Upcoming Bross Lectures

The lectures explore a different way of understanding European art, focusing on works that break the usual rules. These pieces ignore traditional perspective, cross over their own frames, allow elements from outside the main story to enter the scene, experiment with time through prophecy and other techniques, and evoke strong emotions that spread throughout the painting.

This bold treatment, especially in narrative paintings, results in a sense of inevitability and emotional intensity. The lectures focus on the years 1250 to 1650, from the late medieval period to the Baroque. To help make sense of these ideas, three important terms are used: metalepsis, which is when one rhetorical device disrupts another in an unexpected way; parenthesis, which refers to an interruption—either placed alongside the main action or embedded within it; and epiphany, the sudden appearance of something radically different within the scene. These concepts highlight how artists defied expectations to create urgent and powerful works.

Christopher Wood came to New York University in 2014. From 1992 until 2014 he taught in the Department of History of Art at Yale University. At Harvard University he was a Jacob Wendell Scholar and a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows. In 2002 he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and a NEH Rome Prize Fellowship to the American Academy in Rome. In fall 2004 he was Ellen Maria Gorrissen Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. In 2011-12 he was a Member of the School for Historical Studies of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; and a Senior Fellow at the Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften, Vienna. In fall 2018 he was Visiting Professor at Villa I Tatti. In summer 2023 he was Aby-Warburg-Stiftung Professor at the Warburg-Haus in Hamburg and in the coming academic year he will be a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. Christopher Wood is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.