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The Sublime Real: painful excitements in eighteenth-century art and criticism

When:
Venue: Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square

No booking required

This talk on the slippery relations between art and reality starts from a much misunderstood paragraph on 'real sympathy' in Edmund Burke. Speaker Aris Sarafianos (University of Ioannina, and visiting research fellow at Birkbeck) investigates the many interpretations and transformations of real sympathy in cases as diverse as George Stubbs's paintings, William Hunter's anatomical lectures at the Royal Academy, Diderot's writings, De Loutherbourg's theatrical machines and Charles Bell's surgical drawings. What can these tell us about the powerful, treacherous and mixed sensations associated with the 'real' in art?

This is a free event but please reserve your place using our online booking form.

This event is part of Arts Week 2017 - see the full programme here.