Dilthey-Fellowship Identität und Repräsentation. Korporative Siegelbilder im Spätmittelalter
The art of reproduction: replicated media and their artistic contexts in ancient and medieval Europe, Workshop at Schloss Rauischholzhausen, 12th – 13th July 2013
Images and objects reproduced by some form of matrix or template have been considered only rarely in scholarly categories of ancient and medieval art. For the narratives of artistic progress that have dominated the mainstream of disciplines such as archaeology or art history, reproduction as a means of creating art appears highly problematic. During the last decade, however, an increasing number of researchers have chosen a rather different perspective on the subject-matter. Recent studies clearly show that the pictorial world of Greco-Roman Antiquity and the European Middle Ages were full of images and media emerging from replication, which were interwoven within the contemporary visual culture. Above that research has progressively drawn upon the material qualities to create impressed or imprinted imagery. These new approaches have widened the perspectives of interpretation so that coins or seals are no longer seen solely as signs of authority, but rather discussed in contexts of identity, mobility, communication or memory.
But does this necessarily mean that research on reproductive imagery across the disciplines is inspired by and can therefore be categorised under the label of visual and material culture studies or their German counterpart Bildwissenschaften? In July 2013 international experts from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds gathered in a workshop organised by the Volkswagen Stiftung's Dilthey Fellowship <Repräsentation und Identitätsstiftung. Korporative Siegelbilder im Spätmittelalter> to discuss the state of research concerning the art of reproduction in the European visual cultures from classical Antiquity until the later Middle Ages.