[Applause]
some years ago I was travelling in
Western England and I found myself in a
little village called Fairford and I’m
crawling around on my hands and knees in
this restricted part of the building and
I have in one hand the tool that more
than any other has aided me thus far in
my work as a medieval art historian a
flashlight you see I work on the parts
of medieval buildings that are hard to
see I work on furniture in particular
chairs known as misericorde Tsar mercy
seeds and these fold up and down much
like modern theater chairs and they have
often elaborate carvings on the
undersides and interestingly these
carvings don’t really ever match our
modern expectations of what kind of art
is appropriate for a medieval church for
instance this particular day I’m in
Fairford and I encounter an image that
at first glance appears to depict a
hunter or some sort of man squatting
with a pair of dogs but I’m a very
diligent art historian and so I decide
to lay down on my back to get right
underneath the image and I shine my
flashlight on it from below and I
realized that it’s not merely an image
of a man squatting this is a figure in
the act of defecating he is pantsless
with exposed nether regions articulated
in painstaking detail and you could take
my word for his an excrement issues
forth in a neat little line naturally I
wanted to share what I had discovered
so I approached one of the parish
employees an older woman and I described
to her the nature of the scene and her
reaction was so great she was totally
titillated she practically pulled me
across the building and demanded that I
show her the image in question after all
this is someone who had worked in this
building for years who’d passed by this
object countless times but who’d never
been kind of let into the know you know
she’d never gotten down to look at it
from beneath in any case uh we
approached a second parish employee to
discuss this and I was about to learn
that I had not in fact made a totally
unique discovery this second employee
another older woman said I know of
course I know but I don’t like to go
around bragging about it and she said
it’s not seemly this kind of thing and
to me as an art historian these two
reactions one excited the other kind of
disgusted or dismayed these have come to
represent the general range of
interpretive responses I can expect when
describing such art to would-be viewers
in the modern world and these reactions
seem different but in reality they’re
both part of the same modern tendency
which is to see this kind of art as a
dirty little secret and neither really
gets us to the way that the originally
intended audience of monks and priests
would have thought about such images you
see my job is an art historian is to
move beyond these modern interpretations
to perform art history via what I call a
bottom-up methodology and this means
more than just getting underneath an
image like this and looking at it from
below
it’s about posturing myself as a
cultural archeologist determined to dig
up a broader array of interpretive
responses for instance we might consider
that medieval monks and priests were
steeped in a way of thinking that all
we moved beyond the surface level of
things what we might call an exegetical
interpretive formula it’s what helped
them read scripture to look beyond the
sort of surface level meanings of
religious texts we might also consider
that monks and priests had to be at
least functionally literate in Latin and
there’s some revealing evidence here the
Latin term for instance expel RA means
both to expel as in sin from the soul
but also to defecate literally and it
helps us to re-approach an image like
the Fairford hunter because we can come
to see that this ultimately operates
like something of a visual pun or puzzle
it’s an image that demonstrates a
concretize commonplace a relationship in
the medieval imagination that suggests
an interpretation of sin as excrement
now of course to come to this kind of
reading in the modern world is complex
so we have our first interpretation our
first encounter with the image to
overcome that sense of surprise a shock
excitement or dismay what I’m saying is
that to see this image the way it was
meant to be seen we have to be able to
try to move beyond this and I might at
this point note that the Fairford hunter
is by no means unique we find in fact
scores of these scatological or
excrement related images and the fabric
of churches in England as well as across
Europe additionally we see images that
display nudity that are oftentimes
sexually suggestive in these contexts as
well immunise it’s not even just
churches medieval manuscripts religious
manuscripts lakes altars or collections
of Psalms have these kinds of seemingly
profane pictures in the margins of
sacred texts it’s a veritable phenomenon
of sacred profane juxtaposition and
while in the modern world this is kind
of crazy a little bit zany or bizarre
unexpect
did what I would say is that we should
celebrate these kinds of images right I
wonder what would it be like if an image
like the Fairford hunter and others like
it if this wasn’t just a dirty secret
that we’re all all too apt to miss
unless were brought into the no could
knowledge of these kinds of objects the
study of these kinds of images could
this have the potential to inform modern
debates about what actually constitutes
high art right what is the nature of
blasphemy how do we define profanity
right or profane images and really
what’s the value of censorship because
and contrary to popular belief the
thinking of people in the pre-modern
world was in many ways less categorical
than our thinking is today concepts like
sacred and secular are sacred and
profane even we’re not is mutually
exclusive as they so often seem to us
thank you [Applause]
some years ago I was travelling in
Western England and I found myself in a
little village called Fairford and I’m
crawling around on my hands and knees in
this restricted part of the building and
I have in one hand the tool that more
than any other has aided me thus far in
my work as a medieval art historian a
flashlight you see I work on the parts
of medieval buildings that are hard to
see I work on furniture in particular
chairs known as misericorde Tsar mercy
seeds and these fold up and down much
like modern theater chairs and they have
often elaborate carvings on the
undersides and interestingly these
carvings don’t really ever match our
modern expectations of what kind of art
is appropriate for a medieval church for
instance this particular day I’m in
Fairford and I encounter an image that
at first glance appears to depict a
hunter or some sort of man squatting
with a pair of dogs but I’m a very
diligent art historian and so I decide
to lay down on my back to get right
underneath the image and I shine my
flashlight on it from below and I
realized that it’s not merely an image
of a man squatting this is a figure in
the act of defecating he is pantsless
with exposed nether regions articulated
in painstaking detail and you could take
my word for his an excrement issues
forth in a neat little line naturally I
wanted to share what I had discovered
so I approached one of the parish
employees an older woman and I described
to her the nature of the scene and her
reaction was so great she was totally
titillated she practically pulled me
across the building and demanded that I
show her the image in question after all
this is someone who had worked in this
building for years who’d passed by this
object countless times but who’d never
been kind of let into the know you know
she’d never gotten down to look at it
from beneath in any case uh we
approached a second parish employee to
discuss this and I was about to learn
that I had not in fact made a totally
unique discovery this second employee
another older woman said I know of
course I know but I don’t like to go
around bragging about it and she said
it’s not seemly this kind of thing and
to me as an art historian these two
reactions one excited the other kind of
disgusted or dismayed these have come to
represent the general range of
interpretive responses I can expect when
describing such art to would-be viewers
in the modern world and these reactions
seem different but in reality they’re
both part of the same modern tendency
which is to see this kind of art as a
dirty little secret and neither really
gets us to the way that the originally
intended audience of monks and priests
would have thought about such images you
see my job is an art historian is to
move beyond these modern interpretations
to perform art history via what I call a
bottom-up methodology and this means
more than just getting underneath an
image like this and looking at it from
below
it’s about posturing myself as a
cultural archeologist determined to dig
up a broader array of interpretive
responses for instance we might consider
that medieval monks and priests were
steeped in a way of thinking that all
we moved beyond the surface level of
things what we might call an exegetical
interpretive formula it’s what helped
them read scripture to look beyond the
sort of surface level meanings of
religious texts we might also consider
that monks and priests had to be at
least functionally literate in Latin and
there’s some revealing evidence here the
Latin term for instance expel RA means
both to expel as in sin from the soul
but also to defecate literally and it
helps us to re-approach an image like
the Fairford hunter because we can come
to see that this ultimately operates
like something of a visual pun or puzzle
it’s an image that demonstrates a
concretize commonplace a relationship in
the medieval imagination that suggests
an interpretation of sin as excrement
now of course to come to this kind of
reading in the modern world is complex
so we have our first interpretation our
first encounter with the image to
overcome that sense of surprise a shock
excitement or dismay what I’m saying is
that to see this image the way it was
meant to be seen we have to be able to
try to move beyond this and I might at
this point note that the Fairford hunter
is by no means unique we find in fact
scores of these scatological or
excrement related images and the fabric
of churches in England as well as across
Europe additionally we see images that
display nudity that are oftentimes
sexually suggestive in these contexts as
well immunise it’s not even just
churches medieval manuscripts religious
manuscripts lakes altars or collections
of Psalms have these kinds of seemingly
profane pictures in the margins of
sacred texts it’s a veritable phenomenon
of sacred profane juxtaposition and
while in the modern world this is kind
of crazy a little bit zany or bizarre
unexpect
did what I would say is that we should
celebrate these kinds of images right I
wonder what would it be like if an image
like the Fairford hunter and others like
it if this wasn’t just a dirty secret
that we’re all all too apt to miss
unless were brought into the no could
knowledge of these kinds of objects the
study of these kinds of images could
this have the potential to inform modern
debates about what actually constitutes
high art right what is the nature of
blasphemy how do we define profanity
right or profane images and really
what’s the value of censorship because
and contrary to popular belief the
thinking of people in the pre-modern
world was in many ways less categorical
than our thinking is today concepts like
sacred and secular are sacred and
profane even we’re not is mutually
exclusive as they so often seem to us
thank you [Applause]
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