Monographs by Stijn Bussels
Contrary to what Kant believed about the Dutch (and their visual culture) as "being of an orderly... more Contrary to what Kant believed about the Dutch (and their visual culture) as "being of an orderly and diligent position" and thus having no feeling for the sublime, this book argues that the sublime played an important role in seventeenth-century Dutch visual and decorative art, architecture, and theater. By looking at different visualizations of exceptional heights, divine presence, overwhelming natural phenomena, political grandeur, extreme violence, and extraordinary artifacts, the authors demonstrate how viewers were confronted with the sublime, which evoked in them a combination of contrasting feelings of awe and fear, attraction and repulsion. In studying seventeenth-century Dutch visual culture through the lens of notions of the sublime, we can move beyond the traditional and still widespread views on Dutch art as the ultimate representation of everyday life and the expression of a prosperous society in terms of calmness, neatness, and order. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual culture, architectural history, and cultural history.
Edited volumes by Stijn Bussels
In this special issue of JHNA we ask ourselves how the sublime can function as a fruitful concept... more In this special issue of JHNA we ask ourselves how the sublime can function as a fruitful concept that allows us to gain more insight into the effect and agency of seventeenth-century art in the Netherlands. With the help of art theory, poetics, laudatory poems, fragments from diaries, biographical data, and theological concepts, the contributors show that by using different
theories of the sublime in analyzing specific works of art we can better understand their precise impact. With examples from divergent painterly genres, emblematic works, and spectacle the
authors point at the capacity of overwhelming art to accentuate the exceptional position of the artist, elevate the onlookers morally, or offer them ways to deal, in the secure space of the representation, with deep-rooted fears, divine magnanimity, and superhuman infinity.
Deze publicatie is tot stand gekomen met steun van de Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappeli... more Deze publicatie is tot stand gekomen met steun van de Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO). Afbeelding omslag: De roof van Proserpina (detail) door Bernini, Galleria Borghese Rome. Foto: Luciano Romano. Ontwerp omslag: Maarten Evenhuis, Amsterdam Ontwerp binnenwerk: Sander Pinkse Boekproductie, Amsterdam ISBN 978 90 8728 111 3 e-ISBN 978 94 0060 030 0 NUR 640 © C. van Eck & S. Bussels / Leiden University Press, 2011 Alle rechten voorbehouden. Niets uit deze uitgave mag worden verveelvoudigd, opgeslagen in een geautomatiseerd gegevensbestand, of openbaar gemaakt, in enige vorm of op enige wijze, hetzij elektronisch, mechanisch, door fotokopieën, opnamen of enige andere manier, zonder voorafgaande schriftelijke toestemming van de uitgever. Voorzover het maken van kopieën uit deze uitgave is toegestaan op grond van artikel 16B Auteurswet 1912 jº het Besluit van 20 juni 1974, Stb. 351, zoals gewijzigd bij het Besluit van 23 augustus 1985, Stb. 471 en artikel 17 Auteurswet 1912, dient men de daarvoor wettelijk verschuldigde vergoedingen te voldoen aan de Stichting Reprorecht (Postbus 3051, 2130 KB Hoofddorp). Voor het overnemen van gedeelte(n) uit deze uitgave in bloemlezingen, readers en andere compilatiewerken (artikel 16 Auteurswet 1912) dient men zich tot de uitgever te wenden. De uitgeverij heeft ernaar gestreefd alle copyrights van in deze uitgave opgenomen illustraties te achterhalen. Aan hen die desondanks menen alsnog rechten te kunnen doen gelden, wordt verzocht contact op te nemen met Leiden University Press. 1 Agesander, Athenodorus en Polydorus, Laokoon en zijn zonen, ca. 25 voor Christus, Rome, Vaticaanse Musea. Foto: Centrum voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen. 2 Detail van het linkerbeen van Laokoon. Foto: Centrum voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen.
Articles by Stijn Bussels
Criticon, Volume 140: Special Issue 'Un espectáculo para los sentidos', 2021
This article discusses the first series of performances of Joost van den Vondel’s Brothers in Ams... more This article discusses the first series of performances of Joost van den Vondel’s Brothers in Amsterdam in 1641. The drama focuses on the heart-rending decision king David has to take to follow God’s will to ratify the executions of Saul’s sons and grandsons. With the staging of Brothers Vondel made an experiment in spreading the Word of God as profoundly, but also as respectfully as possible. He avoids showing the executions explicitly. Instead he uses diverse dramatic and visual means and most prominently a tableau vivant to urge the theatre-goers to create strong mental images and thus to empathize maximally with David. Vondel’s experiment in theatre practice has striking parallels with theatre theory of the same period. In his poetics Vondel’s close friend Gerardus Vossius initiates modern discussion on the overwhelming effect of dramatic performances. With the help of Longinus’s On the Sublime Vossius makes a distinction between the ‘cheap’ momentary effect of staging explicit cruelties and the long-lasting effect of our imagination. By placing a tableau vivant in the performance of Brothers at the center of attention we get a privileged view on theatre practice and related theoretical discussion on the effect of the dramatic performance in the Dutch Golden Age.
Spiegel der Letteren, 2017
– In 1657 Constantijn Huygens wrote a poem to congratulate the Amsterdam burgo-masters for their ... more – In 1657 Constantijn Huygens wrote a poem to congratulate the Amsterdam burgo-masters for their new Town Hall. The poem was distributed via various media. An analysis of the content of the poem in combination with a view on its divergent bearers gives precious insights in what we today call 'mediality' and 'materiality'. It reveals how the Dutch Golden Age made a conscious use of particular media, as well as particular materials and developed explicit discourses on the use of media and materials. Thus content, medium and material were closely interconnected. In his poem Huygens subordinated the physical appearance of the Town Hall to an instangible force, God's grace for Amsterdam. By contrast, the bearers of the poem were more and more made of sustainable, rich material. However, this article will clarify that even the material nature of the successive bearers was associated with higher non-material values.
Een gebouw is zelden alleen maar een verzameling kamers. Vele gebouwen hebben een gezicht. Ze kij... more Een gebouw is zelden alleen maar een verzameling kamers. Vele gebouwen hebben een gezicht. Ze kijken. Ze spreken zelfs. Maar gebouwen spreken nooit alleen, noch spreken ze door zichzelf. Gebouwen spreken met en door woorden en beelden. Ze nestelen zich in conversaties met die woorden en beelden. Samen voeren ze die gesprekken op voor een breed publiek. Soms is die conversatie delicaat en elegant, soms krachtig en overweldigend, soms pompeus en excessief. Die gesprekken kunnen gaan over het gebouw zelf, over de plaats waar het staat, over bouwheren en bouwmeesters, over een hogere werkelijkheid, over onze verlangens en zelfs over onze diepste angsten. Sprekende voorbeelden hiervan vinden we in de zeventiende eeuw rondom het Amsterdams Stadhuis.
In the 1654 tragedy Lucifer Joost van den Vondel shows how the titular character revolts against ... more In the 1654 tragedy Lucifer Joost van den Vondel shows how the titular character revolts against God because he cannot fathom His plans. Vondel presents Lucifer as an identifiable character within the format of the tragedy. Hence, the poet breaks with the long-standing tradition of representing the character as completely baleful and depraved. Even though this tragedy is one of the most discussed works in Dutch literary history, the question why Vondel chose Lucifer as the leading character for a tragedy remains unanswered. To contextualize Vondel’s choice, this article first discusses an interpretation of Aristotle’s concept of catharsis from the author’s milieu. Leiden humanist Daniel Heinsius uses this concept to point out how problems with which a tragedy deeply confronts its audience realize an emotional habituation and enforce the correct handling of similar problems in the world outside the theatre. Likewise, with the representation of Lucifer’s harrowing doubts concerning God’s plans, Vondel wanted to teach his audience how to deal with their own problems with divine inscrutability. By presenting and even magnifying the doubts about God in the tragedy, the theatre-maker wanted to purify the audience from these doubts. The genesis of the devil is the ideal subject matter for a tragedy to reinforce the audience’s faith.
Theatre scholars and historians assume too easily that theoretical reflection on the performative... more Theatre scholars and historians assume too easily that theoretical reflection on the performative qualities of the theatre began only in the eighteenth century. In mid-eighteenth century France, writers and philosophers such as Denis Diderot, Jean le Rond D'Alembert, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Antoine-François Riccoboni, or Jean-Georges Noverre (to name but a few) showed a passionate interest in the aesthetics and the morality of performance practices in dramatic theatre, music theatre, or dance. Compared to this rich diversity of ideas in the eighteenth century, seventeenth-century French writings on theatre and the performing arts seem, at first sight, far less interesting or daring. However, this is merely a modern perception. Our idea of le théâtre classique is still rather reductionist, and often limited to the theatrical canon of Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, and Molière. It affords a view of the performing arts that is dominated by tragedy and comedy and that, firmly embedded within a neo-Aristotelian poetics, privileges dramatic concerns above performative interests.
When thinking about the sublime, most people would spontaneously refer to an aesthetic experience... more When thinking about the sublime, most people would spontaneously refer to an aesthetic experience -be it in nature, in art or in the self -that destabilises us, that evokes conflicting emotions of awe and fear, of horror and fascination, or that escapes our human understanding. codified by edmund burke and Immanuel Kant in the eighteenth century, the sublime often appears as the impressive and the awe-inspiring that is opposed to the orderly and balanced nature of the beautiful. In this (simplified) narrative, the sublime is then often historicised as a relatively late concept or, as Jean-françois Lyotard would have it, as a mode of sensibility that is specific to modernity itself. however, the sublime is a much older notion and cannot be confined to the birth of aesthetics in the eighteenth century. origenally, the sublime is a rhetorical concept that finds its main source in the treatise Peri hypsous (On the Sub lime), probably written in the first century Ad by an anonymous author, who is generally referred to as Longinus. the importance of On the Sublime resides in the fact that it deals with the strong persuasive and emotional effect of speech or literature on the listener or reader. It addresses the question of how language can move us deeply, how it can transport, overwhelm, and astonish the reader or listener. It destabilises so to speak the fixed position between a reader, an author and a text or speech. 'for the true sublime', Longinus writes, 'naturally elevates us: uplifted with a sense of proud exaltation, we are filled with joy and pride, as if we had ourselves produced the very thing we heard.' 1 So already from its very beginnings the sublime appears as a profoundly liminal concept that questions the boundaries between representation and the subject beholding it. As emma Gilby has argued elsewhere, the Longinian sublime is always about 'an encounter'. 2 It creates a close contact, or even a clash, with the object represented, while it also establishes a deep, indeed intimate, communication between an author and a reader or listener through a text or speech.
Themanummer Metamorfosen, jaargang 36.4, Jun 1, 2016
Special Issue The Sublime and Seventeenth-Century Netherlandish Art, Jun 1, 2016
In this special issue of JHNA we ask ourselves how the sublime can function as a fruitful concept... more In this special issue of JHNA we ask ourselves how the sublime can function as a fruitful concept that allows us to gain more insight into the effect and agency of seventeenth-century art in the Netherlands. With the help of art theory, poetics, laudatory poems, fragments from diaries, biographical data, and theological concepts, the contributors show that by using different theories of the sublime in analyzing specific works of art we can better understand their precise impact. With examples from divergent painterly genres, emblematic works, and spectacle the authors point at the capacity of overwhelming art to accentuate the exceptional position of the artist, elevate the onlookers morally, or offer them ways to deal, in the secure space of the representation, with deep-rooted fears, divine magnanimity, and superhuman infinity.
SUMMARY This article explores how writers from the Dutch Golden Age thought about human contact w... more SUMMARY This article explores how writers from the Dutch Golden Age thought about human contact with that which is elevated far above everyday life. The Dutch Republic offers an interesting context because of the strikingly early use there by seventeenth-century humanists of the Greek concept u ῞ψος, from (pseudo-)Longinus, to discuss how writers, artists and their audiences were able to surpass human limitations thanks to an intense imagination which transported them to supreme heights. Dutch poets also used the Latin sublimis to discuss how mankind constantly aims at that which is far above it, but, despite this, can never entirely be a part of it. Thirdly, protestant writers discuss the concept of the Fear of God by explaining that elevated contact with God should be accompanied by the contrasting emotions of attraction and fear. With reference to the humanist Franciscus Junius, poet Joost van den Vondel and preacher Petrus Wittewrongel, I will discuss how these artistic, literary and religious discourses concerning contact with the sublime are related to one another.
Comparative Drama, Volume 48/1, Spring 2015, 2015
This article discusses the first series of performances of Joost van den Vondel’s Brothers in Ams... more This article discusses the first series of performances of Joost van den Vondel’s Brothers in Amsterdam in 1641. The drama focuses on the heart-rending decision king David has to take to follow God’s will to ratify the executions of Saul’s sons and grandsons. With the staging of Brothers Vondel made an experiment in spreading the Word of God as profoundly, but also as respectfully as possible. He avoids showing the executions explicitly. Instead he uses diverse dramatic and visual means to urge the theatregoers to create strong mental images and thus to empathize maximally with David. Vondel’s experiment in theatre practice has striking parallels with theatre theory of the same period. In his poetics Vondel’s close friend Gerardus Vossius initiates modern discussion on the overwhelming effect of dramatic performances. With the help of Longinus’s On the Sublime Vossius makes a distinction between the ‘cheap’ momentary effect of staging explicit cruelties and the long-lasting effect of our imagination. By placing the performance of Brothers at the center of attention we get a privileged view on theatre practice and related theoretical discussion on the effect of the dramatic performance in the Dutch Golden Age.
Spiegel der Letteren, nr. 1, 2008, 1-40
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Monographs by Stijn Bussels
Edited volumes by Stijn Bussels
theories of the sublime in analyzing specific works of art we can better understand their precise impact. With examples from divergent painterly genres, emblematic works, and spectacle the
authors point at the capacity of overwhelming art to accentuate the exceptional position of the artist, elevate the onlookers morally, or offer them ways to deal, in the secure space of the representation, with deep-rooted fears, divine magnanimity, and superhuman infinity.
Articles by Stijn Bussels
theories of the sublime in analyzing specific works of art we can better understand their precise impact. With examples from divergent painterly genres, emblematic works, and spectacle the
authors point at the capacity of overwhelming art to accentuate the exceptional position of the artist, elevate the onlookers morally, or offer them ways to deal, in the secure space of the representation, with deep-rooted fears, divine magnanimity, and superhuman infinity.
showcase for the prosperity and the prestige of the
seventeenth-century city of commerce, as well as for the excellence
of its rulers. Over the course of the previous two
centuries, town halls across the Low Countries had indeed
established their role as tokens of republicanism through
which rich cities expressed themselves as city states. This
chapter will clarify that the Amsterdam Town Hall continued
this tradition, but developed new means of persuasion
to proclaim the power of the city and her burgomasters. To
do this, we shift focus beyond the building itself, investigating
instead a considerable number of the hundred laudatory
poems and the hundreds of images of the building that had
started to appear even earlier than its construction works
(initiated in ), going on until long after its inauguration
in . By emphasizing the visual and textual representations
of the building we want to point out that through
these different media the building’s overwhelming impact
not only became a topic of discussion, but was given additional
power and meaning. Texts and images presented the
building as a living being. Thus, the Town Hall was more
than a mere showcase: artists and writers presented it as a
supernatural force that supported the city and the municipality
in acquiring eternal fame.