à 12h15
Uni-Bastions, room B214, rue De-Candolle 5

Actualité de la recherche, Spring Semester 2017-2018
Seminar with the Université de Genève, Unité d'Histoire de l'art

Brigitte Sölch lecture
ArchiSculpture. The power of the human body in architecture

To what extent can we learn more about the social and emotive impact of architecture when we include both the planned and the accidental transgression of boundaries by visual media in reception research?  And what insights do we gain especially from the subject of the human supporting figure? My paper focuses on both the public artwork like Puget's former portal of the Hôtel de Ville in Toulon as well as on the public architecture in books and prints (e.g. Dietterlin and Rembrandt), to discuss the potential power of human bodies in architecture, more specifically the power of those human supporting figures referred to as "prigioni", "schiavi", "cose animate" in the early modern architectural theory. In this case, architecture and sculpture do not only follow their own rules. They act and react in an intensive dialogue. Thus they produce - also from a phenomenological point of view - effects which can be described with terms like order, dignity, courage, force, violence and so on. These effects are results of the formal-aesthetic, artistic, social and gender impact of two different but interacting media as well as of their potential forces (in time and space).