Modern painters are being investigated using technical means already well established in the study of Renaissance art. The resulting new perceptions about iconic figures of modern painting include knowledge that Van Gogh used a perspective frame, that Picasso worked up his paintings as he would on a sketch pad and that Mondrian’s paintings are as much physical as they are cognitive.
Dr. Molly Faries will address those issues, as well as the new democratization of painting ushered in by art-technological change in the Impressionist era. Her free public presentation, “Technical Investigation of Modern ‘Old Masters,'” will be given on Thursday, Dec. 2, at 7 p.m. in ETSU’s Ball Hall auditorium.
Faries holds the ETSU Wayne G. Basler Chair of Excellence for the Integration of the Arts, Rhetoric and Science for the fall semester. The Chair of Excellence strives to “bridge the gap that exists in academia between the sciences and the arts and humanities disciplines.”
An art historian, Faries is a pioneer in the scientific and technical analysis of art, specifically in the area of Infrared Reflectography (IRR). IRR displays what is beneath the surface of a painting to reveal the artist’s preliminary sketches and changes hidden under the paint layers.
Faries was one of the first Americans to study and use IRR. Trained at the Art History Institute of the State University of Amsterdam (1966-68) and at the Central Research Laboratory for Works of Art and Science in Amsterdam (1973-74), she received her Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College in 1972. She was a professor at Indiana University (1975-2005) and professor and chair of Technical Studies in Art History at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands (1998-2005), and is now professor emerita with both universities. The recipient of national awards in scholarship and education, she has presented IRR workshops in the United States, Germany, and The Netherlands. She is one of a few professors to incorporate IRR training in university teaching, rather than only in museum practice.
For more information, contact Catherine Murray of the ETSU Department of Art and Design at (423) 439-4247 or murrayc@etsu.edu.
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