Byzantine Studies Research Center Seminar Series - 1

THE ONE THOUSAND YEAR COEXISTENCE OF CRAFT, BELIEF AND ART: WALL PAINTING TRADITION IN BYZANTIUM 

ASST. PROF. B. TOLGA UYAR

NEVSEHIR HACI BEKTAS VELI UNIVERSITY

MAY 5-6, 2017

The most common technique used for monumental wall-painting in the Byzantine Empire and its surroundings (fresco-secco, secco) has outlived the empire. It spread as a form of authentic expression of belief and culture in the entire Orthodox geography, rivaled only by the icon painting tradition. Despite its New Platonist roots, the Byzantine monumental painting tradition, which Renaissance and Enlightenment art theory referred as "obsolete," was in fact highly variable and rich. This tradition, which reflects the identity of Byzantine art production in the large territories of the empire for a millennium, reached the present day with a rich collection of paintings in nearly two thousand and five hundred churches.

The two-day and 12-hour intensive seminar, organized by the Bogazici University Byzantine Studies Research Center, addressed this rich and vibrant painting tradition of the Byzantine world in various ways. Tolga Uyar focused on painting techniques and methods, painters and production processes, iconography and iconology, space and mural painting, stylistic trends and aesthetics, and the social, historical, cultural contexts of mural painting and presented to the participants the bibliography of the field.

ASST. PROF. B. TOLGA UYAR

Tolga B. Uyar (PhD University Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2011) specializes in Byzantine art, architecture and archaeology, with an emphasis on the monumental painting of Cappadocia. Dr Uyar has been a member of several archaeological surveys and excavations in Turkey since 1996. His research interests include methodological questions related to the “archaeology of art,” interactions between visual, written, oral, and material cultures in the Medieval Mediterranean, popular piety across religions, and issues of identity as they relate to artistic production. Since 2011 he has been teaching at the “Byzantine Cappadocia in Context” summer graduate program (Koç University) and as for October 2015 he is holding ass. prof. position at the Art History Department of Nevsehir H.B.V. University.

Please click ... to see the photographs of the event.