{"id":6371,"date":"2024-11-22T14:12:24","date_gmt":"2024-11-22T22:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arthistory.ucr.edu\/?p=6371"},"modified":"2024-11-22T14:24:21","modified_gmt":"2024-11-22T22:24:21","slug":"chass-professors-close-year-long-distinguished-lecture-series-in-shanghai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arthistory.ucr.edu\/chass-professors-close-year-long-distinguished-lecture-series-in-shanghai\/","title":{"rendered":"CHASS professors close year-long Distinguished Lecture Series in Shanghai"},"content":{"rendered":"

CHASS Professors Jeanette Kohl and Johannes Endres Close the World Art History Institute’s Distinguished Lecture Series in Shanghai<\/span><\/h1>\n

The lecture series on Renaissance art and culture brought together 12 scholars, featuring workshops and presentations
\n<\/span>By Alejandra Prado, Writer\/CHASS Marketing and Communications | <\/span><\/strong><\/span>November 12, 2024<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"JeanetteUC Riverside\u2019s Jeanette Kohl, associate professor of art history, concluded the 2023-24 World Art History Institute\u2019s (WAI) Distinguished Lecture Series on Renaissance Art and Culture during a September trip to China. As a distinguished visiting professor, Kohl delivered the closing lecture at Shanghai International Studies University (SISU), following a series of presentations and a two-day workshop that explored new perspectives of art history and culture during a two-week visit spanning three cities.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a particular honor to give the closing lecture for a year-long series with such esteemed international scholars,\u201d Kohl said. Kohl, who also serves as co-director for UCR\u2019s Center for Ideas and Society (CIS), was invited by Chinese art historian LaoZhu, the founder of WAI.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s series, \u201cDialogues with Distinguished Scholars of World Art History,\u201d brought together 12 experts in European Renaissance art from the U.S. and Europe for monthly lectures to foster dialogue between Eastern and Western perspectives on art history. Kohl was also accompanied by her husband and UCR colleague, Johannes Endres, professor of art history and comparative literature, who also delivered a keynote and co-led a workshop with Kohl at the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts (LAFA) in Shenyang, China.<\/p>\n

Closing the lecture series, Kohl presented her keynote lecture, \u201cA Murder, a Mummy, and a Bust \u2013 Forensics of a Renaissance Portrait Sculpture,\u201d at SISU. The lecture highlighted Kohl\u2019s approach to Renaissance art, using the bust of Simon of Trent \u2013 an object closely linked to anti-Semitic persecution during the late 15th century \u2013 as an example.<\/p>\n

\u201cI presented new conservatory and iconographic evidence for the object as a key work in the ferocious, anti-Semitic propaganda around the Trent blood libel of 1475,\u201d she said. \u201cThe unusual object is a particularly suited object to talk about the role of visual and conservatory observation, knowledge of historical contexts, and questions of methodology in Renaissance art history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prior to her lecture at SISU, Kohl also spoke at the School of Arts at Peking University in Beijing, the third-ranked university in China, in a hybrid presentation with both in-person and virtual audiences. Kohl\u2019s lecture, \u201cThinking with Busts: Rembrandt\u2019s Aristotle with the Bust of Homer,\u201d amassed a virtual attendance of 12,000 viewers on Zoom. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis lecture was a unique experience and left a big impression on me,\u201d she said. \u201cProbably the largest audience I will ever reach with a single presentation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kohl\u2019s lecture at Peking University was based on the last chapter of her latest book, \u201cThe Life of Bust,\u201d currently in press with Brepols Publishers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI spoke about the artistic and \u2018phenomenological\u2019 significance of sculpted portraits as a key medium of remembrance that touches humans in unique intellectual and sensory ways,\u201d she said, examining Rembrandt\u2019s famous painting depicting Aristotle as he contemplates a bust of Homer.<\/p>\n

Kohl and Endres engaged with 16 students who presented their papers on Western art traditions in a two-day, \u201cstudent-centered\u201d workshop at the LAFA. Proposed by Endres, the workshop\u2019s topic, \u201cThe Concept of Style: Epistemologies in Art and Science,\u201d is closely related to his research on 19th-century European art and literature.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe workshop was a great success,\u201d Endres said. \u201cI was thrilled to see how interested our hosts and their students were in our research, and especially in the Western disciplinary methodologies of our common field of art history.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was positively surprised by the students\u2019 open-mindedness, excellent preparation of their papers, their dedication to their topics, and the huge interest in European academic traditions \u2013 quite different from the U.S.,\u201d Kohl said. \u201cThere was a completely open intellectual exchange, both with colleagues and students, about what is going well and what is going not so well on U.S. campuses and in China.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Kohl and Endres, the workshop was eye-opening in the differences between academia in the U.S. and China, even down to student approaches to resources used for study. Both were impressed by the students\u2019 dedication to understanding foreign texts and their proficiency in various languages. <\/p>\n

\u201cInterest in primary textual and visual sources is strong, and we were absolutely taken with the tremendous generosity and hospitality in all three locations, but especially in Shenyang,\u201d Kohl said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir enthusiasm for learning from us was contagious and amazed my wife and me wherever we went on our trip and whatever we did and saw,\u201d Endres said. \u201cIn return, they brought us into their country and their academic lives and took us on exciting excursions into the great history of their art and culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the LAFA workshop, Endres was also invited to speak in a keynote address on \u201cStyle in an Interdisciplinary Perspective,\u201d aimed at exploring the evolution of style as a concept across art, science, and other fields. Endres, who has researched the concept of \u201cstyle\u201d at length, has traced how style has grown from a term used in art and literary criticism about the cultural shaping of work to a broader intellectual framework on discourse in reasoning in different disciplines. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn my talk, I was therefore interested in exploring new ways of looking at the relationships between cultural and scientific knowledge formations and their disciplinary production in different fields and objects, such as works of art, literary texts, music, and scientific epistemologies,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Speaking and co-leading the workshop at LAFA left Endres with new perspectives and questions for his research. \u201cI learned a great deal from their questions and presentations and from their different cultural backgrounds, as they shared a common interest in questions of style and form in art,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is much to be gained, not least on the academic level, from meeting each other at eye level and cultivating an interest in our respective histories and values,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

For Endres and Kohl, it was also an opportunity to represent UCR, as both members of the University of California and scholars of European art and culture. <\/p>\n

\u201cVisits and conversations like these are invaluable,\u201d Kohl said. \u201cWe need to leave our own academic and national bubbles and actually talk to colleagues in other cultures, connect with their traditions, respect them, and bring an open mind to learn from them and their histories.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Kohl, their two weeks in China were not merely an academic visit but a full cultural immersion. Outside of lectures and presentations, the visit offered Kohl and Endres opportunities to explore local cuisine, museums, and historic sites with tour guides by their side.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is such a modern and forward-pushing society, in many ways, and the state of digitization, the cutting-edge technology, and the pride of their own long cultural traditions was palpable everywhere,\u201d Kohl said.<\/p>\n

Following their trip, Kohl is motivated to continue working with her colleagues in China by collaborating with them on her new project, \u201cGlobal Faces,\u201d which examines the various styles of portraiture across cultures during the Renaissance period.<\/p>\n

Kohl and Endres hope their visit will strengthen much-needed international academic ties for students and colleagues.<\/p>\n

Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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