IMC 2003: Sessions

Session 202: Impotence and Subversion, I: Sessions in Memory of Michael Camille

Monday 14 July 2003, 14.15-15.45

Sponsor:	International Center of Medieval Art, New York
Organiser:	Veronica Anne Sekules, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia
Moderator/Chair:	Paul Binski, Department of History of Art, University of Cambridge
Paper 202-a	English Nonsense: Bottom Up, Top Down and the Humour of Enclosure - Michael Camille and the Politics of the Marginal (Language: English) Paul Binski, Department of History of Art, University of Cambridge Index terms: Art History - General
Paper 202-b	Image on the Ledge (Language: English) Malcolm Haydn Jones, School of English Literature, Language & Linguistics, University of Sheffield Index terms: Art History - General
Paper 202-c	Farting at Authority (Language: English) Christa Grössinger, Independent Scholar, Manchester Index terms: Art History - General
Abstract	Paper -a: English nonsense: bottom up, top down and the humour of enclosure. Michael Camille and the politics of the marginal. For Michael the relationship of centre and margin was not (always) that of a stand-off between high and low culture, but a relationship of collusion. Can more be said about the forms of the margin in relation to these politics? The example of the ceiling at Peterborough, a monastic work of art, will be taken as a starting point for nonsensical thoughts. Paper -b: In his characteristically stimulating book, “Image on the Edge” (1992), Michael Camille discussed various genres of late medieval marginal art, including that of the misericord corpus. This homage to Michael’s work seeks to build on his insight into the ‘marginal’ position, both physical and iconographic, of misericord imagery, exploring the relationship between the spoken idiom and this still relatively unknown body of ‘minor’ sculpture, as well as that between gravitas and absurdity Paper -c: Abstract: In this talk I aim to explore the subversion of authority as shown in the profane arts of the late 15th and early 16th centuries in the North. Burlesque humour in the shape of bums and human orifices was the vent for disrespect and derision, often associated with the tradition of carnival, a time of reversal and the shattering of all norms. This, I hope, will also be in the spirit of Michael Camille.