Livestreaming of Opening Events: http://new.livestream.com/yale/byzmod2012

The Byzantine Empire cultivated a thriving community of theologians and philosophers that debated the ontological, phenomenological, and broader epistemic foundations of the image, upon which the Empire and the Church grounded their physical and metaphysical rule.  Since the nineteenth century, artists, critics, and scholars have utilized the Byzantine as a manner of articulating the development of modernity and its image-world.  For example, in 1958, Clement Greenberg famously remarked on the formal homologies between Byzantine art and contemporary abstraction.  Before him, Roger Fry coined the term "Proto-Byzantines" to describe the Post-Impressionists, and Alfred Barr described Byzantine art and its iconic heritage as fundamental to modern art.  The connection between Byzantium and modernity, however, is usually relegated to passing references or mere formal parallels, lacking a sustained consideration and archaeology of its conceptual grounding.

What does modern art have to gain from Byzantium?  How can Byzantine philosophy enrich our understanding of the modern and contemporary image? The goal of this conference is twofold: First, to investigate the prolific interest in Byzantine art at the turn of the century and its effects on the historical Avant-Gardes in art, architecture, and visual culture to the present; second, to articulate how Byzantine art and image philosophy can contribute to modern and contemporary visual culture. The intention is to produce an intellectual history of art from the nineteenth century to the present that uses Byzantium/Modernism as a paradigmatic fissure for the co-identification of said terms.

Chairs: Roland Betancourt and Maria Taroutina

Conference Schedule

Friday, April 20: OPENING EVENTS

Livestream: http://new.livestream.com/yale/byzmod2012

Yale University Art Gallery, McNeil Auditorium

1111 Chapel Street (at York Street) 

Registration (2:30-3:30)

Opening Remarks and Introduction (3:30-3:45)

Maria Taroutina and Roland Betancourt 

Byzantine Subjectivity in Modernity (3:45-5:00)

Stratis Papaioannou (Brown University), "The History of Autobiography and Byzantine Literature"

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Columbia University), "Subduing Byzantium"

Chair: Roland Betancourt (Yale University)

Opening Keynote (5:00-6:20)

"Voice and Incarnation in Contemporary Images: Patristic Thought in Tarkovsky’s Films"

Marie-José Mondzain (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Respondent: Susan Buck-Morss (Cornell University)

Roundtable Discussion (6:20-6:45)

Susan Buck-Morss, Marie-José Mondzain, Stratis Papaioannou, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Moderators: Roland Betancourt and Maria Taroutina

Reception (6:45-7:30)

Saturday, April 21

Loria Center for the History of Art, Room 250 (Spillover: Loria 351)

190 York Street (at Chapel St.)

Registration (9:00-9:30)

The Historical Avant-Gardes (9:30 – 11:30)

Mark Antliff (Duke University), “From Bergson to Byzantium: The Case of Henri Matisse”

Lisa Florman (Ohio State University), “The Byzantine Example in Kandinsky’s Über das Geistige in der Kunst”

Effie Rentzou (Princeton University), “Representing the Surreal: Byzantine Iconicity and the Surrealist Simulacrum”

Glenn Peers (University of Texas at Austin), "Abstraction, Exhibition and Byzantine Materiality at the Menil Collection"

Chair: Sebastian Zeidler (Yale University)

Lunch (11:30-1:00)

Modernism and Its Counter-Movements (1:00-3:00)

J.B. Bullen (University of Reading), “Neo-Byzantine Oxford, from Victorians to Moderns”

Christopher Reed (Pennsylvania State University), “Byzantium in Bloomsbury; or, How to Avoid ‘A Nasty Wooly Realism about the Sheep’”

Elizabeth Berkowitz (CUNY), “Common Ancestors: German Expressionism and the Byzantium Problem for Bloomsbury Art Criticism”

Dimitra Kotoula (British School of Athens), "Arts and Crafts and 'the Byzantine'"

Karen Stock (Winthrop University), "Maurice Denis's Byzantium as Panacea to Modern Idolatry"

Chair: Tim Barringer (Yale University)

Break (3:00-3:30)

The Icon and the Avant-Garde: The Russian Case (3:30-5:30)

Wendy Salmond (Chapman University), “Byzantium, Byzantinism and the Paths of Modern Art in Russia ca. 1913”

Gleb Sidorkin (Harvard University), “Kazimir Malevich: A New Gospel in Art”

Natasha Kurchanova (Independent Scholar), “Tatlin’s Byzantine Connections”

Robert Bird (University of Chicago), "Gift/Sacrifice: Scale Models and the Stalin Consensus"

Jane Sharp (Rutgers University), "'Sources of Life': Reviving the Reliquary in Russian Art after the Thaw"

Chair: John MacKay (Yale University)

Break (5:30-6:00)

Staging Byzantium: A Historiography from the Theatre to the Museum (6:00-8:00)

Elena Boeck (DePaul University), “Archaeology of Decadence: Uncovering Byzantium in Victorien Sardou’s Theodora”

Spyros Papapetros (Princeton University), "From Ornament to Adornment: Kurt Weitzmann’s Studies of Byzantine Manuscript Illumination"

Myroslava Mudrak (Ohio State University), “Paris and the Revival of Byzantine Form in Modern Art, 1909-1910: Mykhailo Boichuk and his School”

Sarah Warren (Purchase College), “‘Excavating the Icon Pompei’: The politics of the 1913 Exhibition of Russian Ancient Art”

Helen Evans (Metropolitan Museum of Art), The Met’s 1940 Exhibition of Hagia Sophia Mosaics

Chair: Margaret Olin (Yale University)

Graduate Student Mixer (Starts at 9:00 PM)

Gryphon's Pub @ GPSCY

204 York Street  New Haven, CT 06520

Sunday, April 22

Loria Center for the History of Art, Room 250 (Spillover: Loria 351)

190 York Street (at Chapel St.)

Byzantine Tactics in Modern Architecture (9:00-10:50)

Jelena Bogdanović (East Carolina University), “Byzantine Architectural Heritage in Central and East European Avant-Gardes: Goetheanums and Zeniteums”

Fani Gargova (University of Vienna), “On the Byzantine Revival in Synagogue Architecture”

Tulay Atak (Rhode Island School of Design), “Abstraction’s Economy: Byzantium in the Modern Architecture’s Imaginary”

Robert Ousterhout (University of Pennsylvania), “Byzantine Architecture: A Moving Target?”

Chair: Kurt W. Forster (Yale School of Architecture)

Brief Break (10:50-11:10)

Pixels and Icons: New Media and the Byzantine (11:10-1:00)

Devin Singh (Yale University), “Iconicity of the Photographic Image: Theodore of Studios and Andre Bazin”

Nicole Paxton Sullo (Yale University), “Icons in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: Photography and the Twentieth-Century Martyr Saint”

Joy Jeehye Kim (Yale University), “Madonna to Madonnas: Photography and the Making of a Contemporary Icon”

Laura Marks (Simon Fraser University), “Looking not at but beyond: Mosaics and Performative Pixels in Byzantine, Islamic, and New Media Art”

Chair: Francesco Casetti (Yale University)

Lunch (1:00-2:30)

A New Historiography: Byzantium/Modernism (2:30-4:30)

Anthony Cutler (Pennsylvania State University), "One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish: On the Analysis of Complex Structures in Byzantium"

Ian Verstegen (Moore College), "Site-Specifics: The Byzantine Post-Modern Aesthetic"

Rico Franses (American University of Beirut), “Lacan and Byzantium”

Charles Barber (University of Notre Dame), “Beyond Representation/the Gift of Sight”

Whitney Davis (UC Berkeley), “Presence in Byzantine Images and Modern Art”

Chair: David Joselit (Yale University)

Closing Keynote (4:30-5:30)

Robert S. Nelson (Yale University), “Modernism's Byzantiums and Byzantium’s Modernisms”

HOTELS

The Omni Hotel New Haven

Conference Rate is $169 per night. Please mention Byzantium/Modernism Conference to get the special conference rate. Space is limited.  Must reserve before 30 March 2012.  

For reservations, please call: 1-800-THE-OMNI

Courtyard Marriott 

Standard Rate varies between $179-189, depending on room type. No available rooms at conference rate. 

http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/hvndt-courtyard-new-haven-at-yale

New Haven Hotel 

Limited Occupancy. Standard Rate around $169 per night.

http://www.newhavenhotel.com/

The Study at Yale

Rates Vary. 

http://www.studyhotels.com/