Hubert Damisch's (1928-2017) commitment to creating a space for interrelation between art history and the humanities as a whole resulted in the immediate founding of the Center for History and Theory of Art (CEHTA) in Paris.

Integrated within the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, this Center has proven to be one of the leading laboratories for theoretical production on the subject of images. Hubert Damisch's ideas there laid the foundation for a theoretical opening whose influence would extend to Visual Studies and the Anthropology of the Image.

On this day dedicated to his thinking in el Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid Not only do we bring together leading scholars in this hybrid and constantly evolving field, but we also open, from the intellectual legacy of Hubert Damisch, a space for debate between philosophy, semiotics, psychoanalysis or sociology around the history of art.

In the first session we have:

– Presentation by Gabriel Cabello and Daniel Lesmes

– Thierry Dufrêne (Director of the Pierre Francastel Center): “From Pierre Francastel to Hubert Damisch: pensee figurative et objet théorique” (From Pierre Francastel to Hubert Damisch: figurative thought and the theoretical object)

– Matthew Bowman (University of Suffolk): “Damisch and Krauss. Apropos the In(-)Visibility of the Theoretical Object”

– Gabriel Cabello (University of Granada): “The history of art taken in a scarf. A counter-reading of Hubert Damisch.”

In the second session we had:

– Sabine Guermouche (CEHTA, responsible for the Hubert Damisch archive): “Thinking about the symbolic form

– Damisch lecteur de Cassirer” (Thinking the symbolic form – Damisch reader de Cassirer)

– Daniel Lesmes (Complutense University): “Take what I cannot give you”: Goya and the influence of Damisch between two languages.

– Elisa Coletta (La Sapienza University): “Nuages ​​en perspective” (Clouds in perspective)

In the afternoon session, we had a conversation with Teri Wehn-Damisch (documentary filmmaker) and Guillermo G. Peydró (documentary filmmaker) about the screening of the documentary on Hubert Damisch , 'Traité du trait' (Films du Louvre, 1995). The closing lecture was given by Georges Didi-Huberman: “Between Phenomenology and Structuralism.”