MONDAY NIGHT LECTURE SERIES | ’COMPARISON’ AS A MODE OF INQUIRY IN THE POST-COMPARATIVE WORLD

Comparing Pictures. Comparative Practices and their Implications

FEBRUARY 22 @ 6 P.M. | Daniel Family Commons, Usdan University Center

In everyday life as well as in museums and galleries we are used to dealing with pictures by comparing them with other visual representations. With the academic institutionalization of art history comparative viewing has become one of the most important basic tools in this field of study. It is primarily this comparative approach which helped art history to claim the status of an independent and serious academic discipline. But what does it mean to compare pictures? Which preconceptions of pictures are implied if they are made accessible mainly by comparative practices? The paper argues that the practice of comparing tends to conceptualize pictures as semiotic devices and to underestimate their particular performative and temporal qualities.