Unseeing the Evil Eye: Powers and Politics of the Apotropaic

Call for Papers: three-day conference co-organized with Miriam Said at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte and the Staatliches Museum Ägyptischer Kunst in Munich, 29 November-01 December 2023

Since the mid-19th century, the ghost of apotropaism has haunted the humanities. Coined by classicist Otto Jahn (1813-1869), the term quickly gained traction in historical scholarship denoting actions or objects conceived as provocative, obscene, and therefore offensive to the aesthetic sensibilities of the time. Depictions of threatening animals, glaring faces and disembodied eyes, exposed genitalia and arcane symbols, accordingly, served as protective devices warding off evil by mirroring its appearance.

Catholic Historical Review, 2002

Social Research, 2016

According to the French philosopher Alain, art must regain its existence as a real and solid object to counteract deceitful imagination. In line with this view is Yves Michaud's description of the "gaseous" state of contemporary art. Paradoxically, the wide circulation of many 'artistic' products, destined to be consumed and invoke emotions, does not indicate that we are in presence of an important affirmation of ethical and aesthetical values. As it were, the proliferation of aesthetic objects has destroyed the symbolic value of art. The Italian philosopher Gianni Carchia has underlined how the disappearance of the axiological dimension has led art towards imposture and under the yoke of imagination, which both assist the strategies of the demonic. At this point a question arises: is it possible to eradicate the power of the demonic and evil from our existential condition? According to Jung it's impossible. In Castelli's view, the union between art, evil and the demonic has characterized the artistic panorama of the sixteenth century. In the twentieth-century, we owe to Hermann Broch -who brought the raising power of kitsch under philosophical scrutiny − the idea of a complicity between degraded art and evil. Not all scholars agreed that Kitsch represented evil. Many philosophers argued that the growing popularity of Kitsch among the masses posed a problem concerning the demand for art. For this reason, philosophical speculation had better not take a Manichean attitude and reject Kitsch outright, on the contrary, Kitsch should be studied with the aim of transforming the "hunger for art", of which it is a manifestation, into a desire for ethical and artistic values.

This book establishes a fresh and expansive view of the grotesque in Western art and culture, from 1500 to the present day. Following the nonlinear evolution of the grotesque, Frances S. Connelly analyzes key works, situating them within their immediate social and cultural contexts, as well as their place in the historical tradition. By taking a long historical view, the book reveals the grotesque to be a complex and continuous tradition comprising several distinct strands: the ornamental, the carnivalesque and caricatural, the traumatic, and the profound. The book articulates a model for understanding the grotesque as a rupture of cultural boundaries that compromises and contradicts accepted realities. Connelly demonstrates that the grotesque is more than a style, genre, or subject; it is a cultural phenomenon engaging the central concerns of the humanistic debate today. Hybrid, ambivalent, and changeful, the grotesque is a shaping force in the modern era. Frances S. Connelly is professor of art history at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. She is the author of The Sleep of Reason: Primitivism in Modern European Art and Aesthetics and the editor of Modern Art and the Grotesque, and she has published numerous articles and book chapters on topics pertaining to the intersection of art and anthropology.

ABSTRACTS OF THE PAPERS DELIVERED DURING THE CONFERENCE ANNIHILATIN EVIL: SCENES OF FIGHTING, SLAYING, TRAMPLING AND BINDING BAD FORCES IN ART, 2022

ABSTRACTS OF THE PAPERS DELIVERED DURING THE CONFERENCE ANNIHILATIN EVIL: SCENES OF FIGHTING, SLAYING, TRAMPLING AND BINDING BAD FORCES IN ART. 4th NOVEMBER of 2022 Starting at 2 pm. CET Link for the audience: https://uksw.webex.com/uksw-en/onstage/g.php?MTID=e5ed24ccc9052667bfd842f0ef66b5eb1

1990

Notre Dame Systematic Theology Colloquium, University of Notre Dame, Department of Theology: December 14th.