Eighth Distinguished WAI Lecture on Renaissance Art and Culture

Praised to the Skies: Elevation, Framing and Sacred Space in the Renaissance Pala

Alison Wright, Professor in Italian Art c. 1300-1500, Department of History of Art, University College London

Friday, 17 May 2024, 7.30-9.30 pm, UTC+8 Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei, and Hong Kong, onsite & Zoom 
[11.30 am–1.30 pm, London; 12.30–2.30 pm, Berlin; 6.30–8.30 am, New York/Washington D.C.]   

Ercole de’ Roberti, Pala Portuense, 1479-1481, detail, oil on canvas, 323×240 cm. Made for S. Maria in Porto Fuori, Ravenna. Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Around 1500, a “revolutionary novelty of pictorial language” (Salvatore Settis) can be observed in Venetian painting, which clearly deviates from the concept of “historia” as formulated by Leon Battista Alberti and implemented by early Renaissance painting, especially in Florence. Particularly in paintings by the old Giovanni Bellini, the early deceased Giorgione and the young Titian, there are hints of an alternative conception of what paintings can achieve. At the centre of this understanding is less an intellectual-scholarly ambition or the precise and reliable communication of certain thoughts than a form of perception in which viewing and contemplation are combined in a distinctive way. In addition to what a depiction gives us to see and reflect upon, i.e. the figures, actions and the meanings conveyed with them, what counts at least as much in Venetian pictorial culture is that a painting stimulates its audience to a specific doing and an unusual experience: to a thoughtful looking. The lecture will present this pictorial concept and ask to what extent it can be traced back to late medieval inspirations. The thesis will be put up for discussion that it is precisely the rather traditional cultural practice of Christian allegoresis from which essential impulses could be taken to arrive at a new conception of the possibilities of painting. This conception, in turn, was to become of great importance for the art of the early modern period. Pictures – as Venetian paintings show – cannot be reduced to being manifestations of a clearly predetermined meaning, but prove to be objects of open, temporally extending contemplation and reflection. Based on these observations, the concluding part of the lecture will outline more general considerations on the temporality of viewing pictures. 

Registration

If you are residing outside mainland China and interested in attending this or other WAI lectures, please register for virtual participation: https://forms.gle/LAj5SkGCuy7Pgu1x9

Kindly note that Professor Wright’s lecture was initially planned for May 24, 2024, but it has been rescheduled to May 17, 2024. If you are interested in joining this event via Zoom, please mark box number 7. Those who have registered will receive timely email notifications with the Zoom links prior to each scheduled event. 

A Panoply of Colours, A World of Materials: Global Connections of Early Modern Dyes

This conference is free and open to the public

Register to attend in-person or via Zoom

Conference attendees should register their vehicle to get access to free parking in Lot 1 Blue: https://www.offstreet.io/location/IB7CPSO8

(for a map of UCR parking lots, click here)

What kinds of histories do textiles and dyes tell? They represent not just culture, artistic expression, and ‘beauty’ but also science, technology, labor, and economics. Their histories are entangled in the histories of commerce, slavery, and colonialism, as well as resistance to them. As dyes come from plants and animals in different ecosystems, how did knowledge about processing and using dyes circulate in the early modern period (before 1850)? Can they help us gain insight into Indigenous forms of knowledge, cultural philosophies, histories of religious conversion, and cultural exchange? How do they expand our understanding of the histories of science and technology? When we foreground the materiality of textiles and dyes, what are the distinct cultural contexts that come into view? What are the spatial relationships, environmental conditions, and technological limitations that become important to understand
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Schedule

9:00 – 9:30 am – Welcome

9:30 – 10:45 am – Keynote by Aboubakar Fofana, “Indigo Pasts and Futures in West Africa: A View from Mali”

10:45 – 11:00 am – Coffee Break

11:00 am – 12:40 pm –  Session 1

• BuYun Chen,  “From Field to Vat: The Life of Indigo in the Ryukyu Islands”
• Sylvia Houghteling, “Fleeting Dyes and Fresh Fabrics: Perishable Materials in the Eastern Indian Ocean Textile Trade”

12:40 – 1:40 pm – Lunch Break

1:40 – 3:20 pm – Session 2

• Sean Silver, “Early Modern Mordants: History, Theory, and Practice” 
• Michelle Rawlings, “The Fading Colors of West Mojave”
• Chi Yen Ha, “Beyond Indigo Blue: Exploring Inter-ethnic Dynamics in Knowledge Expansion and Creativity in Vietnam’s Natural Dyeing Movement”

3:20 – 3:50 pm – Coffee Break

3:50 – 4:50 pm – Tyrrell Tapaha, “People and the Pigments: the Ethnobotanical History of Diné Weaving and the Colorado Plateau”

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Organised by Jody Benjamin (Assistant Professor of History), Yong Cho (Assistant Professor of Art History), Savannah Esquivel (Assistant Professor of Art History), and Fatima Quraishi (Assistant Professor of Art History). This conference is made possible through the support of the Center for Ideas & Society, CHASS Dean’s Office, Department of Art History, Department of History, Department of Media and Cultural Studies, Department for the Study of Religion, Department of English, Reclamation & Native American Communities Commons Group, Queer and Trans Commons Group, Middle East and Islamic Studies Program, and Southeast Asia: Text, Ritual, and Performance.

Photo: Naoya Wada. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Meeting the Unknown: Albrecht Dürer and the Aztecs

Manuel Teget-Welz, Ph.D.
Department of Art History
University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany

Albrecht Dürer is the most important German Renaissance artist. He had a keen interest in the unknown and traveled a great deal, including to Italy and the Netherlands. Following the cruel conquest of the Aztec Empire by Hérnan Cortés in 1519, the Spanish received numerous gifts from the last Aztec ruler, Moctezuma II. These were sent to Europe to Emperor Charles V and were exhibited in numerous cities. Dürer had the opportunity to see the Aztec objects in Brussels, and wrote in detail about this encounter with the unknown in his diary.

Wednesday, April 3 at 5:15pm, ARTS Seminar Room 333

Congratulations to Homer Charles Arnold who present his research at the 2024 Getty Graduate Symposium!

GETTY CENTER
Friday, February 2, 2024, from 9:45 am – 6 pm
Museum Lecture Hall

The Getty Research Institute hosts the sixth annual Getty Graduate Symposium, which showcases the work of emerging scholars from art history graduate programs across California. Organized into three sessions, the symposium includes nine individual presentations, moderated panel discussions, and Q&A sessions with the audience.

Free | In-person and online
Advance ticket required or advance Zoom registration

View the program.

Participants:
Anna Flinchbaugh, University of Southern California
Ariana Pemberton, University of California, Berkeley
Homer Charles Arnold, University of California, Riverside
Joe Riley, University of California, San Diego
Leslie Lodwick, University of California, Santa Cruz
Maria Shevelkina, Stanford University
Mohammadreza Mirzaei, University of California, Santa Barbara
Nastasya Kosygina, University of California, Irvine
Taylor Carr-Howard, University of California, Los Angeles

Get Tickets
To attend in person, click “Get Tickets.”
To watch online, register via Zoom.

The symposium will be available on the Getty Research Institute YouTube channel following the event.

Fourth Distinguished WAI Lecture on Renaissance Art and Culture

Wandering contemplation.
A new concept of the picture in the Venetian Renaissance, its medieval roots and some general considerations on the temporality of viewing

Prof. Dr. Johannes Grave, Department for Art History and Film Studies, Friedrich Schiller University Jena
Vice President (since 2024), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)/The German Research Foundation  

Friday, 26 January 2024, 7.30-9.30 pm, UTC+8 Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, via Zoom
[11.30 am to 1.30 pm UTC+1, London; 12.30 to 2.30 pm, UTC+2, Berlin; 6.30 to 8.30 am, UTC-4, New York, Washington D.C.]

Giorgione, La Tempesta, c. 1508. Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice

Around 1500, a “revolutionary novelty of pictorial language” (Salvatore Settis) can be observed in Venetian painting, which clearly deviates from the concept of “historia” as formulated by Leon Battista Alberti and implemented by early Renaissance painting, especially in Florence. Particularly in paintings by the old Giovanni Bellini, the early deceased Giorgione and the young Titian, there are hints of an alternative conception of what paintings can achieve. At the centre of this understanding is less an intellectual-scholarly ambition or the precise and reliable communication of certain thoughts than a form of perception in which viewing and contemplation are combined in a distinctive way. In addition to what a depiction gives us to see and reflect upon, i.e. the figures, actions and the meanings conveyed with them, what counts at least as much in Venetian pictorial culture is that a painting stimulates its audience to a specific doing and an unusual experience: to a thoughtful looking. The lecture will present this pictorial concept and ask to what extent it can be traced back to late medieval inspirations. The thesis will be put up for discussion that it is precisely the rather traditional cultural practice of Christian allegoresis from which essential impulses could be taken to arrive at a new conception of the possibilities of painting. This conception, in turn, was to become of great importance for the art of the early modern period. Pictures – as Venetian paintings show – cannot be reduced to being manifestations of a clearly predetermined meaning, but prove to be objects of open, temporally extending contemplation and reflection. Based on these observations, the concluding part of the lecture will outline more general considerations on the temporality of viewing pictures. 

Registration
If you are residing outside mainland China and interested in attending this or other WAI lectures, please register for virtual participation: https://forms.gle/LAj5SkGCuy7Pgu1x9