Friday 8 June, 2018
9.30am-3.30pm
Toowong Rowing Club
37 Keith St, UQ St Lucia
Free. All welcome.
Register online by 6 June: https://survey.its.uq.edu.au/checkbox/CHE-Art-and-Resurrection.aspx
‘Behold, I shew you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed’ (1 Corinthians 15: 51-52).
The mysterious process of radical change, the passage through death, the hope of new life: these are themes central to the Christian faith and its doctrine of resurrection, but also to art. Art, too, attempts to transform us, to reinvigorate us, to think the eternal in time, and to find in death rebirth. As William Blake writes in Milton: ‘I come in self-annihilation and the grandeur of inspiration’.
This workshop brings together scholars from literary studies, art history, and cultural history to examine how artists take up the energies and emotions of Christian resurrection and translate them into artistic form: how art attempts to raise a new ‘spiritual body’ (1 Corinthians 15:44) or effect a mysterious ‘change’. How, for instance, do artists such as Holbein, or dramatists such as Shakespeare, imagine death as a process of artistic rebirth that (re)creates meaning in the world? How does this conception of death shape their representations of selfhood or history? What spectral forms result? And how is art itself resurrected in different contexts throughout the centuries – including in our present moment? In tackling these questions, the workshop will offer a range of cross-disciplinary perspectives on how religious notions of resurrection both inspire, and are transformed by, art. The format will be interactive, encouraging discussion between the disciplines.
Speakers:
- Professor Tom Bishop (The University of Auckland)
- Dr Nicholas Luke (The University of Queensland)
- Dr Andrea Bubenik (The University of Queensland)
- Dr Louise Marshall (The University of Sydney)
- Dr Charlotte-Rose Millar (The University of Queensland)
- Dr Jennifer Clement (The University of Queensland)
- Professor Peter Holbrook (The University of Queensland)
Image: William Blake, The Lovers’ Whirlwind, Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta (1827-27).