With the explosion of new reproductive technologies starting in the fifteenth century, antiquities were among the most sought-after subjects for copies, reproductions, impressions, seals, casts and moulds. Although there has been extensive research on antiquarian prints and other types of representations of antiquities, less has been written about the techniques and processes of contact with antiquities and the meaning assigned to these processes. Was physical contact with ruins and remains prioritised? What methods were employed in reproducing antiquities? What are the broader technical and intellectual implications of copying, measuring, and rescaling antique objects?
These questions are among those explored by the research group Logiques du négatif. The network aims to explore imprinting—defined as a contact between two surfaces or two bodies—as an act rooted in the history of technique as well as in the artistic imagination. It considers rubbings, prints, impressions, casts and other forms of imprinting in a broad historical and transcultural context. Practices of imprinting, in different civilisations, evoke Issues of presence and absence, reproduction and imitation, identity and difference.
The group draws inspiration from Georges Didi-Huberman’s groundbreaking exhibition L’empreinte (1997) and book La ressemblance par contact (2008), which charted attitudes and meanings that imprints have mobilized throughout Western (art) history. Logiques du négatif builds on this work and explores new areas left on the margins of Didi-Huberman’s project, for example, techniques such as seal-making and printmaking in non-Western practice, in particular Chinese contexts. Its emphasis is on the multi-layered metaphorical and transcultural dimensions of imprint.
Logiques du négatif met for a first workshop on 23 March, 2023 in Louvain-la-Neuve.
The next meeting will be held in Berlin on 30 and 31 May, 2023, with an international conference sponsored by the Thyssen Foundation:
PROGRAM, Contact: Transcultural Techniques and Metaphors of Imprinting
30 May and 31 May, Jacob-und-Wilhelm-Grimm-Zentrum, Conference Room
May 30
10:00–10:30 Welcome and introduction
Session 1 — Techniques and Technologies
Chair: Kathleen Christian, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
10:30–11:00 Jeffrey Moser, Brown University, The Specular Mode in Medieval Chinese Art
11:00–11:30 Ruth Noyes, National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, Cera, cartapesta, and pasta di reliquie: Impressing and Imprinting corpisanti Relic-Sculptures in 18th-century Rome
11:30–12:00. Jennifer Chuong, Harvard University / Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Printing with Nature in Early America
12:00–12:30 Break 1
12:30–13:00. Steffen Siegel, Folkwang Universität der Künste, Feathers, Butterflies, and some Prussian Kings: Johann Carl Enslen and the Beginning of Photographic Imprinting
13:00–13:30. Buket Altinoba, Universität München, Hands-free? Machines for reproducing sculpture and the question of the authentic imprint
13:30–15:00 Lunch (for speakers only)
Session 2 — Discourses
Chair: Jérémie Koering, Université de Fribourg
15:00–15:30. Carl Knappett, University of Toronto, Technologies of imprinting and containing: conjoined strategies for structural objects
15:30–16:00. Verity Platt, Cornell University, Sponge, Foam, and the Truth in Painting
16:00–16:30. Kathleen Christian, Humboldt-Universität, Marble to Bronze, Bronze to marble. Antico and Michelangelo in Rome
16:30–17:00 Break 2
17:00–17:30. Ralph Dekoninck, Université de Louvain, Homo in imagine [impressa] ambulat, The proof of the (engraved) image
17:30–18:00. Stefano de Bosio, Humboldt-Universität, The logic of the negative: on engraved gems and their Early-Modern (im)prints
May 31
Session 3 — (Trans-)cultural metaphors and imaginaries I
Chair: Ralph Dekoninck, Université Catholique de Louvain
10:00–10:30 Markus Spaeth, University of Giessen, Bodily impression and legal authentication. Dimensions of materiality in sealing culture of medieval Europe
10:30–11:00 Nicolas Sarzeaud, Université Lyon II-Lumière, Holy stains in print culture? On the imprints of the Body of Christ
11:00–11:30 Break 3
11:30–12:00. Patricia Falguières, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Animal typographies: on life casting
12:00–12:30 Jérémie Koering, Université de Fribourg, Imprints to Swallow: Instituting Community in Early Modern Europe
12:30–14:00 Lunch
Session 4 — (Trans-)cultural metaphors and imaginaries II
Chair: Stefano de Bosio, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
14:00–14:30. Jakub Steiskal, Masaryk University, Brno, What do Rubbings Preserve? A Foray into the Aesthetics of a Technique
14:30–15:00 Johanna Malt, King’s College, The Thing and the Hole
15:00–15:30. Chari Larsson, Griffith University, Breathing, Erasing, Dripping: Imprinting in Contemporary Aboriginal Art
15:30–16:00 Break 4
16:00–16:30. Matthias Mansen, Berlin, On making matrices (and woodcuts), in conversation with Stefano de Bosio
16:30–17:00 Veronika Tocha, Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, Critical perspectives on anthropological casts from colonial contexts
17:00–17:30 Final discussion
