New publication Stijn Bussels and Bram van Oostveldt
Stijn Bussels and Bram van Oostveldt have both contributed with an article in the book of Caroline van Eck: Idols to Museum Pieces. The Nature of Sculpture, its Historiography and Exhibition History, 1640-1880.
The publication of Winckelmann’s Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums in 1764 is considered as the defining moment in the genesis of the modern, scientific study of sculpture. It was a formalist and secular history, concentrating on the statue as a work of art, and studying sculpture in a museum setting, abstracting from its original religious, social or political functions. Other 17th- and 18th-century authors tried to understand those functions and why statues so often excited violent reactions ranging from adoration to abuse.
The collection of essays aims to be a first investigation of the questions that arise out of an awareness that the origins of the Western historiography are much more complex than may appear from the perspective of Winckelmann’s vision of the Graeco-Roman tradition. Stijn Bussels has written about 'Medusa's Terror in the Amsterdam Town Hall. How to Look at Sculptures in the Dutch Golden Age.' and Bram van Oostveldt has focussed on 'Ut Sculptura Theatrum'. On the Relation between Theatre and Sculpture in the Late Eighteenth Century'.