Attention in Pre-Modern Art and Visual Culture
In today’s world of perpetual digital connectivity and ever-evolving algorithms, attention is a precious, fervently sought commodity, at once carefully guarded and divided with abandon. While both the amount of imagery that endeavours to claim our attention and the pace of its change may well be at a never-before-seen pitch, concerns about attentiveness and distraction are not uniquely modern. Building on recent explorations of attention in pre-modern contexts such as Jamie Kreiner’s The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction (2023), this session aims to probe issues of attention specifically in relation to the production, reception, experience and interpretation of ancient, medieval and early modern artworks, architectural settings and other forms of crafted objects and spaces. How did the design, iconography, materials or presentation of an artwork garner, hold or direct attention? To what extent did sensory enactment through the visual and the material serve to cultivate attention? How were tensions between attention and distraction navigated in the visual realm? How might modern understandings of cognition and behaviour be productively applied to visual production in the pre-modern world? In addition to generating new perspectives on pre-modern artworks, attending to historical approaches to and concerns about attention may beneficially expand how we understand the complex relationships between visual input and attention both then and now.
Session Convenor:
Elizabeth Pugliano, University of Colorado Denver
Speakers:
Meg Bernstein, New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University
Durational Looking and the Art of Attention in the English Parish Church
Lay people attended mass in their local parish churches weekly, throughout their entire lives. The imagery present in these spaces would have formed the backdrop to their lifespans, and in a visual culture imbued with far fewer images than our own, parishioners were probably much more aware of these painted, sculptured, and glazed images than present churchgoers are today. This paper utilizes reception theory and observations from cognitive science to examine the issues of attention and duration over the course of a lifetime in medieval village churches in England. In particular, the c. 1200 purgatorial ladder mural on the west wall of the parish church at Chaldon (Surrey) is examined. The Chaldon painting, compared with slightly later “Doom” images over the chancel arch in English churches, merits consideration for its precocious approach to emerging theological principles. Its location, behind parishioners as they face the altar during mass, is interesting because it becomes briefly visible as they leave the church in a shorter, more intense period than a painting faced throughout the entire mass. I argue that durational looking at this painting throughout the lifecycle of a parishioner would see the meaning change, shift, and develop for its receivers. While a child might fear the demons and their torments, an adult parishioner might benefit from the reminder to prepare him or herself for the future—a timescale that, as the Chaldon painter reminds the medieval parishioners, was not limited by the mortal lifespan.
Kathryn Davies, The Courtauld Institute of Art
“I deceive all by appearance mild…”: Monstrous Sin and Misguided Fascination in Antwerp’s Allegorical Print Culture, 1576-1579
In a recent article considering modes of historical attention, Torbjörn Gustafsson Chorell discusses how curiosity can foster reflection through novelty and boundary transgression. Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park’s elucidation of early modern ‘wonder’ similarly demonstrates how monstrous creatures garner attention by evoking a paradoxical overlap between pleasure and repugnance.
Drawing on these hypotheses, this paper reconsiders the attentive appeal of human-animal hybrid personifications in allegorical prints produced in late sixteenth-century Antwerp, during the violent confessional disorder of the Dutch Revolt. Scholarship pertaining to these prints has largely focused on the attraction of personified virtues as the accepted subjects of the beholder’s attention. And yet, peripheral personifications of vice offer a tempting distraction, their anomalous bodies harbouring elusive meaning. Given Antwerp’s traumatic climate of conflict, is their cautionary lesson in fact the intended locus of the viewer’s consideration?
Utilising a posthuman methodology, this analysis explores how corruption of the human form evokes simultaneous horror and fascination, both relative to and in tension with the beholder’s own state of (spiritual or worldly) humanity. The layered intricacy—and often intentional disingenuity—of hybrid embodiment invites closer, longer, looking than the clarity of virtuous personification, a sustained reflection which eventually penetrates the ambiguity of non-normativity. Providing both an intellectual challenge and a moralistic commentary on contemporary upheaval, the revelation of meaning within these monsters is only achieved by diligent, if unwilling, attentiveness.
Gretel Rodriguez, Brown University
Attention, Visibility and Votive Practices at Water Sanctuaries of the Ancient Roman World
Sanctuaries dedicated to water deities were among the most popular places of worship and healing in the ancient Mediterranean world. Often connected to natural features such as springs and lakes, these ancient shrines were often monumentalized with the addition of complex architecture and elaborate decoration, especially after the Roman colonization. Water sanctuaries preserve a wealth of information about ancient religious practices in the form of votive offerings, inscriptions, architectural remains, and visual representations. This paper considers the architecture and votive practice associated with various ancient Mediterranean water sites—including the Gallo-Roman sanctuary at Nîmes and the Fountain of Anna Perenna in Rome—focusing on the corpus of stone inscriptions, images of deities, and curse tablets found there. The deliberate placement of these artifacts near and sometimes under water illustrates a desire to manipulate worshippers’ attention, separating the objects from their physical surroundings to emphasize their magical properties. By selectively concealing and revealing the texts of a votive dedication honouring Augustus or an inscribed magical spell directed at an enemy, the builders of these shrines also brought attention to water as the principal medium that enabled a communication between divine and human agents.
Archishman Sarker, Jawaharlal Nehru University
‘Directed Awareness’ to ‘Attentive Perception’: Contemplative Visualisation and Tantric Influences in Medieval Eastern Indian Buddhist Iconography
South Asian pre-modern Buddhist images were used for a variety of purposes, including ritual meditation and philosophical contemplation. These usages varied for monks and for the laity: while the former is often associated with a more disciplined and structured approach towards meditation, as outlined in different Buddhist texts and treatises, for the latter, it was more restricted to the personal ambit, often without an overt application of theological or philosophical knowledge but based on intuitive contemplative practices. For both these categories, focused visualisation was integral—often aided through Buddhist art and iconography—ranging from contemplative attention on specific deities, to reflecting on the complexity of different Buddhist cosmological conceptions where human corporeality is often juxtaposed with the phenomenological world as expressed through mandala paintings. This paper aims to present the spectrum of ways in which Buddhist art and iconography evolved in medieval eastern India, influenced by different tantric traditions, which placed fundamental importance on visualisation practices and the contemplative relationship of the devotee with the object, which ranged from miniature paintings in palm-leaf manuscripts to sculptures in stone and bronze, produced mainly between the tenth and twelfth centuries in the eastern Indian subcontinent in the present-day Indian states of Bihar, West Bengal, and Bangladesh.
Amanda Leong, The Courtauld Institute of Art
Paying Attention to Female Javānmardī in Medieval and Early Modern Persianate Lusterware and Illustrated Manuscripts
Javānmardī (young manliness) is an ethical concept of human perfection and is typically translated from Persian into English as ‘chivalry’. It is used in Persianate cultures to describe an ideal person who possesses manly virtues ranging from courage, physical prowess, integrity, honesty, and hospitality to generosity, self-sacrifice, and fortitude. Regardless of how women have historically been celebrated in medieval and early modern Persianate cultures as models of javānmardī, scholarly attention has largely focused on male-centred representations. This paper challenges this scholarly oversight by examining how medieval and early modern lusterware and Persian manuscript illustrations that were commissioned by both elite Persianate male and female patrons, employed visual strategies like adorning female figures with javānmardī related symbols such as moustaches, tattoos, wrestling feats, bull-lifting, superlative battlefield skills and many others. By disrupting conventional gender expectations, they force their viewers to pay attention to the multifaceted nature of javānmardī and recognize women’s ability to embody this ideal. This paper also seeks to contextualize the production and reception of these medieval and early modern Persianate lusterware and illustrated manuscripts objects as diplomatic gifts, instructional manuals, and legitimizing narratives. This allows us to better understand the different and various attention paid to female javānmardī figures and the extent of female power in the medieval and early modern Persianate contexts.
Tania Sheikhan, Independent Scholar
Capturing the Allure: Sensory Excess and Distraction in Early Modern French Orientalist Art
This paper examines themes of sensory excess and distraction in early modern French Orientalist art, focusing broadly on 18th-century French painters within the genre. Prominent artists created works that immerse viewers in opulent depictions of the ‘exotic’ East. For example, Jean-Baptiste Vanmour’s portrayals of Ottoman court ceremonies and Antoine de Favray’s richly adorned interiors evoke a sense of otherworldly fascination. These works extend beyond mere depictions of the region’s perceived beauty; they offer a racialized portrayal of excess, using distraction as both an artistic technique and a colonial tool.
Distraction plays a central role in many Orientalist works, where figures often appear dazed, languid, or overwhelmed by ancient ruins or dazzling settings. Sensory overload not only drives distraction but also fosters states of stupor. Artists’ correspondence frequently reveals their own struggles with the overwhelming abundance of their surroundings, prompting hurried sketching to capture fleeting details. This urgent documentation, spurred by sensory excess, aimed to preserve impressions before they faded—an urgency reflected in the artworks themselves.
By examining these works, I argue that distraction served not merely as an artistic device but also as a colonial trope, emphasizing excess while drawing viewers into its chaotic allure. This analysis reveals how sensory overload, intertwined with broader colonial narratives, shaped artistic production, memory, and interpretation. Ultimately, it offers a nuanced understanding of how sensory dynamics in Orientalist art both reflected and complicated colonial relations, positioning distraction as a key interpretive lens for these artists’ experiences and works.
Yassin Oulad Daoud, Columbia University
A Feast for the Eyes: Antiquarian Patterns of Attention and Early Renaissance Art
This talk explores a particular form of attention that was conceptualized in early fifteenth-century Italian art theory and mobilized in art. Though contemporary writers did not use a word like “attention” to describe their visual experience, they spoke of notable artworks and antiquities that could “feast” or “hold” the eye. This notion of attention occupied a core part of Leon Battista Alberti’s thought about the purpose of the painter and about what makes a good painting in book III of his De pictura (1435)—an aspect of early Renaissance art theory that has hitherto been overlooked. Crucially, Alberti’s treatise suggested to painters a form of “audience targeting”—to use a modern advertising term—as a way to gain the favour of learned observers. To do this, artists needed to draw upon antiquarian patterns of attention, which I attempt to reconstruct from descriptions by humanists and antiquarians like Ciriaco d’Ancona (1391–1452) that record their authors’ experiences of looking at antiquities and contemporary art. In doing so, I wish to offer a way to explain an eclectic category of details in Renaissance artworks, exemplified here by the work of Donatello and Mantegna, that escapes well known iconographic themes and criteria for design, such as varietà or copia. Such details constitute a crucial aspect of early Renaissance art that, I hope to show, cannot be fully understood without thinking about attention.
Zifeng Zhao, University of Cambridge
Directing Attention and Orchestrating Perception: Visual Strategies in Augustus II’s Chinoiserie Porcelain Rooms
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European nobility’s fascination with East Asian artifacts inspired the creation of dedicated display spaces. Porzellankabinette (porcelain rooms), adorned with chinoiserie décor featuring porcelain, lacquerware, and tapestry from East Asia, became a common feature in German courtly architecture. Removed from their original cultural context, these art objects were modified in form and function to align with European tastes and interests.
My paper focuses on how the porcelain rooms at Augustus II the Strong’s Japanese Palace were designed to capture and direct attention. Between 1717 and 1733, extensive renovation and expansion plans were made to showcase his growing collection of East Asian artifacts. Some rooms incorporated baroque elements, using Coromandel lacquer panels alongside East Asian and German porcelain, creating a visual interplay that fused European and Asian artistry. These richly decorated rooms employed visual complexity to captivate guests during both leisure and state activities, blending reflective surfaces and intricate ornaments to guide their attention and emphasize Augustus II’s magnificence.
I explore how these rooms functioned as immersive environments that directed viewer focus, using chinoiserie displays as political instruments. By analyzing their spatial, visual, and material aspects within the context of contemporary European perceptions of China, this paper reveals how princely identity was constructed through the deliberate manipulation of attention and imagination. Aligning with the panel’s theme, this study sheds light on the sophisticated interplay between art, perception, and power in shaping early modern cultural representations.