Posted by vrcvanderbilt on Tuesday, January 23, 2018 in Events, HART, HART in Nashville, Lectures, News, VRC.

Vivien Green Fryd, professor of history of art, will address the tradition in western art that contemporary feminist artists have dubbed the “heroic rape” in a lecture at 6 pm on January 25 at the Nashville Parthenon.

Her lecture, “Representing and Challenging the ‘Heroic Rape’ Tradition in the History of Western Art,” is held in conjunction with the Parthenon’s current exhibit, An Archaeologist’s Eye:The Parthenon Drawings of Katherine A. Schwab, which examines the sculptural ornamentation of the Parthenon.

“Since antiquity artists have created paintings and sculpture that aestheticized and glorified, as many of the Parthenon sculptures did, a violent sexual act with a patina of heroic mythology and history,”said Fryd. “Scholars have praised such works for their grandeur of design and overpowering sensation of drama without considering their violent sexual subject matter.”

Beginning in the 1980s, some art historians problematized the sexually violent content of such revered works, “arguing that representations of rape, even within the context of mythological and Biblical subject matter, seemed to glorify the event without asking what it means that this subject is so prevalent, accepted, and praised,” Fryd added.

Her talk will explain this “heroic rape” tradition and how and why feminist artists in the United States, working from the 1970s to the second decade of the 21st century, represented and challenged the dominant narrative about sexual violence against women.

Free and open to the public, this lecture, which received primary support from Humanities Tennessee, is cosponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America and The Conservancy for the Parthenon and Centennial Park. Those who plan to attend the AIA lecture are encouraged to call the Nashville Parthenon at 615.862.8431 to reserve a seat.

*Katherine A. Schwab, North Metope 25: Eros, Aphrodite, Helen, statue of Athena, 2009, graphite on paper. The surviving north metopes of the Parthenon illustrate episodes from the sack of Troy