Movement, Materiality, and Affect in Medieval Art

After two decades of scholarship focused chiefly on “the image” in the “era before art” and on the various means by which medieval artists and viewers sought to move past or through the image and into the realm of the ineffable, recent studies have redirected attention to the things themselves—their material properties and visual effects, and above all the way they resonate in the modern world. This seminar, which welcomes students both in and beyond the field of medieval art history, tests the possibilities and limitations of the so-called material turn in art history through close engagement with the scholarly literature and a selection of European monuments and objects made between the fifth and fifteenth centuries. We consider the communicative and ontological value of diverse media (sculpture, painting, metalwork, ivories, mosaics, textiles, etc.) and their relations to embodied beholders in real spaces. We also consider strategies of mediation, above all the role photography has played in conveying the formal properties of works of art and disembodying the process of viewership. Readings include works by Belting, Brilliant, Bynum, Demus, Eisenstein, Ganz, Gell, Hahn, Herder, Jantzen, Petcheva, Suckale, and others. The seminar includes visits to the Beinecke Library, the Yale Art Gallery, and the Metropolitan Museum and/or the Cloisters in New York. Reading knowledge of French and/or German is strongly recommended.

Taught by Jacqueline Jung Fall 2014