Academic Sessions: London 2003
Histories of the Eye
Convenor:
Maria H. Loh, Department of Fine Art, University of Toronto.
Send proposals to: 2 Drake House, 120 Stepney Way, London E1 3BE UK. Tel: 44 020 7265 9436; Fax: 44 020 7357 8929
Abstract:
In the classical paragone of the senses, vision was given prominence over hearing, touch, smell, and taste for it was the most efficacious of the five. In one glance of the eye, the spectator could grasp what it took the poet several lines to relate. For this reason, writers championed painting over poetry as a more effective means of communication and persuasion. However, although beauty was in the eye of the beholder and although the power of this beauty often reverberated throughout the body, it was in the beholder’s mind and ultimately through his/her works and/or words that the aesthetic experience was recorded. This session considers the connection between the eye, the body, and the mind and the way this experience is articulated by artists and in histories of art. Is beauty truly in the eye of the beholder? Is seeing really believing? Does blindness play into vision? How is the power of the eye articulated in both the making and writing of art?
Andre Dombrowski (UC Berkeley) Pessimism and the Evolution of the Senses in Burne–Jones’s Laus Veneris.
Alastair Wright (Princeton University) Trouble Retinien: Fauvism and the Schizophrenic Eye.
Juliet Koss (Humbolt Fellow, Berlin) Empathy Resurgent Sarah Monks (Courtauld Institute) Distant Horizons: The Spectacle of Empire at Vauxhall Gardens, circa 1740.
Michael Lobel (Bard College) Perceiving Pop: James Rosenquist, Peripheral Vision and History of Painting.
Karen Butler (Columbia University) Jean Fautrier, Phenomenology, and French Art Criticism in the 1940s.
Johanna Fassl (Columbia University) Interior Vision: Giambattista Tiepolo’s Etchings Seen through the Eye of Ingenium.
Maria H. Loh, Department of Fine Art, University of Toronto.
Send proposals to: 2 Drake House, 120 Stepney Way, London E1 3BE UK. Tel: 44 020 7265 9436; Fax: 44 020 7357 8929
Abstract:
In the classical paragone of the senses, vision was given prominence over hearing, touch, smell, and taste for it was the most efficacious of the five. In one glance of the eye, the spectator could grasp what it took the poet several lines to relate. For this reason, writers championed painting over poetry as a more effective means of communication and persuasion. However, although beauty was in the eye of the beholder and although the power of this beauty often reverberated throughout the body, it was in the beholder’s mind and ultimately through his/her works and/or words that the aesthetic experience was recorded. This session considers the connection between the eye, the body, and the mind and the way this experience is articulated by artists and in histories of art. Is beauty truly in the eye of the beholder? Is seeing really believing? Does blindness play into vision? How is the power of the eye articulated in both the making and writing of art?
Andre Dombrowski (UC Berkeley) Pessimism and the Evolution of the Senses in Burne–Jones’s Laus Veneris.
Alastair Wright (Princeton University) Trouble Retinien: Fauvism and the Schizophrenic Eye.
Juliet Koss (Humbolt Fellow, Berlin) Empathy Resurgent Sarah Monks (Courtauld Institute) Distant Horizons: The Spectacle of Empire at Vauxhall Gardens, circa 1740.
Michael Lobel (Bard College) Perceiving Pop: James Rosenquist, Peripheral Vision and History of Painting.
Karen Butler (Columbia University) Jean Fautrier, Phenomenology, and French Art Criticism in the 1940s.
Johanna Fassl (Columbia University) Interior Vision: Giambattista Tiepolo’s Etchings Seen through the Eye of Ingenium.