A two-day international conference (online): 22-23 April 2021
Organized by Prof. Juliet Simpson, Coventry University/Warburg Institute
Steering Committee: Prof. Gabriele Rippl (University of Bern), Dr Stefan Bauer (University of Warwick), Dr Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff (Ateneum-Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki); Conference Assistant: Joanna Meredith (PhD candidate, Coventry University)
In 1920 Louis Gillet, the French art historian and internationalist published a rousing article defending the repatriation of stolen fragments from the Van Eycks’ Ghent Altarpiece from Germany to Belgium as ‘un drapeau’. His ensign of a Northern patrimony pitched as an emotive call for a different cultural ‘belonging’ post-1918 was part of a pattern. Jean Fouquet’s Melun diptych was vaunted as both a ‘jewel’, yet the opprobrium of France. At its most charged was the identification of Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece with extreme War trauma during its 1918-19 Munich display. Yet these Northern Renaissance ‘Afterlives’ remain neglected. This conference explores how responses to the Northern Renaissance (in the period spanning the late 1890s to early 1930s) were mediated via objects, images, monuments and words in potently emotive contexts of reception, recreation, visual and material imaginaries and contemporary memory-making. Leading scholars and curators investigate the emotionally charged resonances and meanings of Northern Renaissances for contemporary culture at a time of turbulence and innovation. Via emotional viewing, object encounters, passionate prints, sensing the past and wonder-inspiring collections, we will illuminate new ways in which the histories and cultures of a pivotal past touch and embody early-twentieth-century modernity.
Keynote (confirmed): Professor Gabriele Rippl (University of Bern)
Register Online (free) and Full Programme available at: https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/events/event/23626
The Organizer and Steering Committee would like to express their gratitude to the Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Studies, University of London; the Royal Historical Society and Coventry University (Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities) for their generous support for this event.