Images at Work: Image and Efficacy from Antiquity to the Rise of Modernity

International Conference

According to legend, Virgil made a fly out of bronze and placed it above
the gates of Naples. The sole purpose of the bronze fly was to prevent
other flies from entering the city. The conference 'Images at Work' will
set out to explore the intention, function, and reception of images like
Virgil's fly: images made to influence the natural world. We seek to
examine the theories behind the construction of these operative images,
to interrogate how the production of apotropaic images related to the
production of Art, and to question how the manufacture of such working
images interacted with the production of other types of mechanical
apparatus. In contrast to religious miracle-working images that perform
multiple miracles of varying types, and which, crucially, are usually
perceived as operating in the world only subsequent to their creation,
the images with which this conference seeks to engage had, in most
cases, very specific, predetermined functions. The objective of 'Images
at Work' is thus to focus on the scientific and magical spheres of image
production; it will consider these adjunctive images as both objects in
space and actors in ritual. The goal of the conference at the
Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz will be to map the central issues
regarding images that function in the natural world. We aim to discuss
the phenomena ascribed to this category of images historically,
culturally, and geographically, employing a broad array of theoretical
and disciplinary approaches. The conference will address the manufacture
of images that work, their function in real as well as in imaginary
realms, and their reception on both functional and aesthetic levels.

Date: September 30th, 2010 to October 2nd, 2010
Location: Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max-Planck-Institut,
Palazzo Grifoni – Seminarraum, Via dei Servi 51, 50122 Firenze
Contact: Ashley Jones, E-mail: joneskhi.fi.it

Program:

Thursday 30 September:
17:30 Seminar: Efficacy, Magic and Anthrolopolgy
Screening of “Magia Lucana” by Luigi Di Gianni

Friday 1 October:
9:45 Welcome: Gerhard Wolf
10:00 Images at Work: Posing Questions to Art Historians,
Hannah Baader & Ittai Weinryb
Chair: Ittai Weinryb
10:45 Bloodstained, Beate Fricke
11:30 Coffee Break
11:45 Making Amulets Work in Late Antiquity, Ashley Jones
12:30 'quae sub luce videantur:' The Status of Images between
Magic and Art Theory, Ana Debenedetti
13:15 Lunch Break
Chair: Philippe Cordez
14:30 “Spiritus and Virtutes”: What Renaissance
Psychophysiology Can Tell Us About How Images Worked, Tanja Klemm

15:15 The Charged Matrix: Printmaking's Productive Surfaces,
Lisa Pon
16:00 Manufacturing the Miraculous in Sixteenth-Century
Italian Painting, Christopher Nygren
16:45 Tea Break
17:15 Antidotism: Painting as 'Pharmakon,' Karin Leonhard
18:00 Concluding Remarks, Christopher Wood

Saturday 2 October:
Chair: Ashley Jones
11:00 Dragons at the Gates: Sympathy, Symmetry, and Sculpture
along the Thirteenth-Century Tigris, Persis Berlekamp
11:45 What Do We Mean When We Talk about Medieval Automata?
Elly Truitt
12:30 Animal, Vegetal, and Mineral: Ambiguity and Efficacy in the
Nishapur Wall-Paintings, Finbar Barry Flood
13:15 Lunch Break
Chair: Hannah Baader
14:30 The Eagle and the Snake: Looking at Sculpture with
Nicetas Choniates, Paroma Chatterjee
15:15 The Talismanic Value of Vermin on the Doors of the
Baptistry in Florence, Mauro Di Vito
16:00 Tea Break
16:30 Conclusion, Gerhard Wolf
17:15 Concluding Discussion