成人大片

Dr. Tomasz Grusiecki, Associate Professor of Art History, Boise State University

From the 16th century onward, Jaktor贸w Forest in Mazovia, Poland, became the last refuge of the aurochs, a now-extinct species of long-horned wild cattle. Despite the Polish kings鈥� best efforts at conservation, the last aurochs perished in 1627. This lecture examines objects made from aurochs horn, which sought to reanimate鈥攐r at least memorialize鈥攖hese endangered and ultimately extinct animals. The most evocative among them is a hunting horn, now at Stockholm鈥檚 Livrustkammaren, fashioned from the horn of 鈥渢he last aurochs,鈥� as its inscription attests. An artistic eulogy for a lost species, the object stands at the intersection of art and environmental crisis. This and other aurochs-themed artifacts not only mediate the ecological transformations of the early Anthropocene but also invite an ecocritical reassessment of Baroque art history. Could the Baroque鈥攐riginally a term marking the seventeenth century as a period of artistic decline, formal excess, and stylistic contamination鈥攂e reconfigured as a lens through which to consider European art鈥檚 response to the realities of late early modernity, accounting for both its rapid expansion鈥攖hrough urbanization, international trade, and protoindustrialization鈥� and its increasingly evident consequences, such as environmental degradation and various ethical dilemmas?

This lecture series is supported with the generous support of the late Alfred Bader.