Stephen Bann - Biography#

As stated on the back cover of the Festschrift prepared in his honour (About Stephen Bann, ed. Deborah Cherry (2006)), ‘Stephen Bann’s writings have had a profound effect on the fields of visual studies, art history and cultural history’. Having taught at the University of Kent from 1967 to 2000, and at the University of Bristol from 2000-2008, he became a scholar of international renown, reshaping the approach to word and image studies by encompassing art, architecture, the aesthetics of landscape and poem prints. He has published extensively in French, in exhibition catalogues and art history journals. Furthermore, he was President of the Comité international d’histoire de l’art, from 2000 to 2004 and has sat on a number of Arts Panels in the UK.

Full details of his publications are available via the Websites. Towering over these, however, is Stephen Bann’s influence on future generations of scholars, who, thanks to him, have been empowered to look with keen attentiveness as well as to extrapolate from that close focus to wider abstractions.