WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — On Sunday, Oct. 15, the Clark Art Institute presents a lecture with art historian Alexander Nagel, who examines how prints set in motion a new way of thinking about images as media, continually bringing image-making back to its fundamentals: lines on surfaces. 

 

The free lecture takes place at 1 pm in the Clark's auditorium, located in its Manton Research Center.

 

According to a press release:

 

Five centuries before photography, printmaking fundamentally transformed western art. Prints made images move like never before, launching new forms of fame, sparking viral memes, and building shared imaginaries. Prints reconfigured all other visual art media into a system, making it possible to imagine a history of art.

 

Alexander Nagel is the Craig Hugh Smyth Professor of Fine Arts at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Nagel is a noted expert on Renaissance and early modern art, and has written extensively on the subject, including ten books and numerous articles.

 

This lecture is presented in conjunction with Printed Renaissance, on view in the Eugene V. Thaw Gallery of the Clark's Manton Research Center through Oct. 22, 2023. The exhibition explores the relationship between art writing and graphic reproduction, books, and prints in Italy between 1500 and 1800. Just as with reprints of texts, enterprising publishers retouched and reprinted copperplates and woodblocks for later collectors—demonstrating both a market interest in art of the past and a more broadly developing consciousness of a history of art. The exhibition includes more than thirty prints drawn from the Clark's extensive holdings of works on paper.

 

Printed Renaissance is organized by the Clark Art Institute and curated by Yuefeng Wu, 2022 graduate of the Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art.

 

Support for Printed Renaissance is provided by the Malcolm Hewitt Wiener Foundation.

 

Free; no registration required.