Victor Stoichita, Dr. phil.
Professor of Art History
Université de Fribourg (Switzerland)
Born in 1949 in Bucharest, Romania
Studied History of Art, Philosophy and Comparative Literature at the
University of Bucharest, the University of Rome and the
Université Paris 1, Panthéon Sorbonne
Project
The Pygmalion-Effect
Ausgangspunkt ist der Pygmalionmythos, so wie ihn Ovid in den Metamorphosen geschildert hat. Ich beabsichtige das Überleben dieses Mythos in der mittelalterlichen und neuzeitlichen Literatur und insbesondere in der Ikonographie der bildenden Künste zu analysieren. Im Zentrum meiner Abhandlung steht das Motiv der lebendigen Statue. Von der Kunsttheorie (Gauricus, Vasari, usw.) und der Naturphilosophie (Agrippa von Nettesheim, Paracelsus, usw.) der Renaissance, über Descartes und die Philosophie des 18. Jahrhunderts (Condillac, La Mettrie, usw.) bis zum kinematographischen Bild der Gegenwart wird das Verhältnis zwischen Kunstwerk, Körper und Leben unter die Lupe genommen.Lektüreempfehlung
Stoichita, Victor I. The Self-Aware Image. An Insight into Early Modern Meta-Painting. Cambridge, 1997. (deutsche Übersetzung: Das selbstbewußte Bild. Vom Ursprung der Metamalerei. München, 1998.)
-. A Short History of the Shadow. London, 1997. (deutsche Übersetzung: Eine kurze Geschichte des Schattens. München, 1999.)
Stoichita, Victor I. und Anna Maria Coderch. Goya. The Last Carnival. London, 1999. (spanische Übersetzung: El último carnaval. Madrid, 2000.)
Colloquium, 08.07.2003
Some Difficulties in Being an Artist's Model
The digitalized edition of Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists (Florence, 1550 and 1568) contains several revealing indications of how a work of art was judged in the Renaissance and of what precisely was understood by the term "work of art". For example, we see that the word "beauty" (bellezza) is used 491 times, the word "flesh" (carne) 91 times, the word "breath" (fiato) 28 times, and the word "pulse" (polsi) only 3 times - the latter reserved for the greatest masters, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
Apart from having to be beautiful: following the canon provided by the ancient world's myth of mimesis, a work of art in the Renaissance is characterized primarily by its celebration of the liveliness of the body's external appearance: trembling flesh, breathing body, and - in exceptional cases - a beating pulse. These seem to be the primary metaphors of giving life.
It appears as if the first history of art in the modern era was based on a kind of "Pygmalion mania"; but this suspicion is immediately controverted by two crucial facts. First, the myth of Pygmalion is extremely rare in the iconography of the 16th and 17th centuries, and beyond that, explicit allusions to this myth are equally rare in the period's textual commentaries on art.
But Vasari and other Renaissance authors provide numerous examples of a "Pygmalion effect"; here, the "exchange of life for the work of art" is thematized.
My lecture takes a closer look at one of these examples. I think it is one of the most beautiful stories about a model and his artist that the old art-historical literature has left us. In the first part, I comment upon a passage of the "Vita" of Jacopo Sansovino that recounts the creation of a masterpiece and the sad fate of the model. The second part is an attempt to reconstruct the origin and effect of this story Vasari narrates.
Publications from the Fellows' Library
Stoichita, Victor (2020)
Stoichita, Victor (München, 2016)
On several telepathic dispositifs Panofsky-Professur ... am Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte ; 2016
Stoichita, Victor ([Paris], 2014)
L' image de l'autre : noirs, juifs, musulmans et "gitans" dans l'art occidental des temps modernes 1453-1789 Louvre éditions la Chaire du Louvre
Stoichita, Victor (München, 2011)
Der Pygmalion-Effekt : Trugbilder von Ovid bis Hitchcock The Pygmalion effect <dt.>
Stoichita, Victor (2010)
Deixis und Geschmack: Tizians Venusfest
Stoichita, Victor (Genève, 2008)
L' effet Pygmalion : pour une anthropologie historique des simulacres Titre courant ; 37
Stoichita, Victor (Chicago, Ill. [u.a.], 2008)
The Pygmalion effect : from Ovid to Hitchcock L'effet Pygmalion <engl.>
Stoichita, Victor (München, 2006)
Goya - der letzte Karneval Goya - the last carnival <dt.>
Stoichita, Victor (2006)
Stoichita, Victor (Wiesbaden, 2006)
