Member Professor Lois Ascher presents Taking the Renaissance Apart: Demystifying Modern Art, a series of lectures in three parts, as described below.
This series of three talks will attempt to take apart the Renaissance so we may begin to understand the manner in which modern art attempts to image its very challenging modern world, a world not unlike our own.
Some thoughts to consider:
"The work of art declares you must change your life," declares Rainier Maria Rilke.
What does the poet know that we must learn? And how does this quote from Rilke’s Archaic Torso of Apollo shed light on modern and contemporary art, art so different from the comforting illusionism of Renaissance art? And what is the value of taking the Renaissance apart to create a window into the present? What do modern artists know that is worth discovering? If indeed, “A work of art is not something abstract, but something which has been produced by a certain moment in history (Annamaria Petrioli Tofani), what does it have to teach us about our own history? Why should we even bother with the discomfort of a toilet displayed in a gallery? Of a Brillo box? Of a line of colors with no recognizable imagery displayed on a wall? What is its message? Does it even have a message? Best to head for the Impressionist gallery. So much more soothing. But not soothing to those who first encountered them. Impressionism, too, gave their viewers “a shaking up,” as Delacroix demanded.