Event: PIZZA TALK: In the Beginning there was the Carved Lion-man from Swabia: On Histories about the Fuss about the ‘First’


Date & Time

March 6, 2019 - 12:00pm to 1:00pm
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Contact Information

Sumiji Takahashi
sutakahashi@ioa.ucla.edu
Phone 310-825-4169

Location

Fowler A222 (Seminar Room)

Event Type

Pizza Talk

Event Details

Dr. Avinoam Shalem
Department of Art History and Archaeology
Columbia University

Abstract:

In this lecture, I would like to challenge the specific art historians’ interest in the question of the earliest and the first-in-sequence work of art. My inquiry does not aim at disregarding this query as a legitimate one or criticizing the art historian’s obsession with this mode of investigation. On the contrary, I would like to ponder on the benefit that art historians gain from locating specific art works as the earliest or the first of their kind. Moreover, I would like to disclose the historical trajectory of this method, namely the first medieval scholarly quests for defining and demarcating the earliest. Thus, my aim is to set this mode of research in its historical context and, hopefully, raise further critical points about our regarding of this approach as scholarly method, for its bad and good reasons alike.