Ekphrasis // Ekphrasis The Early Modernism of Art, Post-Internet

Abstract

The thesis is an initial attempt toward recontextualisation of contemporary art according to its historiological, theological and ideological underpinnings, taking a longer view of history than is currently countenanced in institutions tied to the global capitalist imperative. The enforced secularisation of art began during the Protestant Reformation in 16th century Saxony, where initial protests against the corruption of the church gave way to a new proto-capitalist hierarchy. What has been called the “Dutch Golden Age” (of the 17th Century) is historically renowned for its painting (as well as colonialism), which coincided with the formation of both the stock market and what we understand as the art market. The way in which we understand art today was further influenced by post-revolutionary France, where debates between Romanticism and Realism finally established art as a secular and avant-garde production. This thesis, in essentially explaining a series of paintings that nevertheless remain oblique, also acts as a broader critique of the model of research wherein the written word is privileged over other visual forms of communication, prevalent as a result of the aniconism of Protestant theology (thus the painting is an “ekphrasis” of its own “ekphrasis”). The link be-tween these periods can be described as the lens of the Early Modern, the period of great change in Europe between the 16th and 18th Centuries. The Early Modern therefore refers to a longer history of artistic modernity than that simply ascribed to work of the first part of the 20th Century.