aris sarafianos | University of Ioannina/Greece (original) (raw)
My research investigates the following areas:
- The appearance of new kinds of naturalist theories and visual practices in the 18thcentury and their numerous connections to anti-establishment cultures and marginal groups
- The relations between scientific discourses (natural history, natural philosophy, empirical science, biomedical and environmental sciences) and art practices; the critical role of such synergies in the birth of art history as a discipline
- The extensive interactions between the history of medicine (physiology, anatomy, pathology and therapeutic practices) and art history during the 18th and 19th centuries and especially the complex interdisciplinary and inter-professional issues that they raise
- The crucial role of materialist notions of affect in the history of aesthetics, and their intimate relations to the appearance of amplified forms of anatomical imitation (‘hyper-naturalism’) in the eighteenth century
- The politics of detail in the representation of the human figure during the 18th and 19th centuries and its relations to new vitalist approaches to expression and perception
- The bio-political roots and functions of artistic discourses; the political economy of life encoded in such historical systems of artistic practice as neoclassicism and other idealist trends, polite theories of taste, the sublime, the picturesque as well as the numerous historical versions of realism and naturalism
- The professional, social and aesthetic dimensions of British academism and its clash with the sensorial and representational economies of its different opponents
- The rich reception of the antique in the 18th and 19th centuries; especially the major tensions triggered by the introduction of the Parthenon sculptures in Britain and the leading role of medical men, radical outsiders and innovative systems of biomedical thinking in this process
My book in progress, titled "Sublime Realism: Anatomy, Economies of Affect, Medical Men and the Art Profession, 1757-1823" explores these themes in detail.
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Papers by aris sarafianos
Journal of the History of Ideas, 2007
Aris Sarafianos With the Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Be... more Aris Sarafianos With the Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757/59) Edmund Burke introduced a multilayered biomedical language into aesthetic theory. This language shared with the work of Christopher Nugent (his personal physician and father-in-law) significant epistemic and social features. 1 In the first section of this essay, I will suggest that this discourse drew on specific models of the theory of contractility. I have favored the term ''contractility'' (a later variant of ''contractibility'' or ''contractibleness'') over the allied concepts of ''irritability'' or ''excitability'' because it points more clearly to the earlier mixed genealogies of vitalism on which I chose to focus. The language of solid contractility employed by Nugent and Burke provided an amplified vision of the economy of life, and was intertwined with the discovery of a particularly enhanced model of medical therapeutics which registered important social and professional developments. Together with the analysis of other forms of evidence, a discussion of James Barry's portraits of Burke and Nugent will provide new insights into their heterodox ideas and identities, and also highlight significant coalitions between fringe sectors of the medical and artistic professions.
Ιστορία της Τέχνης: Ζητήματα Ιστορίας, Μεθοδολογίας, Ιστοριογραφίας, 2019
"The Progress of Civil Society" and the Birth of Art History: Progressive Gentlemen, Taste and Hi... more "The Progress of Civil Society" and the Birth of Art History: Progressive Gentlemen, Taste and History (Richard Payne Knight's Preliminary Dissertation on the Rise, Progress and Decline of Ancient Sculpture)
Comparative Critical Studies, 2005
This section presents new and original research that examines historical topics that for various ... more This section presents new and original research that examines historical topics that for various reasons have not received much scholarly attention. There are in all historiographies silences, omissions and gaps. Sometimes they are purposeful, part of a collective, selective forgetting about parts of the historical record considered not worthy of being preserved as sites of memory. Other times they are caused by the belief that the source materials needed to write about a topic are not available or are inaccessible. And at still other times, they occur because the political climate in a given place at a specific time make writing about certain historical topics extremely difficult. For whatever reasons, then, gaps, lacunae and selective silences occur in the historical record. The articles to be published in this section of Historein speak to those silences, erase those lacunae and explore the hitherto uncharted topics of the past.
Journal of the History of Ideas, 2007
Aris Sarafianos With the Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Be... more Aris Sarafianos With the Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757/59) Edmund Burke introduced a multilayered biomedical language into aesthetic theory. This language shared with the work of Christopher Nugent (his personal physician and father-in-law) significant epistemic and social features. 1 In the first section of this essay, I will suggest that this discourse drew on specific models of the theory of contractility. I have favored the term ''contractility'' (a later variant of ''contractibility'' or ''contractibleness'') over the allied concepts of ''irritability'' or ''excitability'' because it points more clearly to the earlier mixed genealogies of vitalism on which I chose to focus. The language of solid contractility employed by Nugent and Burke provided an amplified vision of the economy of life, and was intertwined with the discovery of a particularly enhanced model of medical therapeutics which registered important social and professional developments. Together with the analysis of other forms of evidence, a discussion of James Barry's portraits of Burke and Nugent will provide new insights into their heterodox ideas and identities, and also highlight significant coalitions between fringe sectors of the medical and artistic professions.
Ιστορία της Τέχνης: Ζητήματα Ιστορίας, Μεθοδολογίας, Ιστοριογραφίας, 2019
"The Progress of Civil Society" and the Birth of Art History: Progressive Gentlemen, Taste and Hi... more "The Progress of Civil Society" and the Birth of Art History: Progressive Gentlemen, Taste and History (Richard Payne Knight's Preliminary Dissertation on the Rise, Progress and Decline of Ancient Sculpture)
Comparative Critical Studies, 2005
This section presents new and original research that examines historical topics that for various ... more This section presents new and original research that examines historical topics that for various reasons have not received much scholarly attention. There are in all historiographies silences, omissions and gaps. Sometimes they are purposeful, part of a collective, selective forgetting about parts of the historical record considered not worthy of being preserved as sites of memory. Other times they are caused by the belief that the source materials needed to write about a topic are not available or are inaccessible. And at still other times, they occur because the political climate in a given place at a specific time make writing about certain historical topics extremely difficult. For whatever reasons, then, gaps, lacunae and selective silences occur in the historical record. The articles to be published in this section of Historein speak to those silences, erase those lacunae and explore the hitherto uncharted topics of the past.