Lecturer: Ivan Foletti
Contact: [email protected] (activities.education @ liste.parisnanterre.fr)
In traditional historiographical narration, the arrival of the “barbarians” corresponds to the end of the greatest civilization of the ancient Mediterranean: the Roman Empire. But was the situation that simple? Who were these “barbarians”? And did the Empire really collapse or was it rather transformed? The objective of this course is to focus on the artistic, visual, material and performative cultures that have coexisted in this extraordinary moment in history. To achieve this, we will first focus on the prejudices built by the Renaissance to the present day on what was commonly considered the “Dark Age”. Secondly, we will investigate the role of the media in the transformations of visual history: from sculptures to “two-dimensional” images, from scrolls to codes, from illusory to iconic images. Thirdly, we will analyze the role played by the meeting of cultures – constitutive for the period under investigation – in the birth of the “Middle Ages”. In traditional historiographical narrative, the arrival of the “barbarians” corresponds to the end of the greatest civilization of the ancient Mediterranean: the Roman Empire. But was the situation that simple? Who were these “barbarians”? And did the Empire really collapse or was it rather transformed? The objective of this course is to focus on the artistic, visual, material and performative cultures that have coexisted in this extraordinary moment in history. To achieve this, we will first focus on the prejudices built by the Renaissance to the present day on what was commonly considered the “Dark Age”. Secondly, we will investigate the role of the media in the transformations of visual history: from sculptures to “two-dimensional” images, from scrolls to codes, from illusory to iconic images. Thirdly, we will analyze the role played by the meeting of cultures – constitutive for the period under investigation – in the birth of the “Middle Ages”.
