On Monday, 27 January 2025, 7:30–9:00 pm (Lecture Hall 102, Philosophikum, Domplatz 23), Prof. Dr Johannes Grave (Jena) will give his Fellow Lecture on the topic “Access Dynamics of Romantic Art: Two Spotlights on French Painting” (in German):

It is obvious that access to cultural goods has a considerable influence on their production and reception. This is particularly true of visual art, which is designed to be viewed and thus aims at a practice that requires access. What sounds trivial in general terms can, in specific cases, be associated with remarkable dynamics. Two such dynamics, which affect both the reception and production of art, will be traced in French Romantic painting. On the one hand, it will be shown that the Musée Napoléon in the Louvre, with its extraordinary number and variety of high-ranking non-classical works of art that came to Paris in the course of confiscations, provided important conditions for the emergence of Romantic painting. Secondly, the example of Eugène Delacroix's painting ‘Liberty Leading the People’ will be used to outline how interim phases of inaccessibility could become decisive for our view of a Romantic painting today.

Johannes Grave is Professor of Modern Art History (with a focus on European Romanticism) at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and, in the winter semester 2024/25, Senior Fellow of the Centre for Advanced Study “Access to Cultural Goods in Digital Change”. His research focuses on questions of image theory and historical image concepts; temporality of the image and image reception; practices of comparison; art, art theory and art history around 1800; Italian painting of the early Renaissance, as well as French painting of the 17th to 19th centuries.