Events

Noam Elcott , Columbia University
Jeffrey Hamburger, Harvard University

This paper proceeds from the observation that words are central to canonical art in the West before 1500 and after 1900, but not in the intervening centuries. Anchored in late Medieval Christianity and modern intellectual property law, the paper focuses on the cultural techniques of viewing, reading, and touching as interrogated in Flemish illuminated manuscripts circa 1500 and avant-garde collages around 1900.