Duygu Hoşgör

The Combines that Robert Rauschenberg produced between 1953 and 1956 represent a “queering” of Abstract Expressionism, and by extension the culture of postwar modernism itself, through the artist’s pronounced use of decoration. The decorative materiality of his work is overlooked by current scholarship that frames the Combines as either a postmodern allegory of representation, or as an iconographically read revelation of his gay identity. Refusing biography, the essay draws on queer theory’s opposition to legible—and legislated—identity to read the decorative as a queerly deconstructive strategy deployed to undermine postwar American art’s grand narratives of subjectivity.

This study focuses on the Menologion of Basil II preserved in the Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat.gr.1613, an illustrated ecclesiastical calendar that presents short notices for each commemoration day. The codex encompasses 430 miniatures of high quality painted on gold-leaf backgrounds, suggesting a Constantinopolitan production and
consequently represents one of the highest points of development in Byzantine
manuscript tradition. Approximately, one third of the miniatures employ scenes of beheading as the method of execution of Christian martyrs, visually forming the most frequent type of persecution. This study aims to conduct an iconographical analysis of these scenes through analyzing recurring patterns in the representations of decapitation. It is argued that the persistent choice of representing the beheaded martyr in the moment preceding the execution is reminiscent of the iconographical motifs used in depictions of Sacrifice of Isaac. A thorough investigation presented in the format of a catalogue has been employed to identify these recurring motifs. The first chapter presents the codicological and historical background of the manuscript; the second chapter identifies the methodological approach applied to catalogue entries; the third chapter discusses the relationship between the scenes of the Sacrifice of Isaac and Early Christian martyrdom scenes and examines the similarities between the Menologion’s beheading scenes and representations of ‘Aqedah [binding] in monumental painting and manuscript
illumination prior to the 11th century.

The art produced in Late Antiquity, in the geographical areas where a traceable level of Greco-Roman past still existed, is often addressed as products of a period of ‘decline’. Beginning with Vasari whom we call the first art historian of the Western tradition of art history and proceeding on with scholars like Bernard Berenson, Alois Riegl and Erwin Panofsky, this paper aims to portray Western art historian’s ‘gaze’ on the artistic production between 2nd to 8th centuries A.D.in regions under the control of Eastern Roman Empire. In the last part, a brief discussion on the reflections of scholars from the scholarship of Byzantine studies like Ernst Kitzinger and Kurt Weitzmann are discussed. Instead of referring to the aforementioned art production as a form of ‘decline’, this paper
presents a view that embraces the idea of ‘change’, which is an indispensable element of the process of art making where understanding of it should be divorced from formulas of good and bad, rise and decline and similar connotations.

While mentioning the Greek libraries as foregoing models to Roman libraries the focus of this paper is the function of the libraries. From the immediate surroundings of the elite intellectuals, did the written sources find their way to the shelves of the public libraries to be shared with the common peoples of Rome, or did they merely remain in the closed circle of people who were affiliated with emperors? While suggesting answers to this question, other accompanying functions of book collecting in the ancient world will be addressed in order to place the discussion in a wider perspective.

Aiming to touch on the general subject of Early Christian bookmaking, the particular area of study is the purple manuscripts that were produced in the Early Byzantine Empire. Namely, the Codex Purpureus, Cotton Genesis, Vienna Genesis, Codex Sinopensis and Rossana Gospels will be studied to draw different examples.