CWI Director Pete Carmichael will provide a gallery talk accompanying Schmucker Art Gallery’s fall exhibition, The Plains of Mars: European War Prints, 1500-1825. Carmichael’s talk will draw connections between the depictions of warfare on view in the Gallery with representations of the American Civil War (focusing largely on Alexander Gardner’s photographs of the carnage at Antietam). The talk, which is free, and open to the public, will begin at 12:00 pm in the Gallery, on Thursday, October 25.
On loan from the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the works of art included in this exhibition examine the topics of war and peace, propaganda, heroism, brutal conflicts, and the harrowing aftermath of battle. Spanning from the Renaissance to the Romantic periods and encompassing a wide geographic scope including Italy, Germany, France, Spain, the Low Countries, England, and North America, the prints depict triumphant Renaissance soldiers, devastating scenes of violence, satirical caricatures of political figures, and a response to the brutality of the Spanish War of Independence. The exhibition includes over fifty original prints by renowned artists from the sixteenth through the early nineteenth century, including Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, Théodore Géricault, and Francisco de Goya, among many others.
A full-color catalogue with images and essays by Bailey Harper ’19 and Melissa Casale ’19, under the supervision of Professors Felicia Else and Shannon Egan, is planned to accompany the exhibition. With direction from Else and Egan, Casale and Harper have also created an interactive digital interface to complement the exhibition. James Clifton, Director of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, will also deliver a lecture in conjunction with the exhibition. Dr. Clifton, who also serves as curator of Renaissance and Baroque painting at MFAH, curated the exhibition in its first iteration and wrote the exhibition catalogue (published by Yale University Press). Dr. Clifton’s lecture – scheduled for October 16, at 5:00 pm in the Pennsylvania Hall Lyceum – not only will provide an overview of the exhibition, but also will focus on the concept of “mediated war.”