Dr. Guy Tal

Researches the cultural and intellectual aspects of witchcraft in Italian and Spanish art in the 15th - 18th centuries, as well as topics relating to gender, imagination, the image of the “other” and body language. Lecturer and head of theoretical studies in the Master's degree program in design; senior member of faculty in the unit of Art History and Philosophy of Art, Design and Technology.

Dr. Tal holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Indiana, Bloomington (2006), prior to which he earned his MA, summa cum laude, from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and his BA from the University of Haifa. He was granted a ‘returning scientist’ status from the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption in collaboration with the Hebrew University for two years. His papers have been published in the leading journals in the world and he has won two awards of excellence for lectures he gave at conferences in the United States. 

Among the courses taught by Dr. Tal in Cultural Studies Unit at Shenkar: Erotica and Gender in Renaissance and Baroque Art, Body Language in Western Art, Witches, Gypsies and Gnomes: “The Other” in Art, The History of the Print, Introduction to Renaissance and Baroque Art and Introduction to Medieval Art, Material Design and Culture in the Early Modern Period.

Most recent papers by Dr. Tal

• “Saint or Sinner?: Enea Vico’s Old Woman with a Distaff after a Drawing by Parmigianino.” Source: Notes in the History of Art (forthcoming) 
• “A Chimerical Procession: Invention, Emulation, and the Language of Witchcraft in Lo stregozzo.” Artibus et Historiae 78 (2018): 267-95. 
• “Demonic Possession in the Enlightenment: Goya’s Flying Witches.” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 11, no. 2 (2016): 176-207.
• “An ‘Enlightened’ View of Witches: Melancholy and Delusionary Experience in Goya’s Spell.” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 75, no. 1 (2012): 33-50. 
• “Switching Places: Salvator Rosa’s Pendants of A Witch and A Soldier, and the Principle of Dextrality.” Source: Notes in the History of Art 30, no. 2 (2011): 20-25.
• “The Gestural Language in Francisco Goya’s Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.” Word & Image 26, no. 2 (2010): 115-27. 
• “The Missing Member in Marcantonio’s Apollo and his Lover.” Print Quarterly 26, no. 4 (2009): 335-46.
• “Disbelieving in Witchcraft: Allori’s Melancholic Circe in the Palazzo Salviati.” Athanor 22 (2004): 57-65.