CONFERENCE: Religion, Art and Conflict: Disputes, Destruction and Creation, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN, 5 – 6 December 2014.
Throughout history religion and belief have been the catalyst for the creation of great buildings and works of art. However, religious art has frequently been disputed, despised and destroyed. This one and a half day conference will examine the role of reform, ideology and conflict in the destruction and preservation of religious art and architecture. The conference will also investigate how theological disputes and religious conflicts have been the impetus for new intellectual and creative approaches to the visual and material arts.
The papers presented at the conference will cover 600 years of art history, from fifteenth-century Florence to depictions of Islam after 9/11, and a breadth of topics from medieval monasticism to William Blake’s theology of art, from Bhutanese seventeenth century art to the Vatican’s relationship with con- temporary art, and much more.
PROGRAMME
Friday, 5 December 2014, 13.30
Session 1: Cultural Interaction or Conflict?
* María Molina Fajardo (University of Granada), Building a ‘Catholic Site’: Spaces of Encounter, the Aggression and the Creation of the Village of Nigüelas (Granada) after the Castilian Conquest
* Ariana Maki (University of Colorado Boulder), Lines and Lineages: Depicting History and Religion in 17th-Century Bhutan
* David Low (The Courtauld Institute of Art), The Ruins of Ani: the Rediscovery, Destruction and Reconstruction of an Armenian City.
Session 2: Word, Image and Conflict – Liturgical Books in Late Medieval and Reformation-era England
* Jayne Wackett (University of Kent), Liturgical Images in the English Reformation: Lost, Found and Altered
* Michael Carter (The Courtauld Institute of Art), Tuppence Worth: an Annotated Missal from a Cistercian Abbey.
Keynote Lecture:
James Carley (York University, Toronto / University of Kent), ‘So myserably peryshed in the spoyle’: John Leland and John Bale on the Dissolution of the English Religious Houses.
Saturday, 6 December, 9.30
Session 3: Violence, Destruction and Creation in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy
* Scott Nethersole (The Courtauld Institute of Art), ‘Art came to an end’: Making and Destruction in Fra Filippo Lippi’s Medici Altarpiece
* Anna Marazuela Kim (University of Virginia), Idols of Art and of the Mind: Sculptural and Spiritual Iconoclasm in Michelangelo’s Rondanini Pietà
* Eva Papoulia (The Courtauld Institute of Art), The Gregorian Chapel in St Peter’s: a Catholic Response to Protestant Claims.
Keynote Lecture:
Sussan Babaie (The Courtauld Institute of Art), ‘Holy’ Wars and the Visual Poetics of Innocence; Iran-Iraq, then (1980-89)
Session 4: Religion, Conflict and Identity
* Lloyd De Beer (British Museum / University of East Anglia), Burial and Belief: Alabaster Sculpture in Context
* Ágnes Kriza (University of Cambridge), Representing Destruction: Medieval Russian Visualisations of Byzantine Iconoclasm
* Emily Pegues (The Courtauld Institute of Art / National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.), To die for an ideal’: Three Wars, One Retable and the Foundations of a Belgian History of Art.
Session 5: Religion, Art and Conflict in the Modern and Contemporary World
* Naomi Billingsley (University of Manchester), Knock, Knock, William Blake’s Here: Creative Conflict in Blake’s Illustrations of Edward Young’s Night Thoughts
* Anna Messner (University of Munich), In Search of Jewish Art and Identity: The Munich Artist Rudolf Ernst (1896-1942)
* Lieke Wijnia (Tilburg University), Religion’s Reclaim of Contemporary Art: The Vaticanat the 2013 Venice Biennale.
