EVENT DETAILS

Emergence in Courbet’s Landscapes and in The Painter’s Studio

The Ph.D. Program in Visual Studies is pleased to present the Spring Faculty/Student Colloquium:

Emergence in Courbet’s Landscapes and in The Painter’s Studio

Presenter: Professor Jim Herbert, Art History and Visual Studies
Respondent: Eric Morrill, Visual Studies

Contrary to myths current at the time and since, the pasty slabs of paint laid down by the palette knife in Courbet’s paintings—especially plentiful in the late landscapes such as The Waterspout, Etretat of c. 1870 and The Roe Deer’s Shelter in Winter of c. 1866—do not testify to the autonomous individuality of the artist. Rather, these brushstrokes are the product (in a process well described by the nascent science of emergence) of complex and unpredictable interactions between local configurations of previously applied paint and neural pathways inscribed by Courbet’s accumulated technical experience. This dynamic not only corresponds with the natural processes depicted in the landscapes: the crashing of waves against rocks, say, or the matching of wits between hunter and deer. It also casts new light on Courbet’s Painter’s Studio of 1855, where the depicted individuals and social types interact in the unpredictable manner of emergent brushstrokes.

Free and open to the public.