SYMBOLISM·AND·ABSTRACTION·IN·LATE·
ANTIQUE·AND·EARLY·BYZANTINE·ART·
(c. 300-700)
T I
T
U 9
PROGRAMME
Organiser and chair: Cecilia Olovsdotter
Location: Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, Istiklal cad. 247, Tünel-Beyoglu, 34433 ISTANBUL
Day 1, Thursday 9 May:
9.30 Registration
10.00 Welcome
Session 1: Approaching late antique art: some critical and methodological
perspectives. Chair: Paul Magdalino, Koç Üniversitesi, Istanbul
10.10 Sarah Bassett, Indiana University, Bloomington: Late antique art and
modernist vision
10.55 John Onians, University of East Anglia: The other hippocampus: the
importance of unconscious mental formation for the experience of late antique art
and architecture
11.40 Coffee break
11.55 Anne Karahan, Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul; Stockholms
Universitet: Image and meta-image. Byzantine faith and the improbable necessity
of divine appearance
12.40 Glenn Peers, University of Texas at Austin: Transfiguring materialities:
relational abstraction in late antiquity
(13.25 Lunch break)
Session 2: Abstraction in late antique art. Chair: Alessandra Ricci, Koç Üniversitesi,
Istanbul
15.00 Bente Kiilerich, Universitetet i Bergen: Abstraction in late antique art
15.45 Robin Cormack, University of London; University of Cambridge: Abstraction
in the early icons at Sinai
16.30 Coffee break
16.45 Beat Brenk, Universität Basel; Università degli Studi di Roma ”La Sapienza”:
Aniconic art in late antiquity (300-700)
17.30 Conclusion
Day 2, Friday 10 May:
Session 3: Symbolic themes of late antique art (I). Chair: Peter Talloen, Koç
Üniversitesi RCAC, Istanbul
10.00 Rainer Warland, Universität Freiburg: Vom Umbau der symbolischen Bilder
in der Spätantike und der Schaffung einer Bildkultur visueller Zeichen
10.45 Josef Engemann, Universität Bonn; Deutsches Archäologisches Institut: A
modern ‘myth’: the sixth-century starting date of the ‘eastern’ representation of
Christ’s ascension
11.30 Coffee break
11.45 Ivana Jevtic, Koç Üniversitesi, Istanbul: The use and meaning of
personifications: following the threads of continuity between late antique and
Byzantine art
12.30 Cecilia Olovsdotter, Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul; Lunds
Universitet: Architecture and the spheres of the human universe in late antique art
(13.15 Lunch break)
Session 4: Symbolic themes of late antique art (II). Chair: Marianne Boqvist,
Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul
14.45 Livia Bevilacqua, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”: The floor
mosaics in the Church of the Multiplication of Loaves and Fishes in Tabgha
15.30 Maja Kominko, Oxford University; Arcadia Fund: Ornamental crosses in lateantique Syriac manuscripts
16.15 Coffee break
16.30 Hjalmar Torp, Oslo Universitet: The mosaics of the Rotunda at Thessaloniki:
sixty years of study
17.15 Conclusion
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