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BAERT, Barbara

Présentation / Presentation

Barbara Baert (1967) is Professor in Medieval Art, Iconology and Historiography at the KU Leuven. Her research projects show a determined interdisciplinary dialogue within the humanities and can be regarded from three main angles: the methodological space between text and image, the impact of the sensorium in the visual arts, and finally critical reflection on the art historical discipline. Author of more than 80 articles, c. 100 chapters in books, 28 books and 16 edited volumes, Barbara Baert was honored with several awards, among which the most prestigious is the Francqui Prize for Human Sciences in 2016. In November 2017 she was knighted in recognition of her public service as Commandeur in the Belgian Order of Leopold. She was invited as a guest professor at numerous universities in Europe, Japan and the United States. Baert was Fellow at the Internationales Kolleg für Kulturforschung und Medienphilosophie (IKKM) of the Weimar Bauhaus Universität (2015), at the Istituto di Studi Avanzati of the Università di Bologna (2018), at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (2019), and at the Center of Excellence BildEvidenz of the Freie Universität Berlin (2020). She is a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium, and of the Academia Europaea. She is the founder and editor in chief of four academic series, amongst others, Studies in Iconology (Peeters Publishers).

À propos du hasard / About chance (publications)

  • Kairos or Occasion as Paradigm in the Visual Medium. Nachleben, Iconography, Hermeneutics, (Studies in Iconology, 5), Leuven-Walpole-Paris-Bristol, 2016.
  • Pneuma and the Visual Medium in the Middle Ages and Early Modernity. Essays on Wind, Ruach, Incarnation, Odour, Stains, Movement, Kairos, Web and Silence (Peeters: 2016).
  • At press: From Kairos to Occasio along Fortuna. Text / Image / Afterlife. On the Antique Critical Moment, a Grisaille in Mantua (School of Mantegna, 1495-1510) and the Fortunes of Aby Warburg (1866-1929), Brepols & Harvey Miller, 2020 (at press: ISBN: 978-1-912554-62-1).
  • Kairos or Occasion as Paradigm in the Visual Medium. Nachleben, Iconography, Hermeneutics, in Antwerp Royal Museum Annual, 2013-2014 (appeared in 2016), p. 193-251.
  • Reprint in Kairos or Occasion as Paradigm in the Visual Medium. Nachleben, Iconography, Hermeneutics, in Archaevs. Study in the History of Religions, 19-20, 2015- 2016, p. 87-150; Kairos. Nachleben, Iconography, Hermeneutics, in Iconographica. Rivista di Iconografia Medievale e Moderna, 16, 2017, p. 71-93.
  • German Translation and shorter: Kairos. Nachleben, Ikonographie und Hermeneutik, in Das Münster, 2, 2017, p. 136-150.
  • Life is short, art is long, crisis is fleeting. Kairos or weaving the right moment, in Textile. Journal for Cloth and Culture (Routledge), 2020, p. 3-23: DOI: 10.1080/14759756.2020.1773606
  • Afterlife Studies and the Occasio Grisaille in Mantua (School of Mantegna, 1495-1510), in Ikon, 13, 2020, p. 95-108.
  • From Kairos to Occasio through Fortuna. Text / Image / Afterlife On the Antique Critical Moment, a Grisaille in Mantua (School of Mantegna, 1495-1510), and the Fortunes of Aby Warburg (1866-1929),  Harvey Miller Publishers, 2021

perspectives sur le hasard / on chance

La compréhension de la déchirure et de la partition comme événements générateurs de vie, d’amour et de sagesse (tel que le déchirement du voile du Temple), est profondément ancrée dans les corpus iconique et littéraire de l’antiquité et de la chrétienté. La partition cosmogonique primordiale est toujours subite, elle a le tranchant d’une lame acérée, l’ubiquité fugace et foudroyante de l’éclair, et elle est transitive à la totalité du spectre sensoriel (frissonnement, extase, soupir, vent, souffle). La partition est la réalisation épiphanique d’un changement radical, la révolution et le pas au-delà. Une divinité grecque incarne ce mystère : Kairos. Au plan historiographique, Kairos a exercé une influence majeure sur la rhétorique classique… [Lire la suite]

Franz Werfel (1890–1945) ends his novella Pale Blue Ink in a Lady’s Hand with the protagonist Leonidas dozing off: “While sleeping under the oppressive dome of the ever-louder music, Leonidas knew with inexpressible clarity that today an offer of salvation had been made to him—dark, muted, vague, like all such offers. He knew that he had missed it. He knew that such an offer would not be made again.” The ancients had a word for the joy and the sorrow of an opportunity that suddenly presents itself but is just as suddenly gone: kairos. The word goes back to before Homer… [Read more]