Ashley D. West
Temple University

In such an internationally-connected—even globally-connected—cultural and financial center as Augsburg in the early sixteenth century, what is the importance of the sense of place and locality? What might we learn by drilling down to the street-level of activity and interaction taking place there? Central to this story is the painter and print designer, Hans Burgkmair, whose name appears in the Augsburg guild records in 1498 as master in the Painter, Glazier, and Sculptors’ Guild. In this talk BGC fellow Ashley D. West will explore the living-working shared spaces of some of Augsburg’s key artist workshops, arguing that the close proximity of various named craftsmen working in different materials brought about not only collaborations and creative energy in multi-media works, but foremost artistic and technical innovations by Burgkmair during these years, especially in the sphere of printmaking. What’s at stake ultimately here is the illumination of a localized topographic view of key artistic sites and networks—personal and professional —and an expansive idea of what the technical, manual, and cognitive processes were for a master like Burgkmair.

Ashley D. West is an associate professor of art history at Temple University with a particular interest in the history, practice, and theory of printmaking and the art of the Holy Roman Empire, ca. 1500. She investigates processes of cultural transmission and the dissemination of knowledge, as well as opportunities for artistic exchange through travel and portable objects, pilgrimages, warfare, global trade and exploration, and early collecting practices. She has published on early etchings; history painting and the German sense of the past; early modern antiquarianism; and early representations of peoples from the coast of Africa and India. West is finishing her book on Hans Burgkmair and the visual translation of knowledge in the German Renaissance, which reevaluates notions of the German Renaissance through the prints, drawings, and paintings of Hans Burgkmair the Elder, a contemporary of Albrecht Dürer. Her project at Bard Graduate Center focuses on the materials and technologies of sixteenth-century Augsburg as a site for negotiating the global and the local in everyday experience.

West currently is the vice president of the Historians of Netherlandish Art. She has been a visiting fellow with the international research project “BildEvidenz: History and Aesthetics” at the Freie Universität in Berlin, and her research has also been supported by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) and Andrew Mellon Foundation, among others.

Tuesday, September 24, 12:15 pm
38 West 86th Street, Lecture Hall

Lunch will be served starting at noon. Registration required.