has edited a volume of essays presented to Sir Ernst Gombrich on his 85th birthday, Sight and Insight. Essays on Art and Culture, London 1994 and the first ever Atlas of World Art, 2004. A collection of his articles and papers appeared as Art, Culture and Nature. From Art History to World Art Studies, Pindar Press, 2007. Following Neuroarthistory. From Aristotle and Pliny to Baxandall and Zeki, Yale 2007, he is now writing a book on the neuroarthistory of Europe.


EAST WING COLLECTION VIII

‘Know Thyself’, Art and Anatomy: a Discontinued History

Thursday, 7 February 2008
13.00 Research Forum South Room

Speaker(s): Dr Raphael Cuir (art historian)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Sarah Wilson
Further information: In the Renaissance, anatomists transformed the human body, the ‘divine Masterpiece’, into  one of the instruments of transcendence, granting anatomy an extraordinary prestige via a tour de force which transformed the destruction of the human body into the knowledge of God. They achieved this using art, images of a rhetoric of self-dissection.
Today, numerous artists give a new meaning to the ‘know thyself’ of anatomical knowledge. At a time when the individual subject is in search of a new definition of himself, he or she seeks for the answer in the interior folds of the body, as in the works of Marc Quinn, Gilles Barbier, Orlan or Bernar Venet, anatomical dissection is no longer a viable practice, nor the dissected body the incarnation of a scientific knowledge given as a truth. Human anatomy now offers the possibilities of radical transformation and manipulation.
Dr. Raphael Cuir is a Paris-based art historian and writer whose book, The Renaissance of Anatomy, will be published by the Edwin Mellen Press in 2008. His research focuses on anatomy and art from the Renaissance to the present. In 1999 he created the first art history TV Channel on the internet, featuring interviews of some of the most prominent art historians, curators, artists, philosophers, writers, such as Jean Baudrillard, Georges Didi-Huberman, Catherine Millet, Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, Daniel Arasse, Alfred Pacquement, Orlan and  Jochen Gerz. He spent two years at the Getty Research Institute (2005-2007) and taught at the Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles. He collaborates regularly with Art Press magazine for whom his is editing the special ‘Cyborgs’ issue.


ORLAN (artist)

This is my Body, This is my Software: between Western Culture and Non-western Culture

Thursday, 7 February 2008
17.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre

 

Image
Black virgin wielding a white cross and a black cross, 1983 © ORLAN Studio Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Sarah Wilson
Further information: This lecture was first given during ORLAN’s period as a guest scholar at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, where the annual theme was ‘Religion and Ritual’. Since 1964, ORLAN has been active in photography, video, sculpture, installation and performance: her work features prominently in performance histories and psychoanalytic art writing. In 1977, The Artist’s Kiss performance during the FIAC international art fair in Paris created a huge scandal. In 1978 she created the International Symposium of Performance in Lyon. In 1982; she founded the first on-line magazine of contemporary art Art-Accès-Revue on the Minitel, France’s internet precursor. From 1990 to 1993 she conducted her series of nine performances – surgical operations, filmed and broadcast in institutions throughout the world, including the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Sandra Gering Gallery in New York. Her series of major retrospectives culminated last May at the Museum of Modern Art, Saint-Etienne, her native city, for her 60th birthday.
The Self-Hybridizations series, using digital photography and begun in 1998, challenged the construction of ‘beauty’ in various civilizations, focussing on pre-Columbian, African, American-Indian and Chinese cultures. ORLAN is currently exhibiting in SK-interfaces (FACT, Liverpool), in SKIN (Osaka), and the retrospective WACK! Art and the feminist revolution currently in Washington. She has featured in the Courtauld East Wing Collection and visited the Institute several times.
ORLAN exhibits internationally and teaches at the Ecole National Supérieure d’Arts, Paris-Cergy.
www.ORLAN.net


Research seminar: Modern and Contemporary

Weaving Loss: Hair in the Works of Ann Hamilton, Mona Hatoum, Doris Salcedo and Anne Wilson


Monday, 11 February 2008
17.30, Research Forum South Room
Speaker(s): Shir Aloni (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Caroline Arscott


2008 London Seminar in Roman Art

Image in Distress: The Meleager Sarcophagus in Paris and the Problem of Visual Narrative

Monday, 11 February 2008
17.30, Seminar Room 1
Speaker(s): Dr. Katharina Lorenz (University of Nottingham)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Peter Stewart and Amanda Claridge


Research seminar: History of Photography

A So-Called School: Six Vancouver Artists, 1968-1992

Wednesday, 13 February 2008
17.30, Research Forum South Room
Speaker(s): Cliff Lauson (PhD candidate, History of Art, UCL, and Curatorial Assistant, Tate Modern)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Alexandra Moschovi and Barbara Thompson
Further information: The History of Photography research seminar series aims to be 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, and endeavours to provide scholars with a challenging opportunity to present work in progress and test out new ideas.
The seminars usually take place once a term, on Wednesday evenings at 5.30pm in the Research Forum. The papers, and formal discussion, are followed by informal discussion over a glass of wine.
Contact: Dr Alexandra Moschovi (alexandra.moschovi@courtauld.ac.uk) or Barbara Thompson (barbara.thompson@courtauld.ac.uk)


Research seminar: Medieval Work in Progress

Image, Identity, and Initiation in Twelfth-Century Novara

Thursday, 14 February 2008
17.30, Research Forum South Room
Speaker(s): Dr Lucy Donkin (University College, Oxford)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professor John Lowden


courtauld generations

Writing Art History

Tuesday 19 February 2008
17.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Speaker(s): Penelope Curtis (Henry Moore Foundation), Professor Liz James (University of Sussex), Professor David Solkin (Courtauld Institute of Art), Dr Alison Wright (University College London)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professor Christopher Green
Further information: As part of The Courtauld’s 75th anniversary celebrations this year, The Courtauld has taken as a theme ‘Writing Art History’, which offers a chance critically to reflect on the changing role of the art historian at this moment of celebration; a theme that will continue into the next academic year. One among this diverse programme of events is Courtauld Generations, a series of three public, round-table discussions between Courtauld alumni. Together, these discussions will cover the chronological period from the sixties to the present, and explore the Institute's position within, and contribution to, the discipline and professional field of art history, as well as putting together elements of an oral history of student experience since 1960.
Chaired by Dr Joanna Woodall (Courtauld Institute of Art), this second panel will explore the period from 1975 to 1990, a period when the discipline was challenged by new methodologies and fields of enquiry with new force, and when for some the Courtauld represented resistance to change. Among topics to be raised will be the actual diversity of experience within the Institute, and the importance of its continuing commitment to the material object as the focus of art historical work.
This series is supported by the Friends of The Courtauld Institute of Art.


Research seminar: Renaissance

The Master of Rimini and Early Alabaster Imagery in the Netherlands


Wednesday, 20 February 2008
17.30, Research Forum South Room
Speaker(s): Dr Kim Woods (Open University)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professor Paul Hills


Conference

Histories of Violence: Italy and the Mediterranean c 1300-1700


Saturday, 23 February 2008

10.00 – 17.00, Research Forum South Room (registration from 09.30)

Speaker(s): Samuel Bibby (UCL), Sara Gonzalez (Institute of Musical Research), Scott Nethersole (Courtauld Institute of Art), Thomas Nickson (Courtauld Institute of Art), Edward Payne (Courtauld Institute of Art), Per Rumberg (Courtauld Institute of Art) and Anthea Stevens (Courtauld Institute of Art)

Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission, but it is essential to book in advance due to limited availability and for security purposes; email ResearchForumEvents@courtauld.ac.uk or call 020 7848 2785

Organised by: Scott Nethersole and Edward Payne

Further information: From the late Middle Ages through to the early modern period, the Mediterranean world was shattered by multiple acts of violence. These were primarily religious, political and artistic in nature. Yet as a concept, violence poses a challenge to modern historians, for its definition is hard to pin down: the term we employ loosely, though its physical expressions are numerous, its textual and visual forms provocative, its reception history problematic. Violence, rather, manifests itself as an attitude or process whose stakes change in space and over time. This symposium, whose scope spans across four centuries, addresses the manifold histories of violence in Italy and the Mediterranean during an artistically explosive and politically turbulent period of social and cultural development. It does so with the hope of arriving at a more nuanced ‘period’ understanding of violence and its various artistic or socio-political manifestations.

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Research seminar: Modern and Contemporary

Gesture and Restraint: the Painting of Frederic Leighton


Monday, 25 February 2008
17.30, Research Forum South Room

Speaker(s): Keren Hammerschlag (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Caroline Arscott


London seminar for Early Modern Visual Culture

Discussion Meeting: texts to be announced


Monday, 25 February 2008
18.00, Seminar Room 3; Room 124; First floor, History of Art Department, University College London, 39-41 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD

Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Mechthild Fend (m.fend@ucl.ac.uk), Denis Ribouillault (denis.ribouillault@courtauld.ac.uk)
Further information: This seminar series has been organised jointly by The Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum and University College London


2008 London Seminar in Roman Art

Ancient Sculptural Polychromy: Research Status and Ways Forward


Monday, 25 February 2008
17.30, Seminar Room 1

Speaker(s): Dr Jan Stubbe Ostergaard (Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Peter Stewart and Amanda Claridge


MARCH

Research seminar: Modern and Contemporary

Portrait or Type? Alfred-Philippe Roll’s Images of Workers

Monday, 3 March 2008
17.30, Research Forum South Room
Speaker(s): Alister Mill (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Caroline Arscott


Research seminar: Renaissance

The Villa Giulia, the Campus Martius and 'Ars Topiara'

Wednesday, 5 March 2008
18.00, Research Forum South Room (note time)
Speaker(s): Dr Denis Ribouillault (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professor Paul Hills


Research seminar: Medieval Work in Progress

St. Elizabeth's in Košice and the Transylvanian Connection. Town, Court and Church Building in Late Medieval Hungary

Thursday, 6 March 2008
17.30, Research Forum South Room
Speaker(s): Tim Juckes (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professor John Lowden


Research seminar: Modern and Contemporary

New Identity in the New Century? The Problematic Identity of Collective Creation in Web 2.0

Monday, 10 March 2008
17.30, Seminar Room 4 (note venue)
Speaker(s): Emma Shang-Min Chien (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Caroline Arscott


2008 London Seminar in Roman Art

Three Late Roman Boxes

Monday, 10 March 2008
17.30, Seminar Room 1
Speaker(s): Dr Jaś Elsner (University of Oxford)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Peter Stewart and Amanda Claridge


courtauld generations

Writing Art History

Tuesday 11 March 2008
17.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Speaker(s): Laura Cleaver (Courtauld Institute of Art), Dr Anna Lovatt (University of Nottingham), Dr Charles Miller (Courtauld Institute of Art), Dr Sarah Monks (University of York), Scott Nethersole (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professor Christopher Green
Further information: As part of The Courtauld’s 75th anniversary celebrations this year, The Courtauld has taken as a theme ‘Writing Art History’, which offers a chance critically to reflect on the changing role of the art historian at this moment of celebration; a theme that will continue into the next academic year. One among this diverse programme of events is Courtauld Generations, a series of three public, round-table discussions between Courtauld alumni. Together, these discussions will cover the chronological period from the sixties to the present, and explore the Institute's position within, and contribution to, the discipline and professional field of art history, as well as putting together elements of an oral history of student experience since 1960.
Chaired by Dr Barnaby Wright (Courtauld Institute of Art), this third panel covers the period from 1990 to now, asking what has been distinctive and memorable in the student experience of art history at the Institute in the recent past, and what new possibilities are being opened up here by the discipline.
This series is supported by the Friends of The Courtauld Institute of Art.


Lecture

Victory Over the Sun

Thursday, 13 March 2008

17.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre

Speaker(s): Professor Evgeny Steiner (Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, SOAS; and Russian Institute for Cultural Research, Moscow)

Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission

Organised by: Dr Sarah Wilson

Further information: Victory Over the Sun is a seminal text of Russian Futurism, the collaborative tour de force of Malevich (as stage and costume designer), Matyushin (as composer), Khlebnikov and Kruchenykh (as authors of the Prologue and Libretto). This lecture is organised in conjunction with the publication of a 3-volume encyclopaedia of Victory Over the Sun, which is the brain-child of Dr. Patricia Railing, the editor. Leading scholars on Russian Avant-garde contributed articles, and Evgeny Steiner translated the original texts of Khlebnikov and Kruchenykh with commentaries and introductions.

In this lecture Evgeny Steiner gives an overview of Futurism, reads from his translations of the Futuristic trans-rational language, and places this art and literary movement into the broader cultural and political context of 20th century Modernism.

Prof. Evgeny Steiner (Ph.D. in Japanese Studies and a second doctorate in Russian Avant-garde) has taught and conducted research in the fields of Japanese and Russian art history and cultural studies at universities in Moscow, Jerusalem, Tokyo, Yokohama, New York and Manchester. Currently he is a Senior Research Fellow at the Sainsbury Institute for the study of Japanese arts and cultures based at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and is also a Leading Research Fellow at the Russian Institute for Cultural Research, Moscow. He has published seven books which include Stories for Little Comrades: Revolutionary Artists and the Making of the Early Soviet Children’s Books (Seattle-London: Univ. of Washington Press, 1999), a modified edition of which was later published in Russia as Avant-garde and Construction of the New Man (Moscow: New Literary Review, 2002).




AAH 2008 Conference Preview
From War Memorial to the Beatles: Locating Kazakh Monu-mentality

Friday, 14 March 2008
17.00, Research Forum South Room


Speaker(s): Aliya Abykayeva de Tiesenhausen
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission

Organised by: Dr Judith Batalion

Further information:  Aliya Abykayeva de Tiesenhausen is one of two recipients of the scholarships awarded by the Research Forum to Courtauld Institute of Art postgraduate students who will be giving research papers at the 2008 Annual Conference of the Association of Art Historians (AAH), in London, 2-4 April. This conference preview will provide an opportunity to hear her paper, a work in progress.

The other 2008 recipient is Hannah Williams who gave a preview of her paper, Jean-Etienne Liotard: Other than Himself, as part of a workshop on Questions of Body, Identity, Collection and Things organised by Dr Katie Scott on 25 February 2008.


Workshop
Collecting and the Courtauld Collections

Monday, 17 March 2008
12.30, Research Forum South Room

Speaker(s): Research Forum Research Associates: Claire Brisby, Robin Chung, Diane Flint, Ashley Siple and Zachary Stewart
Ticket/entry details: Courtauld Institute of Art research active staff, postgraduate students and Associate Scholars
Organised by: Jane Cunningham, Patricia Rubin and Barbara Thompson

Further information: The Research Associates of the Witt and Conway Libraries and Photographic Survey Department present their findings, which explore the following topics: Art History before the Courtauld (using Sir Robert Witt’s news cuttings albums, pre-1931 and other archival documentation); Questions arising from the Photographic Survey’s work at Grimsthorpe Castle and Drayton House: the relationships between the collections, the collectors and the buildings.


London seminar for Early Modern Visual Culture

Facing Trauma


Monday, 17 March 2008
18.00, Seminar Room 3; Room 124; First floor, History of Art Department, University College London, 39-41 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD

Speaker(s): Dr Allison Levy (UCL)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Mechthild Fend (m.fend@ucl.ac.uk), Denis Ribouillault (denis.ribouillault@courtauld.ac.uk)
Further information: This seminar series has been organised jointly by The Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum and University College London


Lecture

Legal Iconicity: The Documentary Image, Sacred Space and the Work of the Beholder


Thursday, 20 March 2008
12.00 – 13.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre (note time)
Speaker(s): Anthony Cutler (Evan Pugh Professor of Art History, Penn State University)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Antony Eastmond
Further information: The Dionysiou chrysobull of 1374 records the gifts of Alexios III and his spouse Theodora to "the convent of the Grand Komnenos."  It is treated by historians as a fiscal document and largely ignored by art historians.  When this binary myopia is replaced by an understanding of the work of icons, and particularly of the task assumed by their spectators, the optical co-operation of these viewers in the creation of a legal compact comes into focus. This lecture is organised in association with the Sussex Centre for Byzantine Cultural History.