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About
Mannerism is a word invented by art historians to account for a glitch in the history of Western European art around the middle of the 16 th century. A moment when the faithful representation of bodies and space underwent a distortion that pulled art into strange new territory. It’s a word with negative connotations, suggesting artifice for its own sake, deliberate obscurity, and wilful weirdness. Yet mannerism keeps coming back. This lecture thinks of mannerism both as a historical period and as a recurring idea about the experience of embodiment. We live in a time in which mannerism feels contemporary: where bodies are hybrid, transformative, in states of flux; where the virtual and the real mash and meld together. Looking at mannerist art, as well as works of art made since then, this lecture proposes that art of the distant past can be our guide to confronting and making sense of the times in which we live now.
Biography
Dr. Ben Street is an art historian and educator. He is the author of How to Enjoy Art (Yale, 2021) and the award-winning childrens book How To Be an Art Rebel
(Thames and Hudson, 2021). He is a tutor at the University of East Anglia and the
University of Oxford and has been a lecturer and educator for the National Gallery, Tate, and Dulwich Picture Gallery. Ben is a contributing writer for Art Review, Apollo, Gagosian Quarterly and the Times Literary Supplement.
Booking is required due to limited capacity.
Mannerism is a word invented by art historians to account for a glitch in the history of Western European art around the middle of the 16 th century. A moment when the faithful representation of bodies and space underwent a distortion that pulled art into strange new territory. It’s a word with negative connotations, suggesting artifice for its own sake, deliberate obscurity, and wilful weirdness. Yet mannerism keeps coming back. This lecture thinks of mannerism both as a historical period and as a recurring idea about the experience of embodiment. We live in a time in which mannerism feels contemporary: where bodies are hybrid, transformative, in states of flux; where the virtual and the real mash and meld together. Looking at mannerist art, as well as works of art made since then, this lecture proposes that art of the distant past can be our guide to confronting and making sense of the times in which we live now.
Biography
Dr. Ben Street is an art historian and educator. He is the author of How to Enjoy Art (Yale, 2021) and the award-winning childrens book How To Be an Art Rebel
(Thames and Hudson, 2021). He is a tutor at the University of East Anglia and the
University of Oxford and has been a lecturer and educator for the National Gallery, Tate, and Dulwich Picture Gallery. Ben is a contributing writer for Art Review, Apollo, Gagosian Quarterly and the Times Literary Supplement.
Booking is required due to limited capacity.
The Brown Collection is fully accessible. Please let us know if you have specific requirements when booking.
Light refreshments will be served.
For any queries, please email: [email protected]