Research Seminar Series "Methodology and Ideology: Critical Perspectives on the Historical Paradigms of Art History" (1st Research Seminar): Mimesis and Self-Mimesis: What Belongs to Whom?

  • Event on site and via Zoom
  • Data: 31.05.2022
  • Ora: 14:00 - 16:00
  • Relatore: Eric Michaud
  • Luogo: Villino Stroganoff, Via Gregoriana 22, 00187 Rom
  • Contatto: freiberg@biblhertz.it
Research Seminar Series "Methodology and Ideology: Critical Perspectives on the Historical Paradigms of Art History" (1st Research Seminar): Mimesis and Self-Mimesis: What Belongs to Whom?
In light of shifting theoretical paradigms in art history, reflecting on methods and their cultural frameworks is crucial and urgent. Contemporary efforts to evolve beyond the power relations of center and periphery and to redefine the relations between ideas, things, people, spaces and temporalities are fostered by current societal and political changes. From this arises the demand for an awareness of the intellectual genealogies and ideological implications of art historical methods.

However, ideologically-loaded labels and concepts persist despite radical transformations in contemporary accounts of art historical theories and methods.
This research seminar series intends to encourage a critical and historical analysis of conceptual frameworks such as the relationship between art history and ideology, politics and cultural heritage, collective identities, post-colonialism and national stereotypes, formalism and stylistic categories, visual arguments and teaching practices as well as eco-criticism and the Anthropocene.

1. Research Seminar Mimesis and self-mimesis: what belongs to whom ?

Towards the middle of the 18th century, the idea arises that each people, each culture produces an art in its own likeness, to his physical and moral resemblance. It is what I call the self-mimesis thesis. But at the same time the opposite thesis develops which relies on the effects of the mimetic contagion that results of the confrontation of identities, making them fluid and capable of jostling if not sweeping away cultural boundaries. Let's just call it the mimesis thesis. Along with that of self-mimesis, they have since constituted two antithetical anthropologies of the evolution of art, crossing discourses, animating and guiding artists, opposing anthropologists and art historians.

Eric Michaud is directeur d’études at the EHESS Paris, where he holds the Professorship for Histories and Ideologies of Contemporary Art. His research interests focus on the figures of the New Man at the cross roads between art, politics, propaganda and the anthropological notion of race. He served as a Visiting Professor at the The Johns Hopkins University, Duke University, University of Virginia, the Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Buenos Aires, and New York University. Memberships and Fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Getty Research Center in Los Angeles, The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America (Columbia University).
His books include La fin du salut par l’image et autres textes (Paris, Flammarion, 2020) The Barbarian Invasions. A Genealogy of the History of Art (Paris, Gallimard, 2015, engl. transl. MIT Press, October Books, 2019), The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany (Paris, Gallimard, 1996, engl. transl. Stanford University Press, 2004), Histoire de l’art : une discipline à ses frontières (Paris, Hazan, 2005), Fabriques de l'homme nouveau, de Léger à Mondrian (Paris, Carré, 1997).


This event will take place on-site (without registration). It is possible to join also on Zoom.
The link to join the event will be sent to you in a confirmation email. Please register through this link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIuc-2gpjItH9WOxN-EAD5-mymANWeYDDIl
Password: 004262



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