OI Members' Lecture: Marian Feldman

1155 East 58th Street,Chicago IL 60637

04 May, 2022

Description

Charismatic Rulers and Spatial Voids in the Art of the Akkadian Empire, c 2350-2150 BCE Registration is for in-person attendance only. A link to the video livestream will be sent out on OI social media closer to the event. Do not register for the link. Masks are required in all University of Chicago buildings. Charismatic Rulers and Spatial Voids in the Art of the Akkadian Empire, c 2350-2150 BCE Marian Feldman, professor and W.H. Collins Vickers Chair in Archaeology, History of Art, Johns Hopkins University Akkadian art is heralded as an innovative breakthrough in large part due to its ostensibly naturalistic renderings, such as the sculptural plasticity of figural forms and the appearance of landscape-like elements seen for example on the victory stele of Naram-Sin. Our own fascination with spatial illusionism, borne from centuries of perspectivism and the standard of Italian Renaissance artistic production, celebrates these Akkadian art works without examining their original motivating factors, nor carefully analyzing their formal characteristics. In fact, spatial illusionism is rarely evident, and instead, the emphasis can be seen to be on the corporeal existence of physical things on their own, which I connect to new, totalizing powers claimed by the Akkadian kings in their territorial unification of the southern Mesopotamian city-states. Visual analysis of Akkadian art demonstrates a singular attention to the bringing into being of material things (both animate and inanimate), but a decided absence of attention to relationships among these entities within spatial settings.