When, five centuries ago last year, Albrecht Dürer embarked on his journey to the Netherlands, his fame proceeded him. Wherever he went locals celebrated his arrival. Such long-distance renown, unprecedented for a craftsperson, derived from what Dürer chose to create: works that were masterful, multiple, and mobile, sheets of paper imprinted with versatile imagery and bearing the artist’s A.D. mark.
Through this dual mobility of person and product, Joseph Koerner will explore the movements of hand and eye, of a receptive and inventive mind, of depicted bodies in seeming states of motion, and of a Europe dramatically on the move. Dürer’s travels, Koerner reports, had unexpected relevance during this, its fifth centennial, when the pandemic made distance learning a necessity.