Like the ex-voti, the wax figure, the imprint, or the mimicry of certain insects, the trompe-l’oeil, too, can be listed among those types of mimesis which have been repelled from the canonical forms of art, and which Louis Marin called „excessive mimesis“.

The workshop discusses new ways of reading the trompe-l'oeils in Netherlandish book illumination and related forerunners of the Dutch still life. Instead of reading these phe-nomena as purely decorative or iconographic elements of the late medieval style in Northern European border design, the workshop proposes to read these elements as self-referential figures of the process, in which the different elements of the illuminated book page were differentiated out and/or lead to hybrid spaces and topologies (such as niches, holes or folds).

Thus, we suggest to address trompe-l’oeils not as motives or metaphors, but as pro-ductions of a mediatic space which thematize and subvert the relationship between signs and things, image space and image support, perspectival depth and topological operationality.

In the context of his Mercator Fellowship which Victor Stoichita spends together with the members of the DFG research group "Media & Mimesis" in January 2016 in Weimar, the project "Metamorphoses of the Surface", which studies the trompe-l'oeil objects in Netherlandish book illumination and early still lifes, hosts experts in questions of late medieval iconic spaces, the hybrid materiality of images, trompe-l'oeils, meta-paintings, intermedial relations between spaces and books as well as between textiles and images.

Thursday, January 21st

9.30-10.00  Welcome and Introduction

10.00-11.00  Barbara Baert
The Intimacy of the Excessive Space.
Trompe-l'œil as Horticulture
in in the Enclosed Gardens

Coffee break

11.30-12.30  David Ganz
Media Archeology of the Book?
The Focus on Materials and Techniques of Writing in Italian Book Illumination

Lunch break

14.30-15.30  Rostislav Tumanov
Trompe-l‘œil and Devotion.
Illusionisms and Spiritual Sight in Late Medieval Manuscripts

Coffee break

16.00-17.00  Roland Krischel
Theological Aspects of the Trompe-l'œil.
Barthel Bruyn and Earlier Cologne Painting


Friday, January 22nd

9.30-11.00  Victor Stoichita
The Two Sides of the Painting.
Life and Death in Early Modern Netherlandish Painting and Beyond

Coffee break

11.30-13.00  Helga Lutz
Things and Niches.
Trompe-l'œils as Figures of Arrested Movements of Medial Self-Reference

Lunch break
    
14.00-16.00  Bernhard Siegert
From Sign to Thing. The Hybrid Dimensionalities of Joris Hoefnagel

Coffee break

16.30-18.00  Discussion


Participants:

Barbara Baert (KU Leuven)  
Nike Bätzner (Hochschule der Künste, Burg Giebichenstein Halle)
Carolin Bohlmann (Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin)
David Ganz (Universität Zürich)
Karin Gludovatz (FU Berlin)
Roland Krischel (Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Köln)
Helga Lutz (Bauhaus Universität Weimar)
James Marrow (Princeton University, Emeritus)
Bettine Menke (Universität Erfurt)
Bernhard Siegert (Bauhaus Universität Weimar)
Victor Stoichita, (Université de Fribourg)
Rostislav Tumanov (Universität Hamburg)

The conference is open to the public. There is no registration fee, but advanced registration is required. Please contact: excessive.spaces@gmail.com

www.fg-mimesis.de