Columbia Art History Graduate Colloquium
The departmental community is invited to submit presentation proposals for the Art History Graduate Colloquium's spring series. We are actively searching for participants across all geographic and historical subfields and from all members of the post-undergraduate community (Master's and PhD students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty members). The Colloquium is a great opportunity to present work in progress and gain feedback from peers and faculty in the program.
The setting is informal, with your 20-30 minute presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. It's the perfect forum to test run a paper you're developing into a larger project such as an article, dissertation chapter, or conference talk. If you would like to submit a proposal or have further questions, please e-mail us at columbiacolloquium@gmail.com.
Note that the Colloquium is open only to affiliates of the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University and their guests.
All events are held in room 832 of Schermerhorn Hall beginning at 6 p.m.
Spring 2012
February 9
Julia Vazquez
"Holbein, Wedigh, and Flat: 'Ekphrastic Failure' and the Art of Hans Holbein"
Inherent in the ekphrastic enterprise is the problem of 'ekphrastic failure'—the paradox of seeking to make present an object that must remain ultimately absent. In relation to the ekphrastic tradition, material artworks, whose physical solidity and temporal endurance suggest an ontological stability against which words appear feeble, are often cited as successful exemplars of the representational endeavor at which ekphrasis appears to fail.
Hans Holbein's use of mimetic description in his Portrait of a Member of the Wedigh Family exemplifies the oft-lauded achievement of Renaissance art in rendering objects (re)present across time and space. And yet, the bright blue background, until now ignored by scholars, reasserts the materiality of the paint on the panel and dispels the possibility of mimetic illusion.
Working within and against the context of 20th-century deconstruction theory and the historiography of portraiture, my paper critically examines the interaction between naturalistic figure and abstract background, considering the literal and metaphorical edge between ‘painting’ and paint as a site of ekphrastic failure.
February 16
Sonia Coman
"Layering the Past: Elizabeth Vige Le Brun's Madame de Staël as Corinne"
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