Anthony Cutler (Evan Pugh University Professor of Art History, Penn State University) "Dissolving the Fourth Wall"
Department: The Center for Early Cultures
Date and Time: November 6, 2017 | 6:00 PM-7:30 PMEvent Location: HG 1800
Event Details
This lecture examines the artistic device in which one or more individuals depicted within an image regard us, even while we look at it from outside. Already extant in Greek red-figure vase painting, the motif recurs independently in Byzantine, Western Medieval and Italian Renaissance art. Following experiments of this sort in the late 19th century, the heyday of the form comes in the mid-20th century in Magritte’s Not to be Reproduced and Jasper Johns’s Target. Since there can be no question of influence across this huge span of time, some sort of theoretical scrutiny of this perennial motif is called for. Even sophisticated, contemporary videogames, predicated on the aesthetics of mutual observtion and the metaphysics of reciprocity remain unhelpful in this respect. Discussion is needed.