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Jeremy Tanner awarded Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship
13 November 2019
Congratulations to Jeremy Tanner (UCL Institute of Archaeology) who has been awarded a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust for research on the Axial Age and the Institution of Art in Ancient Greece and Early Imperial China.
Jeremy Tanner's 3-year project will examine a series of major transformations in the institutions and practices of visual art in ancient Greece (ca 600 BC to AD150) and early imperial China (ca 200 BC to AD 900) to develop a fundamentally new understanding of the character and trajectories of both these artistic traditions, and the cultural and social factors which explain both their similarities and their differences, through a long term comparative history.
The transformations being explored include the development of portraiture and the visual depiction of historical events; new ‘naturalistic’ styles to represent character and emotion in narrative painting; the inauguration of traditions of written theoretical reflection by artists on visual art; and ultimately the invention of practices of art history writing, which are the foundations of Euro-American and East Asian art history writing today. These convergences are quite remarkable, particularly in two traditions which are often characterised as radically divergent. The project will contribute to the development of the field of Sino-Hellenic studies.
Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowships are awarded to distinguished researchers in the humanities and social sciences to complete a piece of original research and facilitate this by the provision of teaching replacement. Eva Mol has been appointed Teaching Fellow in Classical Art and Archaeology for the duration of Jeremy’s Fellowship.