Book Talk: A New Antiquity. Art And Humanity as Universal, 1400-1600

We tend to think of sixteenth-century European artistic theory as separate from the artworks displayed in the non-European sections of museums. Alessandra Russo argues otherwise. Instead of considering the European experience of “New World” artifacts and materials through the lenses of “curiosity” and “exoticism,” Russo asks a different question: What impact have these works had on the way we currently think about—and theorize—the arts? Original and convincing, A New Antiquity is a pathbreaking study that disrupts existing conceptions of Renaissance art and early modern humanity. It will be required reading for art historians specializing in the Renaissance, scholars of Iberian and Latin American cultures and global studies, and anyone interested in anthropology and aesthetics.

Registration is required for this event.

ABOUT OUR GUEST SPEAKER

Alessandra Russo is Department Chair and Professor of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, and Director of the Hispanic Institute at Columbia University. Her research studies the theory, practice and display of the arts in the early modern times, with a special emphasis on the artistic dynamics in the context of the Iberian colonization. An Interview with Columbia News is accessible
here.

Professor Russo’s last book, A New Antiquity. Art and Humanity as Universal (1400-1600) (Penn State University Press, 2024), analyzes the active role that the artifacts encountered—but also those pillaged and collected—in the global context of the Iberian colonization in the Americas, Africa, and Asia had on the modern idea of art. The book has won the Eleanor Tufts Award of the SIGA. Russo is also author of The Untranslatable Image (Texas University Press; French edition: L’image intraduisible, Les Presses du Réel), El realismo circular (IIE-Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), and co-editor of Images Take Flight (Hirmer Verlag-distr. University of Chicago Press; Best book award in “theory of art” and Grand Prix du Jury at FILAF and Honorable Mention, ALAA Book Award). Learn
more.

DISCUSSANTS

Carolina Mangone, Associate Professor, Art and Archaeology, Princeton University
Garry Sparks, Associate Professor, Religion, Princeton University