Interview with Ittai
Weinryb
On April 28-29, BGC assistant professor, Ittai Weinryb, is
organizing a two-day international symposium “Ex Voto: Votive Images
Across Cultures” at the Bard Graduate Center. The symposium is the starting
point for a large exhibition that is scheduled to open at the BGC galleries in
January 2015
Another of his
projects, “Images at Work: Image and Efficacy from Antiquity to the Rise of
Modernity,” a two-day international symposium at the Max Planck Institute in
Florence, which dealt with image, magic, and efficacy, will appear as a special
issue of W86th—the BGC’s new
journal. Among his forthcoming articles are one coming out in Word & Image journal and another in
the inaugural volume of Cultural
Histories of the Material World book series published
by the BGC and the University of Michigan Press.
Dr.
Weinryb received his BA from Tel Aviv University and MA and PhD degrees from
Johns Hopkins University where he was the recipient of the Adolf
Katzenellenbogen Prize. He was also the Robert and Nancy Hall Fellow at the
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, and Max Planck Doctoral Fellow at the
Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence. In 2010, he received the
Kress-International Center of Medieval Art research award to continue his work
on the Bronze doors of medieval Italy.
What is the Ex Voto
Symposium?
The
phenomenon of humans leaving votive objects to a saint or a deity can be found
across histories, religions, and cultures: from archaic Greece to our era, from
the Himalayas to Brazil. Given as a token of gratitude for a miracle performed
or offered as a vow, the ex voto is the most basic and fundamental form of
material exchange between humans and their deities.
This
symposium is one of the few examples of trying to think about these objects and
their relation to culture. In many cases, when scholars study, for
instance, shrines, they focus on their architecture or the cult in which a
deity is worshipped but they have not traditionally studied the objects that
people have left there, except to decipher them as structures of exchange
and uncover their religious meanings.
In
its most basic form, this is the study of folk art— we are focusing on what
people deposit in the shrine. Interestingly, while votive objects are
most often things that people make by themselves and leave in the shrine as
part of their relationship with the deity, they also represent early examples
of mass production. Objects were produced and then personalized by the
consumer with an inscription or by the insertion of a personal object.
How did you get interested in
this project?
As a medievalist
travelling the churches of Europe I noticed the shear amount of objects that
people had left on the altars and continue to leave up until the present
day. Today, you may think of candles as one example of this;
however, across cultures people have left objects that symbolize a head, or a
torso, the hand, or the foot, in an attempt to heal a budding physical problem,
for instance. You can find representations of infants, of breasts (for
people with cancer), and eyes, which were, of course, very important. I
have many examples that are Christian. I also have examples from Ancient
Greece, as well as present-day South America and Asia. People
deposited masses and masses of objects on their shrines. Some of
these objects are beautiful works of art. For instance, Nike of Samothrace, the famous sculpture in the Louvre, was an ex voto object
that was, we think, offered by Rhodian sailors to a shrine in thanks for a
naval victory.
Who are the people involved?
In
the symposium , we have divided the question of the votive objects into both
geographical periods and historical regions. Two scholars will talk
about Greek and Roman cultures; two on Renaissance Italy, two on
the Germanic nations and northern Europe; and two on Asia. One of these
will talk about the Ema tablets in Shinto culture in Japan, and the other, John
Guy, of the Metropolitan, will talk about the Buddhist votive tablet in
Thailand. Two other scholars will focus on South America. One of
them, Clara Bargellini from Mexico City, will talk about the ex voto and votive
arts in the sixteenth- and seventeenth–century colonialism of New Spain.
As a special treat, Diane Fane of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, will be talking
about edible votive objects, which should be most interesting. In addition,
there will be a scholar talking about the tradition of votive objects in
Islamic culture. This scholar, Christiane Gruber, was recently in Iran
collecting material, so it will be a very fresh presentation focusing on a lot
of modern day activities relating to votive objects in that country.
Finally,
Kristin Hass will speak on secular votives—things that we have learned, for
instance, from the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC, 9/11 memorials, the
Oklahoma City bombing memorials, and even Lady Diana memorials.
The
symposium will uncover the question as to why people do these things.
What is interesting about votive giving is its structural consistency. It
is something that has existed since the beginning of time to today, crossing
cultures and religions. It is something that is around us. It is
not something that is celebrated in art galleries nor mentioned in television
specials. It is something that is a part of daily
existence. It is material culture in its most down-to-earth
folk-like aspect.
Where will this lead?
The
symposium will also mark the launch of a bigger project that will result in an
exhibition centering on ex votos in the main exhibition space of the BGC that
is, for now, scheduled to open in 2015. This exhibition will, we hope, draw its
material from private collections as well as from major museum collections in
Europe.
Both
the symposium and the exhibition will bring together a new appreciation for ex
votos within the context of material culture and, we hope, promote the
comparative study of material culture.
