Nikos Stangos Memorial Lecture: Jaś Elsner

Presence, Absence and the Problems of Comparison: Archaeological Art History from Buddhism to Byzantium.

This paper explores two case-studies, one from ancient India and one from Byzantium, to explore the problems of archaeologically-founded art history in reconstructing monuments from fragments insufficient to give a full account of the original.  The conundrum applies in equal measure globally, since around the questions of loss and of objects that can be reconstituted only in the kind of tiny details found through salvaging broken stones, there is a kind of multicultural levelling in which we are all equal – subjects only of the adequacy of our archaeology, the vividness of our imaginations and the rigour of the scholarly methods we may apply to prevent those imaginations going wild. However, there are cultural assumptions and axioms in the starting points of any comparative venture and method that may not be compatible between the different cultures being compared.  The second half of the lecture explores, as it were, the conceptual lenses available to us in taking the risk of comparison, and their limitations.

This lecture will take place in the Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre and will be followed by a reception in the South Cloisters.