David Summers' influential book Real Spaces (2003) re-established the term 'format' in art historical scholarship. In recent years, literary and media studies have also focused on format as both an analytical category and an object of historical inquiry. In this talk, Ralph Ubl turns to an earlier attempt to define 'format' as a key concept for thinking about pictures. In his 1886 lecture 'Format und Bild', Jakob Burckhardt understood format to be an 'enabling condition' of art. This talk will argue that Burckhardt responded to the instability of formats in nineteenth-century visual culture by making format an integral element of artistic form. Furthermore, Ubl will argue that nineteenth-century French painters such as Géricault, Delacroix, Manet and Van Gogh had already conceived of format as form.

Ralph Ubl is the former Director of the eikones Center for the Theory and History of the Image at the University of Basel, where he has been Professor of modern art history since 2010, and before that Laurenz Professor for contemporary art from 2003 to 2006. Ubl studied art history and philosophy in Vienna and taught at the Berlin University of the Arts and the Hangzhou Academy of Art. Before returning to Basel, he was professor at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe, visiting professor at the Humanities Center of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Professor at the University of Chicago, where he was the inaugural Allan and Jean Frumkin Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and a member of the Department of Art History.

Accessibility
Persons with disabilities who need an accommodation in order to participate in this event should contact taiahw@clutteruchicago.edu for assistance.

Support
The public lecture is sponsored by the Department Art History and generously supported by The Smart Family Foundation.