Conrad Rudolph (born 1951) is an American art historian. He is Distinguished Professor of Medieval Art History at the

University of California, Riverside The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public land-grant research university in Riverside, California. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The main campus sits on in a suburban dist ...

. He is an elected Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, and has received fellowships and grants from the Guggenheim, J. Paul Getty, Mellon, and Kress foundations, as well as from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the College Art Association. He has served on the board of editors/advisors of or acted as consultant for several academic journals (''Art History'', ''caa.reviews'', ''Speculum'', ''Architectural Histories'', etc.) and university presses. He has interests in such topics as medieval social theories of art, the ideological use of art, monasticism and art, the origin of

Gothic art Gothic art was a style of medieval art that developed in Northern France out of Romanesque art in the 12th century AD, led by the concurrent development of Gothic architecture. It spread to all of Western Europe, and much of Northern, Southern and ...

, and art and social change. He has worked on resistance to art in the West, using this to understand the origin of Gothic art at Saint-Denis. He has also worked on depictions of violence and daily life as complex depictions of monastic spiritual life (particularly in the Cîteaux ''Moralia in Job''), medieval theories and images of creation, the

pilgrimage A pilgrimage is a journey, often into an unknown or foreign place, where a person goes in search of new or expanded meaning about their self, others, nature, or a higher good, through the experience. It can lead to a personal transformation, aft ...

in the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

, architectural building miracles as ''topoi'' of significant social meaning, the historiography of

medieval art The medieval art of the Western world covers a vast scope of time and place, over 1000 years of art in Europe, and at certain periods in Western Asia and Northern Africa. It includes major art movements and periods, national and regional art, ge ...

, the tour guide in the Middle Ages, the stained glass of

Canterbury Cathedral Canterbury Cathedral in Canterbury, Kent, is one of the oldest and most famous Christian structures in England. It forms part of a World Heritage Site. It is the cathedral of the Archbishop of Canterbury, currently Justin Welby, leader of the ...

, the Classic Cistercian church plan, the Rights of the Devil, and other subjects related to medieval artistic culture. Some of his major studies include

Bernard of Clairvaux Bernard of Clairvaux, O. Cist. ( la, Bernardus Claraevallensis; 109020 August 1153), venerated as Saint Bernard, was an abbot, mystic, co-founder of the Knights Templars, and a major leader in the reformation of the Benedictine Order through t ...

's ''Apologia'' (the most important document we have to provide an understanding of medieval artistic culture and the twelfth-century controversy over art),

Suger of Saint-Denis Suger (; la, Sugerius; 1081 – 13 January 1151) was a French abbot, statesman, and historian. He once lived at the court of Pope Calixtus II in Maguelonne, France. He later became abbot of St-Denis, and became a close confidant to King Lou ...

and the origin of Gothic art (including the invention of the Gothic portal and the exegetical stained-glass window), and Hugh of Saint Victor's ''Mystic Ark'' (the most complex individual work of figural art of the Middle Ages--an image of all time, all space, all matter, all human history, and all spiritual striving--a painting that was meant to be the subject of months-long discussions, repeated by others again and again). He was Project Director for FACES (Faces, Art, and Computerized Evaluation Systems), a pioneering attempt to apply face recognition technology to works of art, specifically portraiture (funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Kress Foundation). As part of his interest in medieval culture, he undertook the grueling medieval pilgrimage on foot from Le Puy in south-central France to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain—a journey of two and a half months and a thousand miles. Conrad Rudolph is the son of Richard C. Rudolph, who was a professor of Chinese Literature and Archaeology at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...

. He is married to Roberta Peterson Rudolph; they have two children, Anna Katharina Rudolph and John Caspar Rudolph.

Select Bibliography

* ''The Mystic Ark: Hugh of Saint Victor, Art, and Thought in the Twelfth Century'' (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2014). * ''"First, I Find the Center Point": Reading the Text of Hugh of Saint Victor's'' The Mystic Ark (American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 2004). * ''Violence and Daily Life: Reading, Art, and Polemics in the Cîteaux Moralia in Job'' (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1997). * ''Artistic Change at St-Denis: Abbot Suger's Program and the Early Twelfth-Century Controversy over Art'' (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1990). * ''The "Things of Greater Importance": Bernard of Clairvaux's Apologia and the Medieval Attitude Toward Art'' (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1990). * (ed.) ''A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe'', Blackwell Companions in Art History, 2nd ed. (Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, 2016). * "FACES: Faces, Art, and Computerized Evaluation Systems--A Feasibility Study of the Application of Face Recognition Technology to Works of Portrait Art," with, Amit Roy-Chowdhury, Ramya Srinivasan, and Jeanette Kohl, ''Artibus et Historiae'' (2016). * "Medieval Architectural Theory, the Sacred Economy, and the Public Presentation of Monastic Architecture: The Classic Cistercian Plan," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 78 (2019) 259-275. * "The Tour Guide in the Middle Ages: Guide Culture and the Mediation of Public Art," Art Bulletin 100 (2018) 36-67. * "The Parabolic Discourse Window and the Canterbury Roll: Social Change and the Assertion of Elite Status at Canterbury Cathedral," ''Oxford Art Journal'' 38 (2015) 1-19. * "Inventing the Exegetical Stained-Glass Window: Suger, Hugh, and a New Elite Art," ''Art Bulletin'' 93 (2011) 399-422. * "Inventing the Gothic Portal: Suger, Hugh of Saint Victor, and the Construction of a New Public Art at Saint-Denis," ''Art History'' 33 (2010) 568-595. * "A Sense of Loss: An Overview of the Historiography of Romanesque and Gothic Art," ''A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe'', ed. Conrad Rudolph (Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 2006) 1-43. * "In the Beginning: Theories and Images of Creation in Northern Europe in the Twelfth Century," ''Art History'' 22 (1999) 3-55. * "Building-Miracles as Artistic Justification in the Early and Mid-Twelfth Century," ''Radical Art History: Internationale Anthologie,'' ed. Wolfgang Kersten (Zip Verlag, Zurich, 1997) 398-410.

References

External links

Conrad Rudolph's departmental web page

Conrad Rudolph's Academia.edu page (with CV)

Illustrations published in ''The Mystic Ark: Hugh of Saint Victor, Art, and Thought in the Twelfth Century''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rudolph, Conrad American art historians Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America