"Groping statues". Pseudo reprises in the global flow of images

My lecture focuses on a striking recent case of apparent female "statue love" in Florence in 2024, juxtaposing it with the near-complete absence of female statue eroticism in the Western history of texts and images. In the broader context of a globally widespread practice of digitally documented "intimate" interactions with statues by people of all genders, I conclude by asking what forms of aesthetic appropriation of figurative sculpture are at stake in such gestures.

Bio

Frank Fehrenbach is an art historian whose work focuses on the interrelations between art, natural philosophy, and science in early modern Europe. He was a senior professor at Harvard University until 2013, when he was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship at Hamburg University. Since 2019, he is co-director of an interdisciplinary Center for Advanced Study on Imaginaria of Force. 

Fehrenbach published widely on Leonardo da Vinci, including the LVIII Lettura Vinciana (2020). More recently, he published an extensive monograph on the concept of “enlivenment” in Italian Renaissance art (Quasi vivo. Lebendigkeit in der italienischen Kunst der Frühen Neuzeit, 2021) and a small monograph on Giotto und die Physiker (2023). He is currently working on a book on concepts of force between art and sciences in the Renaissance.