The Renaissance Elsewhere
Professor Alexander Nagel, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Thursday, 10 March 2016 6 – 7.30pm
Co-presented with Sydney Ideas
The Power Institute is proud to present a lecture by Professor Alexander Nagel, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
For his lecture, Professor Nagel turns his attention to Italian art between c. 1300 and c. 1500 – the Renaissance – a period characterised by its extraordinary openness to the world. The Renaissance represented items and ideas not only in direct proximity to artists of the time, but also distant peoples and places known to artists only through textual accounts, oral reports, drawings, imported objects and other images. Western Christian art was oriented elsewhere due to its unique position at a distinct remove from the origins of its religion, and far to the west of the centres of culture as Latin Christians understood it. It is difficult to think of another tradition of art more focused on depicting ‘elsewheres’.
Renaissance art was an art of naturalism, but it was also an art that relied to an unprecedented degree on data coming through other media. The media-intensive nature of the art is critical to understanding the spectacular and improbable rise of painting in this period from a subordinate to a superintendent artform. Painting was vaulted to a new status because it was the medium most capable of taking in information from other media, and representing those other media (textiles, furnishings, books, metalware, ceramics, sculptures, buildings, etc.).
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Professor Alexander Nagel is interested in how art is classified and reclassified over time, both through its practical handling and its theorisation. Anachronism, antiquarianism, archaism, citation, and forgery have been consistently the focus of his work. Most recently, his work has turned to the question of orientation in Renaissance art. How do art works serve as means by which to orient oneself in the world? To try to answer this question for the art of the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance in the West is to open oneself to a world in which Europe was not at the centre of the world but rather was looking eastward for its values, its image traditions, its sacred geography, as well as for its mythical origins.
He is author of Michelangelo and the Reform of Art (2000), Anachronic Renaissance (2010) co-authored with Christopher Wood, The Controversy of Renaissance Art (2011), and Medieval Modern: Art out of Time (2012).
Thursday, 10 March 2016 6 – 7.30pm Law School LT101 (Auditorium)
Level 1 Sydney Law School
Eastern Avenue
The University of Sydney
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Free event with registration requested. Please click here to RSVP.
PROFESSOR NAGEL WILL ALSO RUN A SEMINAR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY ON FRIDAY 11 MARCH, 1-5pm. FOR MORE INFORMATION SEE THIS PAGE.