Wild (Wo)men, Commodified Forests: Matter and Myth in German Sculpture
Event Information
About this Event
We are delighted to introduce a new online format for our rescheduled research events. You can now attend our series of lectures, symposia and discussions online. We invite you to watch recorded talks, submit your questions and then attend our live discussion.
Early in her career, Paloma Varga Weisz spent three years training as a limewood carver in Bavaria. Learning this traditional craft opened up new possibilities in her sculptural practice. It also connected her - and her work - to the celebrated history of limewood carving in southern German art.
This talk begins by looking back half a millennium at limewood sculpture produced north of the Alps, c.1500. As we journey into the forested hinterlands of Nuremberg in search of trunks to carve, we will encounter other traditional materials that feature in Weisz’s art.
But the forests of southern Germany provided sculptors with more than just matter. They were the stuff of myth: in their shadows lurked hairy wild men. It is against this background of a natural world at once commodified and mythologised that we will consider the formation and deformation of sculpted bodies such as Weisz’s Woman of the Forest, Wild Bunch, Bumpman, and Deer, Standing, among others.
Programme
From 25 November
Professor Dr Ruth Ezra's talk, 'Wild (Wo)men, Commodified Forests: Matter and Myth in German Sculpture', will be available to watch online from Wednesday 25 November. You will need to have signed up to this event to be able to watch this talk.
Wednesday 2 December, 6pm
A live discussion in which Dr Ezra will address questions submitted by the audience either live or in advance. This session will take place on Zoom.
About the speaker
Dr Ruth Ezra is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Southern California. She has received research grants from The British Museum, Villa I Tatti, Gerda Henkel Stiftung and Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, among others. In 2017, she held a Visiting Research Fellowship at the Henry Moore Institute.
Image: Paloma Varga Weisz, Waldfrau (Woman of the Forest), 2001, limewood, fabric, tree trunks. Image courtesy the artist and Collezione La Gaia, Busca, Italy.
