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RICHARD NEER

Richard Neer is Barbara E. and Richard J. Franke Distinguished Service Professor of Art History, Cinema & Media Studies and the College at the University of Chicago.  From 2010 to 2018 he was the Executive Editor of Critical Inquiry, where he continues to serve as co-Editor. He is currently Director of the Franke Institute for the Humanities at the University of Chicago

 

Neer works at the intersection of aesthetics, archaeology and the history of art in multiple fields: Classical Greek sculpture, early modern French painting, theories of style, and mid-20th century cinema.  His Ph.D. is from the University of California at Berkeley (1998), his A.B. from Harvard College (1991). He has received fellowships and awards from the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, the J. Paul Getty Trust and the American Academy in Rome. His most recent books are the second edition of Art and Archaeology of the Greek World: A New History, 2500–100 BCE (Thames & Hudson, 2018); Davidson and His Interlocutors, a special issue of Critical Inquiry co-edited with Daniele Lorenzini (Winter 2019); an edited volume, Conditions of Visibility (Oxford University Press,  2019); and Pindar, Song, and Space: Toward a Lyric Archaeology, co-authored with Leslie Kurke (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), which won the 2020 PROSE Award in Classics from the Association of American Publishers.

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Latest Work

MY LATEST RESEARCH

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Archaic and Classical Greek Art

Vase-painting, sculpture, architecture, landscape.  Special emphasis on early ideas of wonder, grace and beauty as alternatives to Platonizing accounts of Greek art, and on the interface of poetry (Pindar) and the built environment.

Seventeenth-century French Painting

Imitation, knowledge and grace in the works of Poussin, de La Tour, Le Nain and de la Hyre; the relation between spiritual exercises, artisanal skill and theoretical knowledge in the age of absolutism.

Cinema

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Film, philosophy and 'non-discursive thought' in Godard, Malick, Lubitsch, Mizoguchi and others.  Particular interest in questions of evidence, criteria and judgment, with reference to Wittgenstein, Austin and Cavell.

Style and 'Perceptual Proof'

How style became evidence in art history and archaeology; the relation between style and Ludwig Wittgenstein's account of 'aspect-perception'; style and the epistemology of the historical past.

Latest work

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Pindar, Song, and Space: Towards a Lyric Archaeology, co-authored with Leslie Kurke, has appeared from Johns Hopkins University Press (2019).  The book has been awarded the 2020 PROSE award for Best Book in Classics from the Association of American Publishers.

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Conditions of Visibility has appeared from Oxford University Press (2019).  Essays by Claudia Brittenham, JaÅ› Elsner, Richard Neer and Wu Hung.

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Davidson and His Interlocutors, a special issue of Critical Inquiry co-edited with Daniele Lorenzini, has appeared. Essays by Jocelyn Benoist, Mario Biagioli, Lorraine Daston, Piergiorgio Donatelli, Peter Galison, Carlo Ginzburg, David Halperin, Sandra Laugier, George E. Lewis, Daniel Lorenzini, Richard Neer, David Shatz, and Michel Foucault.

[Volume introduction]

[Table of contents]

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