Professor, Art History and Visual Communication
Ph.D. (with distinction) Columbia University
M.Phil. Columbia University
M.A. Columbia University
B.A. University of Toronto
Interior Design Diploma, International Academy of Design
Foundations in Design Thinking Certificate, IDEO-U
Advanced Design Thinking Certificate, IDEO-U
Office: Lowerre Academic Center, Office 14
Phone: +41 91 986 36 64
Email: jfassl@fus.edu
Johanna Fassl is Professor of Art History and Visual Communication and the co-chair of the Division of Arts and Cultures. She received her PhD with Distinction from Columbia University and has been the recipient of numerous fellowships, including from the Mellon and Getty research foundations. In 2004 she built Columbia University’s study center and academic program, which she directed until 2015. In 2016 she co-founded the Scholarships Without Borders program that grants fully funded scholarships to refugee students at Franklin. Fassl’s research analyzes the production and reception of art within an interdisciplinary framework of science, philosophy, and the psychology of perception. In her studies on Giambattista Tiepolo and his circle in eighteenth-century Venice she concentrates on how a deliberate rhetoric of absence in painting connects to theories of the Radical Enlightenment. The void and other forms of abstraction are also at the heart of Fassl’s second research area in contemporary trauma studies where she examines the works of artists who have experienced trauma in the ongoing conflict zones of the Middle East.
Professional Experience:
- Professor of Art History and Visual Communication and Co-Chair of the Division of Arts and Cultures, Franklin University Switzerland
- Co-director, Scholarships Without Borders, Franklin University Switzerland
- Senior Advisor, Global Development
- Director, Casa Muraro: Columbia University Study Center in Venice
- Head Interior Designer, Kumpulan Senireka Sdn.Bhd, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
- Sole Proprietor of Design Studio, Toronto, Canada
Publications:
2021, “’We all die until the Times Photographer Wins the Prize’”, forthcoming in Reconnecting the Dots … The Impact of Covid-19 on Displaced Students in Higher Education Systems,” intervalla: platform for intellectual exchange, volume 9, ed. J. Fassl.
2021, “The Other 5%: Displaced Students in Higher Education,” forthcoming in Reconnecting the Dots … The Impact of Covid-19 on Displaced Students in Higher Education Systems,” intervalla: platform for intellectual exchange, volume 9, ed. J. Fassl.
2021, “Mehr als Scherzi di fantasia: Giambattista Tiepolos grafisches Gedankenlabor im Spiegel der radikalen Aufklärung,” forthcoming.
2019-20, “Giambattista Tiepolo,” Artist Dictionary DeGruyter Academic Publisher
2014-15, “We Photograph Things in Order to Drive Them Out Of Our Minds: Abstraction and Memory in the Photography of a Veteran from Afghanistan and Iraq,“ intervalla: platform for intellectual exchange, volume 2, 127-140.
2014-15, “Rogue Memories: Reflections on Trauma, Art, and Technology,” intervalla: platform for intellectual exchange, volume 2, 1-12, Co-Author.
2014, “The Meaning of the Mark: Gianantonio Guardi’s Optical Investigations, ”In Venetian Painting Matters 1470-1750, ed. J. Cranston. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers.
2013, “’La parola è d’argento, il silenzio è d’oro’: la retorica del silenzio nelle pale d’altare di Giambattista Tiepolo,” 23-39. Polifonie veneziane, ed. S. Meine. Venetiana 13.
2012, “The Suspension of Gravity in Giandomenico Tiepolo’s Punchinello on a Swing,” in Gravity and Levity in Art, ed. M. Edwards and E. Bailey, 137-146. Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishers.
2012, “Il riposo durante la fuga in Egitto: retorica ed eloquenza nelle pale d’altare di Giambattista Tiepolo,” La chiesa di San Massimo e Osvaldo, Cappella Universitaria, 161-176. L’Erma di Bretschneider, Padua, 2012.
2011, “Punchinello Meets the Turk: Giambattista Tiepolo’s Oriental Spectators,” in J. Harper, ed. The Perception of the Turk in the Western Eye: An Overview, 95-125. Aldershot, Ashgate.
2010, Sacred Eloquence: Giambattista Tiepolo and the Rhetoric of the Altarpiece. Peter Lang Academic Publishers, Boston University Series of “Studies in Early Modern European Culture.” New York and Bern.
2007, “In the Art of the Tiepolo a Single Gesture is Often Equivalent to a Long Sentence.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 40/4 (2007): 651-654.
2004, “The Poetics of the Line: Giambattista Tiepolo’s Calligraphy Beyond Representation.” Save Venice Journal: 46-49.
2004, Ph.D. Dissertation: “Sacred Eloquence: Giambattista Tiepolo and the Rhetoric of the Altarpiece.” Columbia Unversity. UMI publication. (Advisor: David Rosand)
Select Design Work:
Intervalla: platform for intellectual exchange, masthead and favicon.
Kuala Lampur Telecommunication Tower, Malaysia
Awards and Honors:
Franklin University Switzerland, Distinguished Teaching Professor, 2022
Franklin University Switzerland, Excellence Award for Teaching, 2019
Franklin University Switzerland, Excellence Award for University Service, 2017
Green Leaves Fund 2012.
Franklin University Switzerland, Excellence Award for Professional Engagement, 2011
The Getty Foundation, Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2006.
Mellon Fellowship, Columbia University, 1999.
President's Fellow, Columbia University, 1998.