Honoring Ilene Forsyth: Letter-Play, Word-Play, and Medieval Visual Art
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Art-Hist: A Virtual Symposium on History and Theory of Artistic Creation from Antiquity to Modern Times
Organizer Name
Estelle Ingrand-Varenne
Organizer Affiliation
Centre d'études supérieures de civilisation médiévale (Poitiers, France)
Presider Name
Kirsten Ataoguz
Presider Affiliation
Indiana Univ.-Purdue Univ.–Fort Wayne
Paper Title 1
Emptiness and Silence: Writing as Shape in Romanesque Sculpture
Presenter 1 Name
Vincent Debiais
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Centre d'études supérieures de civilisation médiévale
Paper Title 2
Word and Image in Byzantium and the Early Arab World (Fifth-Tenth Centuries)
Presenter 2 Name
Anthony Cutler
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Pennsylvania State Univ.
Paper Title 3
The Ideological Antecedents of Google Logos
Presenter 3 Name
David Bernstein
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Sarah Lawrence College
Paper Title 4
Ridiculous Voices in Medieval Art
Presenter 4 Name
Daniel Rico
Presenter 4 Affiliation
Univ. Autònoma de Barcelona
Start Date
10-5-2013 1:30 PM
Session Location
Bernhard 106
Description
The topic of this session concerns the role of writing (as a material object) in artistic creation. The discourse on art, theory a priori or critic a posteriori, shows how much creation and writing are dependent; works of visual art are always connected to a written production which gives it sense, comments on it, supplies its status of “work of art”. The artistic practice is inseparable of graphic one, of written language which impulses the artist’s work and which puts it in perspective with the world which receives it. On the other hand, the study of tituli in manuscripts and in works of art allows to measure the material implications of the presence of both forms of language (writing and image) within the same visual system, and not only in the very general cultural frame which creates it. As the interrogation does not exclusively concern the search for texts as sources of representation, written words – as graphic presence – can be considered for its real paper in the definition of images. This diversion of the analysis moves the interrogation about relations between word and image from the possibility of existence of an image from the medieval texts (it means, an archaeology of the creative phenomena) towards the study of what the image gives to see and to read thanks to inscriptions (an archaeology of graphic phenomena and artistic practices). The interest of this question exceeds Middle Ages and concern all the artistic manifestations; it offers the possibility to approach an original aspect of the work of art and perceive the artist’s work and his conception of his own action on the material.
Vincent Debiais
Honoring Ilene Forsyth: Letter-Play, Word-Play, and Medieval Visual Art
Bernhard 106
The topic of this session concerns the role of writing (as a material object) in artistic creation. The discourse on art, theory a priori or critic a posteriori, shows how much creation and writing are dependent; works of visual art are always connected to a written production which gives it sense, comments on it, supplies its status of “work of art”. The artistic practice is inseparable of graphic one, of written language which impulses the artist’s work and which puts it in perspective with the world which receives it. On the other hand, the study of tituli in manuscripts and in works of art allows to measure the material implications of the presence of both forms of language (writing and image) within the same visual system, and not only in the very general cultural frame which creates it. As the interrogation does not exclusively concern the search for texts as sources of representation, written words – as graphic presence – can be considered for its real paper in the definition of images. This diversion of the analysis moves the interrogation about relations between word and image from the possibility of existence of an image from the medieval texts (it means, an archaeology of the creative phenomena) towards the study of what the image gives to see and to read thanks to inscriptions (an archaeology of graphic phenomena and artistic practices). The interest of this question exceeds Middle Ages and concern all the artistic manifestations; it offers the possibility to approach an original aspect of the work of art and perceive the artist’s work and his conception of his own action on the material.
Vincent Debiais