The Secret Lives of Artworks: International Conference

To mark the conclusion of the project, an international conference will be organized from 24 to 26 June 2010 at Leiden University.

About the conference

Marking the conclusion of the state-granted research project ‘Art, Agency and Living Presence in Early Modern Italy’, the goal of the conference is to place the conclusions of 5 years of research in a broader context. Throughout history, and all over the world, people respond to images as if they are alive: they say that they move, speak or look at the beholder. Paintings are addressed, touched, kissed and embraced, beaten or destroyed. Statues are treated as if they are the living being they represent; buildings are given food and drink, and are reported to move, speak, bleed or look at the beholder. Such responses are not limited to non-Western or so-called ‘primitive’ societies. What is more, such responses seem clearly based on a ontological confusion: images are not alive, and if they move, speak or weep it is because there is a hidden mechanism at work. Yet, they are so constant and widespread, that we cannot simply dismiss them as confusions, primitive reactions to art, critical hyperbole or cliché. Indeed, rather than simply dismissing them on such grounds, we propose to take these responses more seriously.


Programme

Thursday, June 24

9:00

Registration / Coffee

9:30

Conference opening

Word of welcome by the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities

Caroline van Eck

Art, Agency, and Living Presence

10:20

Session I – Theories and Methods

Jason Gaiger

Mimesis, Make-Believe, and Pictorial Seeing

Matthew Rampley

The Image, the Body and the History of Representation

Maarten Delbeke

Alexandre Lenoir’s Musée des monuments français

12:20

Lunch break

14:00

Session II – Spectacle and Ceremony

Minou Schraven

Linking Builders to Buildings: Mythical, Magical and Material Aspects of Foundation Ceremonies in Early Modern Italy

Iain Fenlon

Monteverdi’s Voice

Lex Hermans

Palaces, Theatres and Social Presence in Italy in the Long Sixteenth Century

16:00

Coffee break

16:20

Keynote

Alina Payne

Burckhardt’s ‘lebendige Architektur’, Warburg’s Nympha and the Dangers of Enlivenment in Architecture

 

Friday, June 25

9:00

Registration / Coffee

9:30

Session III – Antiquity

Robin Osborne

The Living Presence of the Gods in Ancient Greece

Peter Stewart

The Agency of Roman Provincial Sculpture

10:50

Coffee break

11:10

Jan Bremmer

The Agency of Statues from Classical Antiquity to Christian Late Antiquity: Continuities and Transformations

Stijn Bussels

Da’ più scorretti abusata: Praxiteles’ Aphrodite and Living Presence Responses

12:30

Lunch break

14:00

Session IV – The Baroque

Arnold Witte

Passeri and the Viewer: Intended Religious Responses to Baroque Art

Joris van Gastel

Sculpture and the ‘Enactive Approach’: Beholding Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne

Sebastian Schütze

Speaking Likeness: The Poetics of Absence and Presence in 17th Century Portraiture

16:00

Coffee break

16:20

Keynote

Lina Bolzoni

Double-Sided Portraits: Literary Models, Modes of Perception between the Mind and the Body


Saturday, June 26

9:00

Registration / Coffee

9:30

Session V – Art in the South

Fredrika Jacobs

Visual Accounting, Miracles and Images in Renaissance Italy

Elsje van Kessel

Between Miracle and Art: Titian and Giorgione in the Scuola di San Rocco

10:50

Coffee break

11:10

Claire Farago

Agency and Art: When Is a Living Image Properly Alive?

Ralph Dekoninck

The Becoming Alive of the Image. Real Presence and Tableau Vivant in the Vision of Saint Thomas Aquinas

12:30

Lunch break

14:00

Session VI – Art in the North

Frédéric Cousinié

Signifiance des fluides: La lactation de saint Bernard (Nicolas Mignard, 1640)

Joanna Woodall

Life in Effigy

Christine Göttler

The Long and Multiple Lives of Images: Copying as Artistic Response

16:00

Coffee break

16:20

Keynote

Frank Fehrenbach

Numisma ex numismate. Titian's Portrait of Jacopo da Strada (1567-68)

17:20

Concluding remarks


Speakers' affiliation: Lina Bolzoni (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa), Jan Bremmer (University of Groningen), Stijn Bussels (Leiden University/University of Groningen), Frédéric Cousinié (Université de Rouen), Ralph Dekoninck (Université catholique de Louvain), Maarten Delbeke (Ghent Univ./Leiden University), Caroline van Eck (Leiden University), Claire Farago (University of Colorado at Boulder), Frank Fehrenbach (Harvard University), Iain Fenlon (University of Cambridge), Jason Gaiger (Open University, UK), Joris van Gastel (Leiden University), Christine Göttler (Universität Bern), Lex Hermans (Leiden University), Fredrika Jacobs (Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond), Elsje van Kessel (Leiden University), Robin Osborne (University of Cambridge), Alina Payne (Harvard University), Matthew Rampley (University of Birmingham), Sebastian Schütze (Universität Wien), Minou Schraven (Leiden University), Peter Stewart (Courtauld Institute, London), Arnold Witte (University of Amsterdam), Joanna Woodall (Courtauld Institute, London).

Registration

To register, please send an email to Joris van Gastel (j.j.van.gastel@hum.leidenuniv.nl) or Elsje van Kessel (e.van.kessel@hum.leidenuniv.nl).

The registration fee, for three days only, is € 100,- or € 30,- for (PhD) students.

Participation is free (though please register by sending an e-mail) for: 

- students of the Department of Art History of Leiden University,
- members of the Huizinga Instituut,
- members of the Onderzoekschool Kunstgeschiedenis,
- members of the LUICD.


Location

The conference wil be held in the Lokhorstkerk.

Pieterskerkstraat 1
2311 SV Leiden?

Please click here for a map. 

Last Modified: 09-06-2010