Germanics, UW

This Book Is Alive:
On Charismatic Art

Encompassing other humanistic themes, Stephen Jaeger’s February lecture discussed a theory of representation that relates art to the charismatic presence visible in an art that idealizes aura. Citing examples as varied as Albrecht Dürer’s 1500 messianic self-portrait to movies like Forrest Gump, Jaeger showed how the technique of overlaying individuality with divinity in depiction of the human face and being can have a powerful hold over the imagination in life as in art.