In defense of the classical tradition: How the humanities make a difference today

The question I have been grappling with since Donald Trump was shockingly and quite possibly illegally elected President of the United States is how to practice art history so that my scholarship has some kind of meaningful agency in the current political climate. Art History is my profession and my calling, but there might come a time when I have to abandon living my “normal life” because of other priorities. That is exactly the decision my parents were forced to make when they found themselves trapped in Nazi Hungary. Eventually they emigrated to a new life inthe United States. What if they had been turned back at the border? As a member of the underground resistance during World War II, my father managed to evade death when many of his family, friends, and associates did not, but he certainly would have been imprisoned or executed for his role in the Independent Smallholders’ Party after the war, had he stayed any longer during the Soviet take-over of Hungary completed in 1949

Conceptions et déterminations récentes du baroque et du néobaroque

Baroque needs to be thought across chronological and geographical divides to connect architecture and dance, painting and natural science, philosophy, sculpture and music (and not in the sense of representations of music) and, above all, in relation to encounters with difference – heavenly, earthly, social, political, religious, geographical. What possibilities in baroque are open now in relation to present dilemmas in art history and world events? Baroque enables – arguably, it demands – a radical rethinking of historical time – and a rethinking of familiar history. It permits a liberation from periodization and linear time, as well as from historicism. While the scholars below acknowledge that baroque is often equated with style or historical period, it is most productively thought beyond them. Mieke Bal has argued that baroque epistemology permits an “hallucinatory quality” of relation between past and present that also allows a release from a supposed academic objectivity, while insisting that the engagement with the past should remain discomfiting and profoundly disturbing.1 Instead of repressing the past and time, creative retrospection allows its implications to emerge. In its materiality and bodiliness, baroque undermines resolution, gropes towards fragmentation, overgrows, and exceeds. Baroque architecture may be seen as overflowing, an excess of ornamental exteriority and evasive proliferation. This brings to the fore the question of surface. Andrew Benjamin’s approach to surface as neither merely structural nor merely decoration in architecture is important here. Baroque time and form impinge on each other – that is, not simply the time that it takes to process point of view into form, but of form into point of view.2 Thus the pursuit is for a baroque vision of vision, a baroque audition of hearing, and a multitemporality. The question of materiality (not mere matter, materials, or technique) must also come into play.Fil: Farago, Claire. State University of Colorado at Boulder; Estados UnidosFil: Hills, Helen. University of York; Reino UnidoFil: Kaup, Monika. University of Washington; Estados UnidosFil: Siracusano, Gabriela Silvana. Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero. Instituto de Investigaciones en Arte y Cultura "Dr. Norberto Griffa"; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Baumgarten, Jens. Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo.; BrasilFil: Jacoviello, Stefano. Università degli Studi di Siena; Itali

Leonardo's Treatise on Painting

EnThis article examines some of Leonardo's activities in the final decade of the Quattrocento, a key period for the development of his theoretical considerations of painting and for the rapid development of his artistic practice involving collaborators under his direction. It asks how knowledge was generated in and circulated through Leonardo's workshop by comparing autograph manuscript evidence from this period to the London Virgin of the Rocks. A direct relationship between the visual and textual evidence is further supported by the new physical information about the underdrawing and superimposed paint layers. With an explanatory text at hand, assistants could be taught the highly complex principles governing the reflected play of light and shadow as Leonardo describes in his notes. Without such guidance, the subtleties would be difficult if not impossible to achieve based on direct observation alone. It proposes concrete connections between Leonardo's notes, collaboration in his workshop, and Leonardo's treatise on painting published in abridged form in 1651 which served as a foundational text for the academic instruction of painters throughout Europe and beyond.ItIl presente contributo esamina alcune delle attività di Leonardo nell'ultimo decennio del Quattrocento, un periodo cruciale per lo sviluppo delle sue considerazioni teoriche sulla pittura e per la rapida evoluzione della sua pratica pittorica, che include la presenza di collaboratori attivi sotto la sua direzione. Ci si chiede come la conoscenza ebbe inizio e circolò all'interno della bottega, attraverso il confronto tra gli scritti autografi dei manoscritti di questo periodo e la Vergine delle Rocce di Londra. Un diretto rapporto tra i dati visuali e quelli testuali è ulteriormente rafforzato dai nuovi dati materiali sul disegno sottostante e sulle sovrapposizioni di strati di pittura. Con un testo esplicativo a disposizione, gli assistenti potevano venire istruiti sui principi, di estrema complessità, che governano i giochi di luce e ombra riflessi, quali Leonardo descrive nelle sue note. Senza tale guida, sarebbe risultato difficile, se non impossibile, raggiungere simili sottigliezze basandosi soltanto sull'osservazione diretta. Si propongono qui specifiche connessioni tra le note di Leonardo, il lavoro comune all'interno della sua bottega e il Trattato della Pittura nella forma abbreviata pubblicata nel 1651, che servì come testo fondamentale per la formazione accademica dei pittori in tutta Europa e oltre