Journée d’étude – Interspaces between the Haptic and the Visual Case Studies around the Representation and the Communication through the Sensorium

20 March 2014

KU Leuven

Faculty of Arts,

MSI 02.08

Blijde inkomststraat, 21

Leuven

Dans le cadre de la Chaire Francqui – Class of Excellence (janvier-juin 2014)

In this workshop we will focus on the interchange, interspaces and conflations of the senses, departing from three thematic fields in medieval iconology and vi- sual anthropology which in particular thematize these scopes in fundamental and paradigmatically way: The Noli me Tangere, the Haemorrhoïssa and the Johan- nesschüssel.

The Noli me tangere installs a paradigm in favor of the visionary (gazing at Christ who is on the threshold of his departure in the visible invisibility = vera icon) suppressing the haptic. Undercurrent of this chiasmic relationship between the haptic and the visual is smell (evoked by the garden) as a transitory affect be- tween two worlds and as mediator of love and insight.

The Haemorrhoïssa installs a paradigm in favor of the tactile (the woman with bloodfluxus takes the dynamis fluxus from Christ’s hem and cures), suppressing the visual. An important mediator of the haptic is the hearing and the inner feeling: ‘her well dried up’. Here a sensorium is represented that is more archaic then the very platonic Noli me tangere. The Haemorrhoïssa, moreover, will conflate with the Veronica, losing her previous haptic power in favor of ultimate visuality.

The Johannesschüssel is the ultimate paradox of the senses. Being part of the sculptural tactile world it represents the death of the voice. The dismantling of the idea of the prophetic vox and hence the sonic world into ‘silence’ strengths the gazing between object and beholder. Yet the object is ‘death’ and cannot respond the gaze. The gazing beholder falls into the black abyss, comparable with the Me- dusa paradigm and as such being the flipside of the vera icon which is the image that looks back beyond any price.

Programme :

9:30: Barbara Baert (Iconology Research Group – Illuminare, KU Leuven) – Introduction

10:00: Emma Sidgwick (Iconology Research Group – Illuminare, KU Leuven) – Strigils & Sensory

10:45: Sophia Rochmes (PhD Candidate, History of Art and Architecture University of California, Santa Barbara) – Medieval Monochrome and the Limits of Sense Perception

11:30: Dominique Delarue (PhD Candidate, Universität Heidelberg – Illuminare, KU Leuven) – Bedeutungsvoll beginnen. Die Rolle von Frontispizen und Eingangsminiaturen in den Bildprogrammen französischer Legendare

12:15: Lunch

14:00: Soetkin Vanhauwaert (PhD Candidate FWO – KU Leuven) – Reflections on the motif of the Head of St John the Baptist on a Platter in the context of healing and dying

14:45: Robrecht Janssen (PhD Candidate, Illuminare, KU Leuven) – ‘Don’t you Believe to See that God is Present?’ Anthonis Mors (1517-1577) Ris- en Christ through the Eyes of Dominicus Lampsonius (1532-1599)

15:30: Bert Watteeuw (Research assistant Rubenianum – PhD Candidate KU Leuven) – Tactile textile. Early modern strategies of synaesthesia in the depiction of dress

Informations complémentaires : barbara.baert@arts.kuleuven.be