The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Practice-based Art Studies (PASS)

Writing Art Histories

This reading group will take as a point of departure central texts from the history of the discipline, students will discuss different approaches to Art History, such as historiography, the history of collections, the reception of antiquity and the Renaissance, the critique of institutions as well as other approaches or relevant themes. The goal of the course is then to foster a critical reading of canonized texts and recent contributions to the field of art historiography.

Each time a student will be responsible for presenting the chosen text and moderating the session. Students will be encouraged to choose texts that resonate with their project and the methodological and historiographical problems it entails. In this way, the course will also function as a source of peer feedback.

Target group

The course is aimed at PhD students (and other researchers with a special interest) in Art History. Its purpose is to provide a forum for critical reflection and discussion on the methodological problems concerning the writing of Art History today.

Session programme

Date: 2.12 2024

Time: 15-17

Room: 16-3-09

Didi-Huberman and Aby Warburg (PhD Sofus Landbo)

Literature

Georges Didi-Huberman: “The Image as Phantom: Survival of Forms and Impurities of Time” The Surviving Image, p. 1-67

Georges Didi-Huberman: ”Question Posed” and “The History of Art Within the Limits of Its Simple Practice” in Confronting Images (2005), p. 1-52

Additional Literature:

Aby Warburg: “Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and Spring” in The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity: Contributions to the Cultural History of the European Renaissance (Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1999), pp. 90–156.

https://www.getty.edu/publications/resources/virtuallibrary/9780892365371.pdf