Charismatic Image

Instructor: Dejan Lukic Date & Time: Sundays from April 11, 18, 25, May 2 14:00 to 16:30 ET

DESCRIPTION: Charisma is an unavoidable force of aesthetics and politics: it can be viewed as “charm” in its positive or affirmative version, or as tyrannical manipulation and a will-to-dominate in its negative form. But the mysterious etymological root takes us back to the ancient Greek word kharis, meaning “grace” or “favor”. Charisma is therefore a form of a gift, something received from the unknown elsewhere. But how exactly is it attained (cosmically, divinely, artisanally)? And how does it turn from grace into a curse?

This Seminar looks at charisma in relation to the image in which it is embedded. An image, an object, a line of writing, a situation, or the presence of a person, gains the power to inspire and attract at the level of temperaments and barely perceptible impulses. Charisma in this sense is a micro-climate, both natural and supernatural. The goal of our weekly investigations will be to usher its movement, like that of weather phenomena, from a divine gesture to an atmospheric disposition. For even miracles relate to changing atmospheres (solidifying water in order to walk on it, reducing gravity in order to levitate, etc.). Changing the atmosphere means reformulating the laws, both divine and natural.

In a series of four brief encounters, we will try to pinpoint the very instant of creation as such. To this end, we will look into paintings, sculptures, installations, embodiments, and atmospheric phenomena.

IMAGE: William Blake, Dante running from the Three Beasts 1824–7

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