Michel Weemans, born in Longlier, Belgium, in 1962. Ph.D. from the École des Hautes-Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. Professor of Art History, École Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Bourges.
Fellow (15 October 2008 – 30 June 2009)
LANDSCAPE AS “VISUAL EXEGESIS”: A RECONCEPTION OF THE WELTLANDSCHAFT
Thanks to my NIAS fellowship I was able to finish two chapters of a book I’m writing on Flemish Landscape Painting in the 16th Century. The first chapter deals with the iconography of the Preaching of John the Baptist. I mainly focused on the notions of analogy and visual typology, questioning their relationship and their specific forms, and use both in literature and in landscape painting. The second chapter questions the topic of spiritual insights and blindness or deception in the iconographic context of landscapes with visionary and hallucinatory themes (temptations, scenes of hell). Besides these, I wrote two articles to be published in two volumes of the Intersections series (Leiden, Brill), and numerous entries for the catalogue of an exhibition I co-curated (“Une image peut en cacher une autre”, Grand Palais, 2009). I also organised a symposium (“The Anthropomorphic Landscape in the Renaissance”, Grand Palais, 2009-06-10).