Paintings/Problems/Possibilities.
A Symposium Dedicated to Svetlana Alpers

University of Amsterdam, 7 May 2010, 10:30-16:30 hrs.
Agnietenkapel, Oudezijds Voorburgwal 231, Amsterdam

The University of Amsterdam hosts a symposium dedicated to the work of
Svetlana Alpers (Professor Emerita, University of California, Berkeley).
Her books on early modern painting are not easy to categorize within
traditional strands of scholarship but share a progressive approach to
their subjects. The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth
Century (1983) turned attention away from iconography to questions about
the look and nature of Dutch painting. Rembrandt's Enterprise: The
Studio and the Market (1988) analyzed the master's work in terms of his
performance on the market. More recently, Alpers has expanded her view
to Italian art in Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence (1994, with
Michael Baxandall), to Spanish art in The Vexations of Art: Velazquez
and Others (2005), and she has now turned to the making and discussing
of art today.

Svetlana Alpers will participate in a multidisciplinary assembly of
visual artist and researchers who have affinity with her thinking. She
will discuss a selection of works from the Renaissance to the present.
Her guests are the artist Jan Andriesse, historian Rudolf Dekker, artist
Jan Dibbets, painter Marlene Dumas, art historian Rudi Fuchs, film maker
Maarten de Kroon, and cultural historian Lotte van de Pol.

Supported by: The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research,
Dutch Postgraduate School for Art History, Amsterdam Centre for the
Study of the Golden Age
Registration obligatory: registration form on
http://cf.uba.uva.nl/goudeneeuw/
Contact persons: Thijs Weststeijn (UvA) and Gerbrand Korevaar (Rijksmuseum)

Dr Thijs Weststeijn
Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nieuwere Tijd/
Art History Department
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Herengracht 286
NL-1016 BX Amsterdam
The Netherlands