Stephen Bann

Stephen Bann at public lecture in the University of Tartu on 6 February 2013.

Stephen Bann CBE, FBA (born 1 August 1942) is the emeritus professor of history of art at the University of Bristol.^[1]

He was made a Fellow of the British Academy in 1998, and named a CBE in 2004.^[2]

Early life

Stephen Bann was born on 1 August 1942 in Manchester, England. He was educated at Winchester College and King's College, Cambridge, attaining his PhD in 1967.^[2]

Career

Bann's work has been influential in focusing scholarly attention toward connections between the history of art and visual culture. The Clothing of Clio (1984)^[3], The Inventions of History (1990)^[4] and Romanticism and the Rise of History (1995) are concerned in particular with the deepening consciousness of history particular to the 19th century.^[5] The examples that Bann takes are explained by him not from a reductive art historical perspective, but through acknowledgement of such examples' location in a broader, metahistorical network. Visual sources, sometimes even unlikely or fragmentary ones, are valued by the author as still points of reference: "a visual example provides a support for the exegesis that the reader (spectator) can follow in a directly participatory way. Its very self-contained nature (as opposed to an extract from a text) enables it to generate cross-references as well as to provide a field for practical analysis" (Romanticism and the Rise of History).^[6]

Bann's notion of "historical-mindedness" as originating in the 19th century and particularly in Paris is unique in the addition of the concept of "the poetics of the museum". Here, the subjectivity of the author of a museum or collection is established as significant in determining how particular representations of the past are structured, specifically in terms of tendencies toward synecdoche (empathetic recreation) and/or metonymy (mechanical and sequential display).

Bann's interest in semiotics, the capacity of images to bear significance, is exemplified in Under the Sign: John Bargrave as Collector, Traveler, and Witness (1994), which comments on the peculiar history and status of a 17th-century cabinet of curiosity as an aid in the self-definition of the collector. Themes of travel and acquisition are brought together on these grounds to detect meaning. Similarly, in writing on the history of gardens, Bann has found cause to cite the Scottish poet Ian Hamilton Finlay, among others indicative of a contemporary imaginative predisposition.^[7]

In Ways Around Modernism (2006), Bann affirms his approach of appreciating commentaries or histories as themselves change- and epoch-making. The argument is completed with an assessment of Post-Modernism in connection with "the historical phenomenon of 'curiosity'" which, for Bann, "has resurfaced as a widespread and noteworthy feature of present-day art". By implication, Post-Modernism may thus reveal overlooked qualities in Modernism. An insistence upon the importance of looking and unstinting attentiveness, in addition to inter-disciplinary openness, is characteristic and influential in his writing.^[8]

Bann's book Parallel Lines: Printmakers, Painters and Photographers in Nineteenth-Century France (Yale University Press, 2001) was awarded the 2002 R. H. Gapper Book Prize by the UK Society for French Studies. This prize recognises the work as the best book published by a scholar working in Britain or Ireland in French studies in 2001.^[9]

Bann has also contributed translations of Roland Barthes's The Discourse of History^[10] and Julia Kristeva's Proust and the Sense of Time (1993).^[11]

References

1. "Stephen Bann".
2. "Professor Stephen Bann - Our People". www.bristol.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 6 June 2021. Retrieved 28 July 2026.
3. Bérard, Robert Nicholas (1985). "Stephen Bann. The Clothing of Clio: A Study of the Representation of History in Nineteenth-Century Britain and France. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1984. Pp. xiii, 195. $37.50". Albion. 17 (3): 352–354. doi:10.2307/4048983. ISSN 0095-1390.
4. Burke, Peter (1 October 1991). "Reviews : Stephen Bann, The Inventions of History: essays on the representation of the past, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990, £35.00, x + 246 pp". History of the Human Sciences. 4 (3): 435–437. doi:10.1177/095269519100400308. ISSN 0952-6951.
5. Baird, Andrew (1996). "Reviews : Stephen Bann, Romanticism and the Rise of History. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995. ix + 189 pp". History of the Human Sciences. 9 (3): 131–140. doi:10.1177/095269519600900307. ISSN 0952-6951.
6. Ceri, Giada (30 May 1996). "Stephen Bann, Romanticism and the Rise of History, New York, Twayne Publishers, 1995, pp.183". Cromohs - Cyber Review of Modern Historiography (1). doi:10.36253/crom-16217. ISSN 1123-7023.
7. Bann, S (1994). Under the Sign: John Bargrave as Collector, Traveler and Witness. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-10436-9.
8. "Ways Around Modernism: Master Narratives and Their Discontents by Stephen Bann". app.thestorygraph.com. Retrieved 28 July 2026.
9. "Academy of Europe: Publications". www.ae-info.org. Retrieved 28 July 2026.
10. "Analysing the discourse of history: Culture, Theory and Critique: Vol 27 , No 1 - Get Access". Culture, Theory and Critique. doi:10.1080/14735788309366465.
11. O'Grady, Kathleen (1997). "Book Reviews : In the Beginning: Julia Kristeva, a Philosopher of Time: Julia Kristeva Proust and the Sense of Time, trans. Stephen Bann London: Faber and Faber, 1993, 103 pp., ISBN 0-571-16880-9 Julia Kristeva Le temps sensible: Proust et l'experience litteraire Paris: Gallimard, 1994, 455 pp., ISBN 2-07-073116-2 English trans: Time and Sense: Proust and the Experience of Literature, trans. Ross Guberman New York: Columbia University Press, 1996, 403 pp., ISBN 0-231-10250-X Julia Kristeva Les nouvelles maladies de l'âme Paris: Librairie Arthàme Fayard, 1993, 204 pp., ISBN 2-213-02961-X English trans: New Maladies of the Soul, trans. Ross Guberman New York: Columbia University Press, 1995, 242 pp., ISBN 0-231-09982-7". European Journal of Women's Studies. 4 (2): 236–240. doi:10.1177/135050689700400209. ISSN 1350-5068.

Further reading

• Cherry, Deborah (ed), About Stephen Bann, Blackwell, Oxford 2006
• Conan, Michel (ed), Landscape Design and the Experience of Motion, Washington D.C, 2003