Professor Martin Kemp, a globally renowned scholar, Emeritus Professor of Art History at the University of Oxford, and a leading figure in Renaissance studies, is visiting China for the first time in fifteen years. This visit features a series of lectures and workshops aimed at deepening the dialogue between domestic and international art researchers and enthusiasts, fostering the global development of art research, and providing a broader platform for international academic and artistic exchange.
Professor Martin Kemp will lecture on ‘Structural Intuition in Art and Science’ at the China Academy of Art on 24 September. He has lectured successfully at the UCCA Auditorium and CAFA, and will give another fascinating lecture at the Resea Coastal Resort on 16 September, further demonstrating his profound knowledge of art history.
Professor Martin Kemp is a world-renowned art historian, curator, Fellow of the British Academy, Emeritus Professor of Art History at the University of Oxford,and an authority on Leonardo da Vinci studies. He studied natural sciences and art history at the University of Cambridge and the Courtauld Institute of Art. He has taught at Wolfson College, Glasgow University, and the University of St Andrews. With a background in natural sciences, Professor Kemp approaches art history from a more rational and scientific perspective, closely aligning with Leonardo da Vinci’s exploration of the intersection between art and science.
Professor Martin Kemp is a prolific author, having published extensively on Leonardo da Vinci, Renaissance art history, and the relationship between art and science. He has published articles in the prestigious journal Nature and played a pivotal role in authenticating the 2011 rediscovered and restored painting Salvator Mundi a work by Leonardo da Vinci. In addition, He has also curated a number of major Da Vinci related exhibitions at important art institutions such as the National Gallery in the UK. To bring the public closer to Leonardo's world and help them understand his thinking and method of observing nature, Professor Kemp collaborated with a British documentary team to create the The DaVinci Masterclass which encapsulates his research and insights from over five decades. His research also covers visualization in art and science, particularly in fields such as anatomy, natural sciences, and optics.
Professor Kemp has received numerous honors and titles from prestigious art institutions, including Chair of Association of Art Historians, Chair of Editorial Board, Art History，Chair of Graeme Murray Gallery, Edinburgh, Professor of History at the Royal Scottish Academy, member of the Council of the British Society for the History of Science, member of the International Committee of Art History, among others. His accolades include Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Honorary Professor of History at the Royal Scottish Academy, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland, Fellow of the British Academy, Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Wolfson Research Professor of the British Academy, Honorary Fellow of Downing College at the University of Cambridge, and Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences，among many other honourable titles.
lecture I: Leonardo da Vinci and Time
Time: September 8 (Sun.) 15:00
Venue: UCCA Auditorium, 798 Art District, No. 4, Jiuxianqiao Rd., Chaoyang Dist., Beijing
The issue of space and its representation in art has been widely studied in art history. Similarly, as a continuous quantity, time and temporality are fully embodied in Leonardo da Vinci's artworks. Da Vinci excelled in addressing the issue of time, for instance, by being the first to introduce the dimension of time into the Madonna and Child theme. In his narrative paintings, such as The Last Supper, time plays a significant role. In this lecture, Professor Martin Kemp approached Da Vinci’s concept of time in art, science, and technology from various perspectives, including biological time, geological time, time measurement in engineering, and the transcendence of time.
Lecture II: Visions of Heaven: Dante's Paradiso and Divine Light in Painting
Time: Wednesday, September 11th, 15:00
Venue: CAFA Art Museum (No.8,South st. Huajiadi,Chaoyang Dist.,Beijing,China)
Dante Alighieri's (1265-1321) The Divine Comedyi is one of the great epics of Western literature. Dante's boundless imagination harmonized with the scientific foundations of his time, and his writing evokes compelling visual imagery. Compared to Inferno and Purgatorio, Paradiso is less familiar to most readers, yet it represents the highest expression of spiritual essence. One of its key themes is the overwhelming divine light in heaven that suppresses the senses. Depicting this invisible light seems to exceed the material capacities of painting, but Renaissance artists discovered creative ways to represent divine light, culminating in Baroque art several centuries later.
In this lecture, Professor Martin Kemp explored Dante's vision of divine light and how Renaissance and later artists, inspired by this vision, creatively portrayed this dazzling, celestial, and explosive light.
Workshop: Iconic Images in Science and Art
Time: Friday, September 13th, 15:00
Venue: Audio-Visual Academic Lecture Hall,Building No.5,CAFA
The field of science has its system of visual symbols. The symbols and images created by scientists have established their place in the public eye, transcending the boundaries of science itself. These science-related images have further evolved and been iterated in computational art and new media art. This workshop explores ‘Images and Symbols in Science and Art’, in which students and scholars shared and presented their relevant research, followed by a discussion on the thematic issues derived from the presentations, with a view to eliciting new knowledge through the collision of ideas.
Lecture III: Renaissance Perspective and the Art of Light: From Brunelleschi to Piero della Francesca
Time: Saturday, September 16th, 15:00
Venue: Resea Coastal Resort, Binhai New Ave East, Beidaihe New District, Qinhuangdao City, Hebei Province
In the early 15th century, the invention of perspective provided artists with a technique to measure space based on optical theory. Perspective became an important "science," comparable to other liberal arts, especially music. In this lecture, Professor Martin Kemp will explore the perspective method invented by Brunelleschi, as well as the development of perspective in later art, particularly in the works of Piero della Francesca and Leonardo da Vinci.
Lecture IV: Structural Intuitions in Art and Science
Time: Tuesday, September 24th, 15:00
Venue: Beiyuan Lecture Hall of Nanshan Campus, China Academy of Art (N.218, Nanshan Road)
"Structural intuition" is the way people use perceptual and cognitive mechanisms to impose order on the world they observe. The perception of patterns in the natural world and their representation in artworks is also an important aspect of art history. From celestial models and modern cosmological ideas to images at the microscopic level, Professor Martin Kemp will explore the significance of "structural intuition" in this lecture. He will demonstrate how the perception of the structural rules of nature is a fundamental driving force behind human cognition, integrating scientific intuition with artistic understanding.
