David Freedberg | |
---|---|
Director of Warburg Institute | |
In office July 2015 –April 2017 | |
Preceded by | Peter Mack |
Succeeded by | Bill Sherman |
Personal details | |
Born | Cape Town,South Africa |
Alma mater | Yale University (BA) University of Oxford (PhD) |
Occupation | Art historian Administrator |
David Freedberg is Pierre Matisse Professor of the History of Art and Director of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University. [1] He was also Director of the Warburg Institute at the University of London from July 2015 to April 2017. [2]
Born in Cape Town,South Africa,David Freedberg was educated at the South African College High School in Newlands,Cape Town (1961–65),the University of Cape Town (1966),Yale University (B.A. 1969),and the University of Oxford (D.Phil. 1973). [3]
Freedberg’s first degree was in Classics,but he switched to art history while at Oxford as the result of the influence of E.H. Gombrich and Michael Baxandall with whom he studied at the Warburg Institute in London. [4]
He taught at the Courtauld Institute of Art of the University of London before being appointed Professor of the History of Art at Columbia in 1984. He has also been Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford in 1983–1984 and at Cambridge in 2016-2017,Andrew W. Mellon Professor at the National Gallery of Art (1996–1998),Nat C. Robertson Professor of Science and Society at Emory University (2006),Rudolf Wittkower Professor at the Biblioteca Hertziana in Rome (2008-2009),etc. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,the American Philosophical Society, [5] the Accademia Nazionale di Agricultura in Bologna,and the Istituto Veneto per le Scienze,Lettere e Arti.
A volume of Tributes to David A. Freedberg:Image and Insight was published in 2019,edited by Claudia Swan. [6]
David Freedberg is best known for his work on psychological responses to art,and particularly for his studies on iconoclasm and censorship. He first investigated this topic in the early 1970s [7] in preparation for his dissertation Iconoclasm and Painting in the Revolt of the Netherlands (University of Oxford 1973) and in Iconoclasts and Their Motives,1984,which was followed by the landmark book,The Power of Images:Studies in the History and Theory of Response,published by the University of Chicago Press in 1989 and in several subsequent editions in many languages. [8]
Freedberg's more traditional art historical writing originally centered on the fields of Dutch and Flemish art. Within these fields he specialized in the history of Dutch printmaking (Dutch Landscape Prints of the Seventeenth Century,1980),and in the paintings and drawings of Bruegel and Rubens (The Prints of Pieter Bruegel the Elder ,1989,and Rubens:The Life of Christ after the Passion,1984).
Freedberg then turned his attention to seventeenth-century Roman art and to the paintings of Nicolas Poussin. [9] Following a series of important discoveries in Windsor Castle,the Institut de France and the archives of the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome of drawings made under the auspices of Galileo's closest friends and collaborators,he began working on the intersection of art and science in the circle of the first modern scientific academy,the Accademia dei Lincei. While much of his work in this area has been published in articles and catalogues,his chief publication in this field is The Eye of the Lynx:Galileo,His Friends,and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History (2002).
During the late 1980s and 1990s Freedberg was involved in several exhibitions of contemporary art,and coauthored The Play of the Unmentionable (1992) with Joseph Kosuth. It was at this time that he also began working on the subject of dance,and in particular on his long-term project on the dance and architecture of the Pueblo peoples.
From the mid-1980s on,Freedberg began speaking and writing about the importance of the new cognitive neurosciences for the understanding of responses to art and images. He is now devoting a substantial portion of his attention to collaborations with neuroscientists working in fields of movement,embodiment,and emotion.
A distinctive aspect of Freedberg’s work has been his many collaborative projects and publications,not only with other art historians and conservation scientists,but also botanists,paleontologists,mycologists and above all neuroscientists.
Much of Freedberg's time is now taken up by his directorship of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America and his commitment to fostering interdisciplinary work across the humanities and the sciences. [10] At the Academy he established its pioneering Humanities and Neurosciences Project in 2001. The initial aim was to bring humanists and neuroscientists together to assess the possibilities for the humanities and social sciences of new understandings of the neural substrate of responses to art and to images. This was followed by a series of bi-annual conferences on neuroscientific issues of topical interest (for example those on Vision,Attention,and Emotion in 2008,Neurotechniques in 2010,Music and Neuroscience in 2011,and the Default Mode Network in 2014).
Throughout Freedberg has sought to achieve a balanced assessment of new understandings of the neural substrate of responses to humans and their representations. In encouraging such work,he has set out to minimize skepticism and allay fears that the practices and procedures of contemporary neurobiological investigations threaten the contextual approaches of the humanities and social sciences. The overall aim of the programs at the Italian Academy has been to foster the mutual understanding of new techniques and leading paradigms in the sciences and the humanities,and to achieve new epistemological frameworks for the disciplines.
In 2007,together with neuroscientist Vittorio Gallese,he has published an article entitles Motion,Emotion and Empathy in Esthetic Experience which become so polemical in the field. As Freedberg and Gallese explain,as the eye sees a work of art,the brain mimics gestures mentally,before it cognitively recognizes the conceptual context or effect of the action it’s mimicking. Freedberg and Gallese’s theory of aesthetic empathetic responses therefore introduces a possible scientific ally into the aesthetic position of nonconceptual or noncognitive formalism. [11]
From 2015 to 2017,Freedberg was Director of the Warburg Institute [12] at the University of London. [13] His aim while at the Institute was to revive the promise of the work of Aby Warburg and his approaches to the history of art,images,and culture more broadly:emphasizing the psychological,anthropological,political,and biological aspects of Warburg’s work. [14] He sought to inject new energy into the main intellectual directions of the Institute,which,under threat from Nazism,was transferred from Hamburg to London in 1933. [15]
Freedberg’s concerns with historic preservation both in the US and across the globe also resulted in the creation (by him and Barbara Faedda) of the International Observatory for Cultural Heritage at the Italian Academy,which has so far concentrated on Italian,Middle Eastern and Native American issues and has sought to engage native peoples from affected regions as far as possible. The mission of the IOCH “recognizes the need to conserve all that is meaningful in culture at a time when so much is threatened with the imminent possibility of destruction.” [16] In March 2018 Freedberg and his colleagues organized the symposium ‘Threatened heritage:Bears Ears,Chaco and Beyond,' which explored the cultural,political and spiritual implications of the Trump administration’s decision in December 2017 to reduce the size of Bears Ears National Monument by 85%. [17]
Freedberg is also president of The Friends of Liberty Hall,a non-profit organization dedicated to the restoration of Liberty Hall in Machiasport,Maine,which overlooks the site of the first sea battle of the American Revolution. [18]
Freedberg also serves on the boards of several academic and professional journals,including Print Quarterly (London),Res (New York),Revue de l'Art,Nuncius (Florence),the Journal of Neuroesthetics (London),Arts and Neurosciences (Paris),Imagines (Rome),etc.
Nicolas Poussin was a French painter who was a leading painter of the classical French Baroque style,although he spent most of his working life in Rome. Most of his works were on religious and mythological subjects painted for a small group of Italian and French collectors. He returned to Paris for a brief period to serve as First Painter to the King under Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu,but soon returned to Rome and resumed his more traditional themes. In his later years he gave growing prominence to the landscape in his paintings. His work is characterized by clarity,logic,and order,and favors line over color. Until the 20th century he remained a major inspiration for such classically-oriented artists as Jacques-Louis David,Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Paul Cézanne.
The Accademia dei Lincei is one of the oldest and most prestigious European scientific institutions,located at the Palazzo Corsini on the Via della Lungara in Rome,Italy.
The University of Parma is a public university in Parma,Emilia-Romagna,Italy. It is organised in nine departments. As of 2016 the University of Parma has about 26,000 students.
Sir Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich was an Austrian-born art historian who,after settling in England in 1936,became a naturalised British citizen in 1947 and spent most of his working life in the United Kingdom.
The Warburg Institute is a research institution associated with the University of London in central London,England. A member of the School of Advanced Study,its focus is the study of cultural history and the role of images in culture –cross-disciplinary and global. It is concerned with the histories of art and science,and their relationship with superstition,magic,and popular beliefs.
Aby Moritz Warburg,better known as Aby Warburg,was a German art historian and cultural theorist who founded the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg,a private library,which was later moved to the Warburg Institute,London. At the heart of his research was the legacy of the classical world,and the transmission of classical representation,in the most varied areas of Western culture through to the Renaissance.
Rudolf Wittkower was a British art historian specializing in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture,who spent much of his career in London,but was educated in Germany,and later moved to the United States. Despite having a British father who stayed in Germany after his studies,he was born and raised in Berlin.
Pietro Testa (1611–1650) was an Italian High Baroque artist active in Rome. He is best known as a printmaker and draftsman.
Cassiano dal Pozzo was an Italian scholar and patron of arts. The secretary of Cardinal Francesco Barberini,he was an antiquary in the classicizing circle of Rome,and a long-term friend and patron of Nicolas Poussin,whom he supported from his earliest arrival in Rome:Poussin in a letter declared that he was "a disciple of the house and the museum of cavaliere dal Pozzo." A doctor with interests in the proto-science of alchemy,a correspondent of major figures like Galileo,a collector of books and master drawings,dal Pozzo was a node in the network of European scientific figures.
Matteo Zaccolini was an Italian painter,priest and author of the late Mannerist and early Baroque periods. He was a mathematical theorist on perspective. He is also called "Zacolini" and "Zocolino".
Giovanni BaptistaFerrari,was an Italian Jesuit,orientalist,university teacher and botanist. Linguistically highly gifted and an able scientist,at 21 years of age Ferrari knew a good deal of Hebrew and spoke and wrote excellent Greek and Latin. He became a professor of Hebrew and Rhetoric at the Jesuit College in Rome and in 1622 edited a Syriac-Latin dictionary.
Friedrich "Fritz" Saxl was the art historian who was the guiding light of the Warburg Institute,especially during the long mental breakdown of its founder,Aby Warburg,whom he succeeded as director.
Vittorio Gallese is professor of Psychobiology at the University of Parma,Italy,and was professor in Experimental Aesthetics at the University of London,UK (2016-2018). He is an expert in neurophysiology,cognitive neuroscience,social neuroscience,and philosophy of mind. Gallese is one of the discoverers of mirror neurons. His research attempts to elucidate the functional organization of brain mechanisms underlying social cognition,including action understanding,empathy,language,mindreading and aesthetic experience.
Horst Bredekamp is a German art historian and visual historian.
The Crossing of the Red Sea is a painting by Nicolas Poussin,produced between 1633 and 1634. It depicts the crossing of the Red Sea by the Israelites,from chapter 14 of the book of Exodus. It was made as part of a pair of paintings commissioned by Amadeo dal Pozzo,Marchese di Voghera of Turin,a cousin to Cassiano dal Pozzo,Poussin's main sponsor in Rome. By 1685 the pair had passed to the Chevalier de Lorraine and in 1710 they were bought by Benigne de Ragois de Bretonvillers.
The Warburg Haus,Hamburg is a German interdisciplinary forum for art history and cultural sciences and primarily for political iconography. It is dedicated to the life and work of Aby Warburg and run by the University of Hamburg as a semi-independent seminar. "It issues a series of art historical publications directly modeled on the original institution's studies and lectures,and is a sponsor of the reprinted 'Study Edition' released through the Akademie Verlag in Berlin."
Martin Clayton,LVO,FSA,is Head of Prints and Drawings for Royal Collection Trust at Windsor Castle. He is a specialist in the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci.
Giovanni Andrea Podestà or Giovanni Andrea Podesta was an Italian painter and engraver who was principally active in Rome. His principal subject matter is children playing in landscapes with classical objects. His works show the influence of Poussin's Arcadian landscapes and bacchanals,which were ultimately derived from Titian's bacchanals.
Christopher S. Wood is professor in the Department of German at New York University;he is best known as an art historian.
Giovanni Pietro Olina was an Italian naturalist,lawyer,and theologian best known for his writings on the capture and maintenance of songbirds in the rare work Uccelliera,overo,Discorso della natura,e proprieta di diversi uccelli (1622) which was written at the behest of,and with the support of Cassiano dal Pozzo who worked under Pope Urbano VIII.