Enfilade

From H-ArtHist:

Stone Face: The Psychology of the Face, the Phenomenology of the Bust
University of Copenhagen, 1–2 October 2018

Registration due by 20 September 2018

This seminar explores the portrait from a phenomenological and psychological approach, looking at how it affects the viewer and what kinds of reactions it prompts. We will be discussing the significance of the bust format, primary sources describing encounters with portraits and busts as well as the significance of the face and the psychology of face perception. The seminar is a preparatory work for understanding the Neoclassical artist Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1844) as a portrait sculptor within a broader context of sculpture theory and art history.

The seminar is the second in a series of seminars under the cross-disciplinary project research and dissemination Powerful Presences: The Sculptural Portrait between Absence and Presence, Group and Individual. The seminar is free and open to everyone. Additional programme and registration details are available here. For more information, please contact Lejla Mrgan, lejla@hum.ku.dk.

M O N D A Y ,  1  O C T O B E R  2 0 1 8

8.45  Arrival and coffee

9.00  Welcome (Jane Fejfer)

9.15  Session 1 | Imagination and Attachment
• Melissa Percival, The Painted and Sculptural Imagination: Short Cuts
• Lejla Mrgan, Perception and imagination: Busts as Objects of Attachment
• Tomas Macsotay, Women and Sculptural Resignification: The Cases of Catherine the Great and the Countess of Albany
• Andreas Grüner, Strike! Diderot and the Reproduction of Immediacy in Ancient Portraits

12.45  Lunch

13.45  Session 2 | Bust and Body
• Jeanette Kohl, The Silence of Busts: Phenomenology, Ontology, Presence?
• Joris van Gastel, The Coat of Arms and the Portrait Bust: Sculpted Presence in Late Renaissance Florence
• Helen Ackers, Networks of interaction: The Roman portrait bust in its familial context
• Josefine Baark, ‘The Originals’: Commemorative Clay Likenesses and Portrait Sculpture in Qing China

17.15  Drinks

19.00  Dinner (speakers only)

T U E S D A Y ,  2  O C T O B E R  2 0 1 8

9.30  Session 3 | Portraits and Faces
• Malcolm Baker, Busts and Faces: Aesthetic Theory and Perceptual Difference
• Alexander Todorov, The Inherent Ambiguity of Facial Expressions
• Anna Schram Vejlby, The Inner Gaze
• Rubina Raja, The Palmyrene More-Than-Bust Funerary Portraits
• Michael Yonan, Messerschmidt, Thorvaldsen, and the Specious Surfaces of the Self

13:30  Lunch

14:00  Summary and perspectives, Whitney Davis and Rolf Schneider

16:00  Portrait talk between artist Trine Søndergaard (Copenhagen) and professor of Art History Jeanette Kohl (University of California Riverside). This special event at Thorvaldsens Museum  requires a ticket.

17:00  Closing Reception at Thorvaldsens Museum