Journée d’étude : « Last Works, 1500–2000 », Londres, University College London, 14 avril 2023
Art history is, most often, a history of beginnings. Its art historical chronologies invoke a history of firsts: first artists, first artworks, first movements. Classification and periodization often accord with an artist’s life, and acts of initiation and points of inception have overwhelmingly been afforded significance and scholarly exposure. In his 1936 essay, “The Storyteller,” Walter Benjamin sought to reverse this naturalization: death, rather than life, provides its own artistic and narratological source. Or put...