Albrecht Dürer and How Art Imagines Our World

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

520 was a bad year for Albrecht Dürer. His patron, Maximilian the Holy Roman Emperor, had died, depriving him of a steady income and a ready source of artistic inspiration. To make matters worse, a plague struck, forcing the artist and his wife and daughter to travel across Europe. Moving west toward the coast, the artist heard about a beached whale in the Dutch province of Zeeland–a sea monster, washed ashore, waiting to be claimed, studied, captured by the hands of the artist. Dürer had found what he was looking for.

The incident is at the heart of Albert and the Whale: Albrecht Dürer and How Art Imagines Our World, a new book by Philip Hoare. Exploring the work of Dürer through a highly personal lens, Hoare’s book draws on history and the natural sciences to help us better understand the complicated interplay between art and reality in the artist’s work.

In this Meet the Author event, Hoare will be joined by printmaker and scholar Andrew Raftery and the Newberry’s Suzanne Karr Schmidt for a conversation about Dürer and his work.