פרופ' אסף פינקוס

I am an art historian from Tel Aviv University; Professor Honorarium, University O f Vienna; Editor-in-Chief of the Tel Aviv University Press;  Head of the Multi- and Interdisciplinary Programs in the Arts (2018-2020); Chair of the Art History Department at Tel Aviv University (2012-2016); Director of the University Gallery (2013-2016|); Co-Head and Founder of the Photography Studies Program (2012-2016); Founder and Chair of the Tel Aviv Israeli Art Foundation (since 2014); and former Chair of IMAGO – The Israeli Association for Visual Culture of the Middle Ages. Between 2013-2016 I was appointed as an International Associate to the Board of Membership of the International Center of Medieval Art; and I am titular Israeli member of CIHA (Comité International d'Histoire de l'Art), and co-president of the Israeli committee.

I specialize in medieval figural arts, inquiring into questions of experience, spectatorship, and non-religious imaginative response to medieval imagery. My current theoretical concerns include questions of soma aesthetic, scale (relational sizing) and the formation of subjectivity.

In 2002 I completed my PhD with distinction at Tel Aviv University, engaging with the sculptural programs of St. Theobald in Thann (Workshops and Patrons of St. Theobald in Thann [Münster: Waxmann, 2006]). The monograph inquired into problems of artistic production, workshop routine, and medieval mass-sculpture, exploring the political agenda of the ecclesiastic and lay art commissioners animated in the imagery. From 2004 to 2006 I was a postdoctoral fellow at Freiburg University, where I embarked on a broader project dedicated to the Parler tympana at Augsburg, Freiburg, Schwäbisch Gmünd, Thann, and Ulm, concentrating on aspects of narrativity and spectatorship of late medieval sculpture (Patrons and Narratives of the Parler School [Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2009]). The book was awarded a distinguished grant by the VGWort. Following this my symulachra project book, (Sculpting Simulacra in Medieval Germany, 1250–1380 [Farnham: Ashgate, 2014]), investigated the potential of an intuitive, imaginative, non-religious response to late medieval art, the research for which was carried out in collaboration with the Art History Institute at Vienna University. My last study (Visual Aggression: Images of Martyrdom in Late Medieval Germany [University Park, Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press, 2020]), engages with soma-aesthetics and bodily response to violence imagery and the history – philological, theological, and cultural – of violence. Another field of my expertise in Modern Christian Art in the Holy Land (Where the Word Became Flesh: The Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth [Cologne: De Gruyter, 2020]. Currently, I work on colossal imagery and the notion of “the Gigantic” in late medieval culture, exploring the role of “the Gigantic” in courtly poems and epics ,Norse Edda, travel literature, cartography and geography (Giants in the Medieval City [Turnhout: Brepols, 2024]). This project led to my Global (Art)History of Giants book (in progress) and the coining of the "Scaling Turn": the artistic, technological, and cultural manipulation of relational sizing that drastically altered the visual culture of the period, along with its theological and philosophical tenets.   

I specialize in medieval figural arts, inquiring into questions of experience, spectatorship, and non-religious imaginative response to medieval imagery. My current theoretical concerns include questions of soma aesthetic, scale (relational sizing) and the formation of subjectivity.

In 2002 I completed my PhD with distinction at Tel Aviv University, engaging with the sculptural programs of St. Theobald in Thann (Workshops and Patrons of St. Theobald in Thann [Münster: Waxmann, 2006]). The monograph inquired into problems of artistic production, workshop routine, and medieval mass-sculpture, exploring the political agenda of the ecclesiastic and lay art commissioners animated in the imagery. From 2004 to 2006 I was a postdoctoral fellow at Freiburg University, where I embarked on a broader project dedicated to the Parler tympana at Augsburg, Freiburg, Schwäbisch Gmünd, Thann, and Ulm, concentrating on aspects of narrativity and spectatorship of late medieval sculpture (Patrons and Narratives of the Parler School [Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2009]). The book was awarded a distinguished grant by the VGWort. Following this my symulachra project book, (Sculpting Simulacra in Medieval Germany, 1250–1380 [Farnham: Ashgate, 2014]), investigated the potential of an intuitive, imaginative, non-religious response to late medieval art, the research for which was carried out in collaboration with the Art History Institute at Vienna University. My last study (Visual Aggression: Images of Martyrdom in Late Medieval Germany [University Park, Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press, 2020]), engages with soma-aesthetics and bodily response to violence imagery and the history – philological, theological, and cultural – of violence. Another field of my expertise in Modern Christian Art in the Holy Land (Where the Word Became Flesh: The Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth [Cologne: De Gruyter, 2020]. Currently, I work on colossal imagery and the notion of “the Gigantic” in late medieval culture, exploring the role of “the Gigantic” in courtly poems and epics ,Norse Edda, travel literature, cartography and geography (Giants in the Medieval City [Turnhout: Brepols, 2024]). This project led to my Global (Art)History of Giants book (in progress) and the coining of the "Scaling Turn": the artistic, technological, and cultural manipulation of relational sizing that drastically altered the visual culture of the period, along with its theological and philosophical tenets.