Renewing Romanesque: The Zodiaque book series and modernist photography
Friday, January 20, 2020, at 18:30
Concordia University, EV-1.605
Zodiaque, Louis Balsan, Jean Dieuzaide and Dom Angelico (with young Michel Dieuzaide) working on tympanum of Sainte-Foi, Conques, in 1960. With permission of the Photothèque, l’Abbaye de Sainte-Marie de la Pierre-qui-Vire.
Janet T. Marquardt
Distinguished Professor Emerita, Eastern Illinois University
Research Associate, Mount Holyoke College
How do photographs function to both document and (re)shape our appreciation for the past?
In “Renewing Romanesque,” Janet Marquardt presents a study of the famous and influential Zodiaque book series, published in France by a Benedictine monastery, under the direction of a young monk who studied Cubist painting with Albert Gleizes. The series was focused on reclaiming pre-Gothic art for modernist viewers as a way of renewing Christian faith after the horrors of World War II. Zodiaque’s powerful images – black and white photogravures - went beyond documentary photography to become collectible graphic prints, shaping the plastic form seen by the camera into a fresh two-dimensional artwork.
Janet Marquardt is a Distinguished Professor Emerita at Eastern Illinois University. Her research traces the epistemological meanings of cultural heritage and the ideological function of patrimony. Her publications include: From Martyr to Monument: The Abbey of Cluny as Cultural Patrimony, (2007/pb2009); Medieval Art after the Middle Ages (2009/pb2011) and most recently, Zodiaque: Making Medieval Modern 1951-2001 (2015). Marquardt is currently a Research Associate of History at Mount Holyoke College, working on New England Protestant missionary women in the Near East during the nineteenth century and how their “hagiography of humanitarianism” affected attitudes about the Middle East in the United States.
