Crafting presence

material Evocations, 300-1300

Dümpelmann, Brita (ed.)

The contributions to this volume analyse material and visual effects that are artistically produced in different, often seemingly 'poorer' media. As an alternative to the notions of mimesis and imitation, this volume uses the term 'evocation’, a concept that avoids the interpretation of lifelike mimesis as representational goal and instead values specific and intrinsic dynamisms that afford objects and materials to assume aesthetic presence. The individual chapters show how distinct cross-media perspectives, such as media permeability, semantic openness, and aesthetic blurring, are consciously employed as media-specific strengths that can transcend the boundaries between materials, crafts, and genres, thus allowing medieval makers to create a unique aesthetic of presence.
The texts collected here are the result of a series of on-site workshops and have benefited from the intensive dialogue between art historians, curators, conservators, and restorers in the context of the Research Network Presence and Evocation. Fictitious Materials and Techniques in the Early and High Middle Ages which ran between 2017 and 2020 and was financed by the German Research Foundation (DFG).