Please join us on Friday, April 25, 2025 at noon ET for “The Morality of Pictures,” a Virtual Salon co-sponsored by the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art (AHNCA) and the Dahesh Museum of Art.
“Art,” Baudelaire wrote, “cannot, except at the price of death or decay, assume the mantle of morality,” but he immediately added that every artwork “naturally and necessarily suggests a moral.” In this Virtual Salon, three distinguished scholars will consider what role, if any, moral values play in the production and understanding of artworks.
Bridget Alsdorf is Professor of Modern European Art at Princeton University. The author of Fellow Men: Fantin-Latour and the Problem of the Group in Nineteenth-Century French Painting (2013) and Gawkers: Art and Audience in Late Nineteenth-Century France (2022), she is currently writing a book on love and collaboration in modern Scandinavian painting, photography, and silent film (ca. 1870–1920), informed by the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard. With Carolyn Yerkes, she is working on a book and exhibition on Jacques Callot.
Todd Cronan is Professor of Art History at Emory University and editor-in-chief of nonsite.org. He is author of Against Affective Formalism: Matisse, Bergson, Modernism (Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2013), Red Aesthetics: Rodchenko, Brecht, Eisenstein (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021), Nothing Permanent: Modern Architecture in California (Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2023) and coeditor (with Peter Bunnell) of Minor White, Memorable Fancies (Princeton University Press, 2025). He is currently working on a book on Matisse and Manet and (with Walter Benn Michaels and Lisa Siraganian) Intention: Three Inquiries in Art and Action (Univ. of Chicago, 2026). He has also written on art and politics for Jacobin, The Nation, Brooklyn Rail, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Common Dreams.
Ralph Ubl is Professor of Modern Art History at the University of Basel, Switzerland. He is author of Prehistoric Future. Max Ernst and the Return of Painting (2013) and Bildtheorie zur Einführung (2013, together with Wolfram Pichler). His most recent publications include essays on Max Klinger and Jeff Wall. He is currently writing a book on Eugène Delacroix.
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This online event is free and open to the public, but registration is required at: https://tinyurl.com/The-Morality-of-Pictures