080041 VO Jan van Eyck and the New Pictorial Concept of Early Netherlandish Painting (2025S)

With its innovative oil technique, precise observation of the visible world and high level of aesthetic and intellectual reflection, Jan van Eyck's art is not only the brilliant founding moment of Netherlandish painting. At the same time, the transition from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period saw a profound change in the concept of the image. Building on the artistic ideas and achievements of Jan van Eyck, early Netherlandish painting developed a deceptive liveliness and presence, on the one hand, by appropriating the viewer's gaze, which operated according to the rules of reality perception, and, on the other hand, by regularly exhibiting self-reflexive moments of deliberate disruption of precisely this evidence, in order to identify the image as a representational achievement and to evoke in the viewer an attitude that was not only sensually experiencing but also thinking. By tracing this new conception of the image, the lecture aims to provide an introduction to the painting of Jan van Eyck and his contemporaries (The Master of Flemalle, Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling and others) that is both visual and theoretical. The individual sessions will focus on important aspects, motifs and themes of early Netherlandish painting - across artists and works: The main themes will be, for example, the phenomenon of the grisaille, threshold situations, the play with the edge of the picture, the motif of the mirror, external and internal vision, the image of St Luke and Christ, etc.