Materiality and Mediality

Materiality and Mediality takes as its focus the reciprocal relationship between the facture of objects and the making of meaning. The questions addressed in this Research Priority build upon the Director’s research on textililty. Material observations of textiles, from Semper onward, have a special role in the historiography of our field, and the study of textiles demands both new economic, social, and material approaches to the history of art, from canvas painting to tapestry, while also emphasizing global movements of materials, techniques, and makers.

More broadly, the study of materials encompasses both the complex negotiation of human makers with material resistances, and the way materials change physically and in terms of their reception over time. From the extraction and procurement of raw materials to the sensual qualities of finished products, the study of an object’s materiality has the ability to bring forth histories of labor, trade, technology, and the environment that have been traditionally considered beyond the remit of Art History. Concomitantly, media theory is a useful tool to examine how medium shapes the behavior of works of art, which becomes especially pronounced when new media emerge and spread. Both materiality and mediality impact the aesthetic, social, and ritual understanding of works of art. The study of materials invites approaches to the history of art that span geographies and chronologies in new and challenging ways. Materiality and mediality serve as broad frameworks to look anew at visual culture by offering sets of methodological tools that can shed new light on canonical works of art while simultaneously integrating overlooked objects into larger art historical narratives.