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Focus is on the medium of image, in the attempt to identify the qualities of materials before the era of mass production and standardization distanced from the realm of nature and myth. This special mediology is described in detail by ancient sources (ekphraseis) evoking objects made out of fire, metallurgy and magic stone (Domus Aurea); marble displayed as cosmic floors which make one as if “walking on waters” (Barry) in the ekphrasis of the imperial space of Hagia Sophia (Paulus Silentiary); interiors of palaces and churches in which a shimmer ruffled by the winds offers a marvelous site of animation (empsychosis). A magnificent display of gems, precious stones, such as onyx, porphyry or Proconensian marble, and gold seen through the dense air imbued with smoke and fragrance dissolved the interiors into a mirage of glitter that seemed to come not from the sun, but to emanate from inside. The gleaming reflection of light made these spaces look like a cosmic abode, a marvelous sight to peruse. Images of glass shimmering with magic visions, of luminescence of gold, bronze, and pearls were not mere metaphors, but the fulcrum of material imagination.
This mediology manifested as matter imbued with spirit (pneuma) has drawn the attention of many contemporary scholars, who addressed it within what is called the aesthetics of brilliance relative to phenomena of glitter, shadow, reverberation, and reonta (moving, kinetic, fugitive). Thus, guided by inspired scholars like Fabio Barry and Bissera Pentcheva, but also sharing my own latest researches on the phenomenology of brilliance and aesthetics of light in the Mediteranean, I would like to take up in this course the difficult task of clarifying topics of material imagination and mediology as living image. Following Hans Belting’s thesis on the division between the history of images before art and the era of art, proper, this mediology could help us better define how image operated in the era of image before art and the status of image, the time when the power of Myth was strong, the connection with Nature was unbroken. Invaluable will be in our task John Sallis’ recent book Force of Imagination: The Sense of the Elemental devoted to the nature of imagination, and its decisive role played in opening experience to the sensible and the elemental in nature, the encompassing light, atmosphere, earth, and sky. It is my hope that with Sallis’s assistance it might be possible to address interesting phenomena in contemporary art, such as Kiefer’s alchemy and Warhol’s gilded image, Eliasson’s atmospheric project, or Katharina Grosses’ rainbow, challenging the contemporary deconstruction of the classical opposition between sensible and intelligible, and casting thus a new light on the nature of art.
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| Litteratur: |
Barry, Fabio. “Walking on Waters: Cosmic Floors in Antiquity and the Middle Ages,” The Art Bulletin,
vol. 89, no. 4 (dec. 2007), pp. 627-656.
Isar, Nicoletta. Dazzling Presence. An Essay in Phenomenology of the Saturated Phenomenon, The Idea of
Presence, Bucharest 2012. (forthcoming)
Isar, Nicoletta. Enchanting Poetry in Stone: Being Moved by Light in the Space of Hagia
Sophia, Medieval and Early Modern Studies for Central and Eastern Europe, 2012. (forthcoming)
Isar, Nicoletta. XOPOΣ: The Dance of Adam. The Making of ByzantineChorography. The Anthropology of
the Byzantine Image of the Choir of Dance, Alexandross Press, Leiden, 2011.
Isar, Nicoletta. “Χορός of Light: Vision of the Sacred Paulus the Silentiary's poem Descriptio S. Sophiae.” Byzantinische Forschungen Internationale Zeitschrift für Byzantinistik 28 (2004): 215–242.
Isar, Nicoletta. “The Vision and ‘its exceedingly blessed beholder’: Of Desire and Participation in the Icon.” RES: Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics 38 (2000): 56-72.
Marion, Jena-Luc. The Visible and the Revealed, trans. Christina M. Gschwandtner
(Bronx, NY: Fordham UP, 2008).
Pentcheva, Bissera. The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium,
Pennsylvania State Univ. Press (2010).
Photios. “The Church of the Virgin of the Pharos.” Homily X, 4ff in C. Mango.
The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312-1453: Sources and Documents (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1986) 185-186.
Procopius, Buildings I, trans. H. B. Dewing, vol. VII, Loeb Classical Library
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1940).
Heidegger, Martin. “Building Dwelling Thinking,” Poetry, Language, Thought,
trans. A. Hofstadter (New York: Harper, 1985) 154.
Sallis, John. Force of Imagination: The Sense of the Elemental, Bloomington: Indiana
UP, 2000.
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