Enlightenment Travel
The following exhibition includes a well-illustrated digital dimension:
Traversées: récits de voyage des Lumières / Crossings: Narratives of Travel from the Enlightenment
Bibliothèque Universitaire Droit-Lettres de l’Université de Poitiers, 11 January — 27 March 2010
Les voyageurs des Lumières se trouvent à un moment particulièrement intéressant à observer car tous les modes de voyage cohabitent : découverte, colonisation, dépaysement. L’exposition présente différents types de voyages et de manières de les raconter dans trois parties du monde au XVIIIe siècle : la découverte et l’utopie dans le Pacifique, l’installation et les missions en Asie, en Afrique et en Amérique du Sud et l’émergence du genre du récit de voyage en Europe.
Conférences
- Yasmine Marcil, “L’attrait des journaux pour les récits de voyages (1750-1789),” le 23 février à 18h
- Fabrice Vigier (Maître de conférences, Université de Poitiers), “Les voyageurs et les auberges du Centre Ouest aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,” le 20 avril à 18h
- Jean-Jacques Tatin-Gourier (Professeur, Université de Tours), “Le rachat des captifs en terre barbaresque : une légitimation traditionnelle du voyage au XVIIIe siècle,” le 27 avril à 18h
Un catalogue illustré sera bientôt disponible. Il est édité et mis en vente par les Cahiers d’histoire culturelle de Tours. Il a été rédigé par des enseignants-chercheurs et des étudiants des université de Poitiers, de Rouen et de Nantes.
Call for Papers: Travel Writing
History in Travel Narrative, 1589-1826
Paris, Sorbonne nouvelle, 11-12 December 2010
Proposals due by 15 June 2010
Joint conference organised by PRISMES (CREA XVIII, Epistémè), Sorbonne nouvelle, and CIERL, Québec
This conference will examine the representation of history in travel narrative. A European’s perception of countries and peoples with no ‘history’ is not the same as that of ‘civilised’ nations. What model of historical change do travel narratives project—history as a decline from some mythical or mythicised origin, cyclical history, history as the unfolding of a providential design, as progress? The evolution of those categories over the period considered will be investigated; this period stretches from 1589, which saw the publication of Richard Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations, to 1826, when William Ellis’s Narrative of a Tour through Hawaii came out.
What is the influence of historiography at any given time on the representation of history as experience in travel literature? How does travel narrative validate its status as historiography? From a more anthropological viewpoint, does the discovery of new or different spaces or places shape the perception and construction of time? Is there any interaction between the conception of space and that of time, between the depiction of spaces and that of time, especially of the time needed for the evolution of manners, customs and institutions which differ from those familiar to the traveller? Does this entail a relativisation of time? How does a European (or Europeanised) nation’s past constrain the analysis of the fabric and customs of the areas visited? Is the historicisation of lived experience limited? What is the impact of measuring instruments on this experience and the account thereof. Those are some of the questions which will be addressed in this conference. Voyages from and to Great Britain will be of particular, but not exclusive, interest.
Please send proposals—200-250 words—for papers not exceeding 30 minutes before 15 June 2010 to Isabelle Bour (Isabelle.Bour@univ-paris3.fr), Line Cottegnies (Line.Cottegnies@univ-paris3.fr) and Thierry Belleguic (Thierry.Belleguic@lit.ulaval.ca).
Review: ‘William Hogarth’s Surprising Cosmopolitanism’
Recently posted at H-Albion:
Robin Simon, Hogarth, France and British Art (London: Greenhill Books/Lionel Leventhal, 2007), 313 pages, ISBN 978-0-9554063-0-0, $90.
Reviewed by Douglas Fordham, Assistant Professor of Art History, University of Virginia; published on H-Albion, January 2010.
Since his death in 1764, William Hogarth has become a protean figurehead for a great many impulses in British culture. John Trusler’s “Hogarth Moralized” (1768) was an early and overt instance of the ends to which Hogarth’s life and oeuvre could be put, and Hogarth continues to be, if not moralized, then at least channeled into a disparate series of voices and roles. While the “New Art History” of the past two decades has turned its pragmatic sights on Hogarth the calculating businessman, it has also tended to reduce the artist to a somewhat bland spokesman for a polite and commercial age.[1] In the writings of David Solkin and David Bindman, in particular, Hogarth has been cast as a cultural latitudinarian, mainstream in his preoccupations and eager to please. To the extent that Hogarth’s works reveal contradictions, unpleasant truths, or impolite expressions they tend to be viewed as apt reflections of an anxious age. This view of the artist offered a calculated response to Ronald Paulson’s towering contribution to Hogarth scholarship, beginning in the 1970s, which emphasized the artist’s antinomian impulses and his empathetic eye for the sub-cultural. If Hogarth merges seamlessly into hegemonic discourses in the former, he activates a dizzying array of allusions and a daunting density of meaning in the voluminous writings of Paulson.[2] While each of these accounts, and a great many others, have transformed our understanding of the artist and his age, readers are ultimately tasked with choosing which Hogarth they prefer. For it hardly seems possible for one individual to embody so many contrary impulses.
Robin Simon makes a welcome contribution to this debate in “Hogarth, France and British Art,” where he offers a surprisingly fresh iteration of the artist and his milieu. Simon’s Hogarth is cosmopolitan in his understanding of European Old Masters and contemporary French art, sophisticated in his handling of oil paints, and a friend to “Tory wits” and Whig politicians alike. Hogarth emerges in Simon’s account as an intellectually serious artist and a deeply gifted painter who almost single-handedly elevated British art to a Continental level of refinement. In his desire to translate French theories and standards into a uniquely English vernacular, “Hogarth demands to be ranked with the literary giants of the ‘Augustan’ age in England” (p. 8). Simon shares with Paulson a propensity for making analogies between English literature and art, and some of Simon’s most compelling observations entail comparisons between Hogarth’s paintings and the English stage. . . .
The paradox latent in Simon’s approach is that Hogarth already had an English visual vernacular at his disposal in London printshops, on painted street signs, and in countless urban spectacles. While Simon deliberately challenges the “determinedly insular” (p. 3) quality of recent Hogarth scholarship, at what cost does Hogarth the cosmopolitan painter become divested from Hogarth the graphic satirist as Diana Donald and Mark Hallett, for example, have presented him?[3] This is a question of synthesis, however, rather than a legitimate critique of Simon’s stated aims. On its own terms, Simon’s book deserves to be read by everyone with an interest in British culture in the first half of the eighteenth century, and it dramatically improves our understanding of Anglo-French relations. It also manages to present us with yet another incarnation of the artist from which to choose. This is a significant accomplishment in itself, and if this new Hogarth sits uncomfortably alongside his forebearers, then it can only encourage us to look anew at Hogarth’s astonishingly diverse and provocative career.
For the full review, click here»
Notes (more…)
Accessing Library Resources in the Digital Age
Koninklijke Bibliotheek, National Library of the Netherlands
Recently within the context of a discussion at C18-L of J-Stor’s experiments with adding auction catalogs to its collection of resources, the inevitable question surfaced: what about access for people who are not attached to institutions that subscribe to such costly databases? At a time when scholarly materials are increasingly migrating from paper to digital storage formats, it’s a serious concern. The web is undoubtedly opening up tremendous avenues, but often at enormous costs, and for individuals not fortunate enough to benefit from libraries that can absorb such costs, the threat of a digital divide is anything but theoretical. One contributor suggested joining the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) in The Hague, which provides remote access to the library’s resources, including the subscription databases. I’ve not tried it, but judging from the
information available on the site it seems to be a viable solution.
At just €15/year, it’s certainly affordable. Other ideas? –C.H.
ASECS in Albuquerque — What a Schedule!
The 2010 ASECS conference takes place in Albuquerque, March 18-21, at the Hotel Albuquerque. Along with our annual luncheon and business meeting, HECAA will be represented by two panels, chaired by Wendy Wassying Roworth and Adrienne Childs:
Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture (HECAA) New Scholars Session
Thursday, 18 March 2010, 11:30-1:00, Turquoise
Chair: Wendy Wassyng ROWORTH, University of Rhode Island
- Rose LOGIE, University of Toronto, “The Artful Voyeur: Watteau, Drawing, and Spectatorship”
- Anne-Louise G. FONESCA, University of Montréal, “Mythological Painting in Eighteenth-Century Portugal: Models, Nudity and Patronage”
- Hilary Coe SMITH, Duke University, “A New Approach to Measuring Taste in the Parisian Art Market, 1760-1784”
- Diana CHENG, McGill University, “The Boudoir of the Marquise Du Châtelet: A Chapel for Oneself and the Illusion of Happiness”
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Theorizing the Decorative in Eighteenth-Century Art (HECAA)
Friday, 19 March 2010, 4:15-5:45, Alvarado A
Chair: Adrienne CHILDS, University of Maryland
- B.A. HARRINGTON, University of Wisconsin, “Virtue Embodied: A Polite and Dutiful Worktable”
- Ethan LASSER, The Chipstone Foundation, “The Phenomenology of Decoration”
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HECAA Luncheon and Business Meeting
Friday, 19 March 2010, 1:00-2:30, Franciscan Ballroom
OTHER SESSIONS RELATED TO THE VISUAL ARTS
THURSDAY, 18 March 2010
Gender and Homosociality in the Long Eighteenth Century
Thursday, 18 March 2010, 8:00-9:30, Alvarado G
Chair: Heidi STROBEL, University of Evansville
- Jennifer GERMANN, Ithaca College, “Women’s Networks and Artistic Survival: The Case of Marie-Éléonore Godefroid”
- Amber LUDWIG, Boston University, “Re-Evaluating Vigée-Lebrun’s Portrait of Lady Hamilton as a Sibyl”
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Theories of Visual Experience and Artists’ Writings about Art in the Eighteenth Century
Thursday, 18 March 2010, 8:00-9:30, Alvarado C
Chair: Maureen HARKIN, Reed College
- Hector REYES, Northwestern University, “Drawing History: Dialectics of Visual Experience in the Comte de Caylus’ Recueil”
- Lyrica TAYLOR, University of Maryland, “Portrait of the Artist: John Francis Rigaud’s Vision of the Role of the Artist in Eighteenth-Century England”
- Abigail ZITIN, University of Chicago, “Hogarth’s Drawing Lesson: Technique and Gender in The Analysis of Beauty”
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Portraits and Money
Thursday, 18 March 2010, 8:00-9:30, Alvarado H
Chair: Bradford MUDGE, University of Colorado, Denver
- Susan EGENOLF, Texas A&M University, “Narrative as Commodity in the Marketing of Wedgwood’s Fine Heads”
- Megan PEISER, Texas Tech University, “A Picture of Commodity: The Culture of Miniatures in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho”
- Tatiana SENKEVITCH, University of Toronto, “The Flip Side of the Ancient Coin: Du Bos on the Portraiture of the King”
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The Eighteenth Century in Motion
Thursday, 18 March 2010, 8:00-9:30, Suite 418
Chair: Alistaire TALLENT, Colorado College
- Lila Miranda GRAVES, University of Alabama, Birmingham, “Walking the Western Circuit: Paradise Hall, Glastonbury Tor and the Arthurian Context of Tom Jones”
- Meredith DAVIS, Ramapo College of New Jersey, “Hogarth In Flight”
- Michael YONAN, University of Missouri, “Movement, Perception, and Salvation in the Bavarian Rococo Church”
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‘Venice’ in the Imagination of the Creative Artist and the Discursive Citizen
Thursday, 18 March 2010, 9:45-11:15, Alvarado G
Chair: Todd L. LARKIN, Montana State University
- Sally GRANT, University of Sydney, “The World in the Venetian Countryside: The Tiepolos at the Villa Valmarana ai Nani”
- Sabrina FERRI, University of Notre Dame, “Venice on Stage: Gozzi’s Theater Between Conservatism and Innovation”
- Irene ZANINI-CORDI, Florida State University, “Lagoon Waters: Double Vision of Venetian Festivities”
- Lisa BERGLUND, Buffalo State College, State University of New York, “Sweet Seducements and Wandering Misery: Hester Lynch Piozzi Reflects on Venice”
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Moving Vegetation: Collecting, Transplanting, and Acclimatizing Plants in the Long Eighteenth Century
Thursday, 18 March 2010, 9:45-11:15, Suite 518
Chair: Giulia PACINI, The College of William & Mary
- Glynis RIDLEY, University of Louisville, “Eating Locally, Eating Globally: The Naturalization of Exotics and the Eighteenth-Century Imperial Enterprise”
- Stephanie VOLMER, Managing Editor, Raritan Quarterly, Rutgers University, “Escaping Plants and Other Examples of Botanical Mobility”
- Mira RADANOVIC, McMaster University, “‘Lily flowers steeped in alcohol, an excellent vulnerary’: The Interests, Surfeits, Debts, and Fetishes of Florilegium Culture”
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Tradition and Innovation in Northern New Spain: Revisiting Eighteenth-Century New Mexico
Thursday, 18 March 2010, 9:45-11:15, Weaver
Chair: Cristina Cruz GONZÁLEZ, Oklahoma State University
- Robin Farwell GAVIN, Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, Santa Fe, “Eighteenth-Century Altarscreens of New Mexico”
- William WROTH, Independent Curator and Scholar, “Ethnic Complexity in Eighteenth-Century Ranchos de Taos”
- Jacqueline Orsini DUNNINGTON, Independent Scholar, “Tracking the Virgin of Guadalupe in New Mexico”
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Artists’ Lives and Afterlives: Fact, Fiction, and Fabrication
Thursday, 18 March 2010, 11:30-1:00, Alvarado B
Chair: Heather MCPHERSON, University of Alabama at Birmingham
- Sarah MONKS, University of East Anglia, Norwich, “Life/Studies: Living as an Artist in Late Eighteenth-Century London”
- Robert MODE, Vanderbilt University, “Staging the Life of Hogarth or The Artist’s Progress”
- Paulo M. KÜHL, State University of Campinas (Brazil), “Making Heroes in the Institut de France: Joachim Le Breton’s Notices Historiques”
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Pastiche in the Eighteenth Century
Thursday, 18 March 2010, 2:30-4:00, Alvarado G
Chair: Julie-Anne PLAX, University of Arizona
- Julia ABRAMSON, University of Oklahoma, “What We Read into a Novel: Pastiche, Postiche, and the Two Authors of Marivaux’s Paysan parvenu”
- Paula RADISICH, Whittier College, “Pastiche & Chardin’s Genre Subjects”
- Wendy Wassyng ROWORTH, University of Rhode Island, “The ‘Characteristical’ Style and Salvator Rosa and in England”
- Susan M. DIXON, University of Tulsa, “Stone Soup, or Leftovers from the Farnese Collection in Rome”
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Mapmaker, Make me a Map: Eighteenth-Century Cartographies
Thursday, 18 March 2010, 4:15-5:45, Alvarado A
Chair: Karen STOLLEY, Emory University
- Brittany ANDERSON, Emory University, “Geography of Latin American Cities in the Encyclopedia metódica: Imagining the New World in the Eighteenth-Century”
- Neal Anthony MESSER, Murray State University, “Imagined Order: Mapping What ‘Should Be’ in Eighteenth-Century Mexico”
- Magali M. CARRERA, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, “Localist Cartographies: Indigenous Mapping of Late Eighteenth-Century New Spain”
- Trevor SPELLER, State University of New York, Buffalo, “Cartographic Humor and Cartographic Power in Gulliver’s Travels”
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FRIDAY, 19 March 2010
Cultures of Flowers
Friday, 19 March 2010, 8:00-9:30, Suite 318A
Chair: Melissa HYDE, University of Florida
- Mira MORGENSTERN, City College of New York, “The ‘Blooming’ Truth: Rousseau and the Paradox of Flowers”
- John KOSTER, University of Toronto, “The Political Aesthetics of Goethe’s Metamorphosis of Plants (1790)”
- Ann SHTEIR, York University, “Flora in the Vernacular: ‘Artificial Flower Gardens’ in 1780s London”
- Julia SHAPCHENKO, All-Russian Academy of Arts, St. Petersburg, “Count Razumovsky’s Botanical Garden, Gorenky, Russia, 1805-1822”
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Visualizing Interiority in the Eighteenth Century
Friday, 19 March 2010, 8:00-9:30, Alvarado C
Chairs: Catherine CLINGER AND Richard TAWS, McGill University
- Jennifer FERNG, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Mining, Modernism, and the Visual Culture of the Geological Landscape in Late Eighteenth Century France”
- David EHRENPREIS, James Madison University, “Inside the Mind’s Eye: Mesmer’s Imagination and Lavoisier’s Reason”
- Suzie PARK, Eastern Illinois University, “Adam Smith, William Gilpin, and Interiority in Ruins: Visualizing ‘what has befallen you’”
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Satire et censure de l’Ancien Régime au Consulat (French Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies)
Friday, 19 March 2010, 9:45-11:15, Alvarado A
Chair: Bernadette FORT, Northwestern University
- Melissa HYDE, University of Florida, “Needling: The Arts of Embroidery and Satire in the Hands of the Saint-Aubins”
- Brigitte WELTMAN-ARON, University of Florida, “Voltaire et Rousseau: courte satire, longue défense”
- Nanette LE COAT, Trinity University, “Les Censeurs censurés: Chamfort, Marat et l’Académie française”
- Julia DOUTHWAITE, University of Notre Dame, “Le Cimetière de la Madeleine et la censure sous le Consulat”
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Presidential Address, Awards, and Business Meeting
Friday, 19 March 2010, 2:30-4:00
Peter H. REILL, University of California, Los Angeles, “Vitalism and the Construction of the Human Sciences in the Enlightenment: Johann Gottfried Herder and Adam Smith”
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SATURDAY, 20 March 2010
Arboreal Values
Saturday, 20 March 2010, 8:00-9:30, Alvarado A
Chair: Elizabeth Heckendorn COOK, University of California, Santa Barbara
- Paula R. BACKSCHEIDER, Auburn University, “Disputed Value: Women and the Trees They Loved”
- Nicolle JORDAN, University of Southern Mississippi, “Writing on Trees in Jonson, Barker, and Defoe”
- Irene FIZER, Hofstra University, “The Residues She Leaves: Arboreal Constructs and the Woman ‘Out of Place’ in Sense and Sensibility”
- Giulia PACINI, The College of William and Mary, “How to Think Trees: Arboreal Values in the Eighteenth Century”
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Representations of the Fairies in Europe and its Colonies in the Long Eighteenth Century
Saturday, 20 March 2010, 8:00-9:30, Alvarado E
Chair: Charlotte TRINQUET, University of Central Florida
- Kevin PASK, Concordia University, “Fairy Painting, Fairy Theater”
- Sophie RAYNARD-LEROY, State University of New York, Stony Brook, “The Conteuse as a Fairy: The Example of Madame d’Aulnoy”
- Aurélie ZYGEL-BASSO, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, “‘Ceci n’est pas une fée’: the Representation of Fairies and Magicians in French and English Anthologies Illustration at the End of the Eighteenth Century (Clément-Pierre Marillier, Thomas Stothard)”
- Anne DUGGAN, Wayne University, “Ancient and Modern ‘Fairies’ in Donkey Skin and Lady Oscar”
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The House of Habsburg and Its Influence, Part I
Saturday, 20 March 2010, 9:45-11:15, Alvarado H
Chair: Michael YONAN, University of Missouri
- Katherine ARENS, University of Texas at Austin, “The Holy Roman Empire as a Missing Early Modern Culture”
- Rita KRUEGER, Temple University, “The Challenges of Imperial Mothering: Empress Maria Theresa and her People”
- Todd L. LARKIN, Montana State University, Bozeman, “The Lily and the Eagle: The Bourbon-Habsburg Alliance Emblematized by Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun’s Marie-Antoinette in Ceremonial Dress (1778)”
- Madeline SUTHERLAND-MEIER, University of Texas at Austin, “The Spanish Habsburgs Viewed from the Eighteenth Century”
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The House of Habsburg and Its Influence, Part II
Saturday, 20 March 2010, 3:45-5:15, Alvarado E
Chair: Michael YONAN, University of Missouri
- Bruno FORMENT, Ghent University, Belgium, “Habsburg Opera under the ‘Belgian Climate’: Three Italian Seasons at the Théâtre de la Monnaie, 1727–1730″
- Erick ARENAS, Stanford University, “The Missa solemnis of Eighteenth-Century Vienna: A Study of Music, Liturgy, and the Habsburg Inheritance”
- Edmund J. GOEHRING, University of Western Ontario, “Mozart Among Austria’s Neoplatonists”
- Karen HILES, Muhlenberg College, “Collecting Music at the Hofburg: Haydn and the ‘Emperor’ Quartet amidst the Emperor’s Quartets”
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Forms of Attention, Forms of Distraction
Saturday, 20 March 2010, 3:45-5:15, Suite 318
Chair: Andrew BROUGHTON, University of Chicago
- Sarah KAREEM, University of California, Los Angeles, “Wonder, Attention, and Absorption”
- Matthew LANDERS, University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez, “Narration and Memory Theory in the Structure of Tristram Shandy: The Medical Aesthetics of Digression”
- Barbara BENEDICT, Trinity College, “Collecting Impressions: Antiquarianism and Attention to Detail in the Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century”
- Respondent: Natalie PHILLIPS, Stanford University
Spanish Enlightenment: The Collection of Carlos IV
From Artdaily.org (7 March 2010)
Royal Splendor in the Enlightenment: Charles IV of Spain, Patron and Collector
Meadows Museum, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, 7 March — 18 July 2010
Francisco de Goya, "Carlos IV," 1789 (Madrid: Royal Academy of History), Inv. No. 76
The Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University will present “Royal Splendor in the Enlightenment: Charles IV of Spain, Patron and Collector”, the first major exhibition to showcase the exceptional art collection and refined taste of King Charles IV of Spain (1748-1819), from March 7 through July 18, 2010.
The Meadows Museum will be the only venue outside of Spain for the exhibition, the result of a unique collaboration between the museum and Patrimonio Nacional, the Spanish government institution that manages the artistic holdings created through the patronage and sponsorship of the Spanish monarchs. The exhibition is curated by Patrimonio Nacional curators Dr. Javier Jordán de Urríes y de la Colina and Dr. José Luis Sancho.
Charles IV and his wife, Queen María Luisa, reigned from 1788 to 1808 (when they were forced into exile by Napoleon), at the end of the Enlightenment period. They had a special passion for the arts and collected avidly throughout their lives.
Royal Workshops, "Sedan Chair of Queen María Luisa of Parma," 1795 (Madrid: Royal Palace, National Heritage), Inv. No. 10008050
“During his reign, Charles IV created a highly sophisticated, refined and cosmopolitan court for which the arts played a major role,” said Dr. Mark Roglán, museum director. “The combination of collecting works from the past as well as investing in those of the present, especially in the field of decorative arts, became part of the daily life of this king, whose artistic taste was among the finest in his time and in the history of the Spanish monarchy. The exhibition also shows the development of Charles’ artistic interests; he was not only influenced by the Spanish tradition, but had a special fondness for Italian art because of his childhood origins in Naples, and for French art, due to the dense network of dynastic relations that linked the Bourbons of Versailles to those of Madrid in the 18th century.”
The exhibition includes more than 80 examples of furniture, textiles, clocks, porcelains, paintings and sculptures selected from the casas de campo (country estates) and royal palaces of Madrid, Aranjuez, El Escorial and El Pardo. The majority of works are from Patrimonio Nacional (the Spanish National Heritage), and most of them have never before traveled to the U.S. The collection includes some of the finest examples of art styles of the day, from Rococo paintings to a stunning Neoclassical dessert centerpiece of semi-precious stones, lapis lazuli, gilded bronze and enamel. Other highlights include the queen’s ceremonial throne with its 18-foot-tall canopy, an elaborate sedan chair in which she was carried by footmen, a gilded bronze, porcelain and enamel bird cage clock, and a shotgun of wood, steel, gold and silver belonging to the king, an avid hunter. Also included are works by Francisco de Goya, the first court painter under Charles IV; his 1789 portrait of the king is making its only appearance outside of Madrid in 200 years. A painting by Diego Velázquez, Portrait (miniature) of the Count-Duke of Olivares, c. 1638, collected by Charles, will also be featured, as well as paintings by Luis Meléndez, Juan de Flandes, Anton Mengs and Giovanni Panini, among others.
The exhibition, which will be shown in the Jake and Nancy Hamon Galleries, will be accompanied by a scholarly, fully illustrated catalogue in English produced by the Meadows Museum. Also included will be a documentary that will feature, in HD video, the rooms and gardens of the palaces highlighted in the exhibition, bringing to life the splendid residences of the King. (more…)
Call for Articles: British Queer History
Call for Papers: Special Issue of The Journal of British Studies on Queer History
Articles for Consideration Due by 1 November 2010
The Journal of British Studies is calling for papers on all aspects of British queer history. Articles can be from the medieval period to the present day. This is for a special issue to be published in late 2011 or early 2012, to be guest edited by Brian Lewis (McGill University). Articles should be 10,000-12,000 words long, follow the JBS format, and be submitted by November 1, 2010. For more information, see the journal’s website or contact the editors at jbs.history@mcgill.ca or Brian Lewis at brian.lewis@mcgill.ca.
More on the ‘Art and Theatre’ Exhibition in Toronto
Artdaily.org (11 March 2010) includes more information on the ‘Art and Theatre’ show as it will appear at the AGO, starting in June (interesting to see how it will be presented in Toronto, complete with “a life-size 18th-century set”).
De la scène au tableau / Drama and Desire: Artists and the Theatre
Musée Cantini, Marseille, 6 October 2009 — 3 January 2010
Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rovereto, 6 February — 23 May 2010
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 19 June — 26 September 2010
Lust. Passion. Murder. Many of the greatest artists of the 19th century shared a profound fascination with the theatre and its themes of triumph and destruction, love and despair. This summer, the Art Gallery of Ontario gives centre stage to key artworks by these artists in a major international exhibition titled Drama and Desire: Artists and the Theatre, opening June 19 and continuing through September 26.
Conceived by Guy Cogeval, president of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the exhibition includes over 100 paintings, drawings and theatrical maquettes, by masters such as Edgar Degas, Eugène Delacroix, Jacques-Louis David, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, William Blake, Aubrey Beardsley, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Édouard Vuillard. The works were selected from the collections of some of the world’s greatest museums, including the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Musée d’Orsay, the British Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The AGO has commissioned Gerard Gauci, set designer for Toronto’s Opera Atelier, to make Drama and Desire an experience like no other. Visitors will enter the exhibition by walking ‘onstage’ through a life-size 18th-century set; the works will be displayed using enhanced lighting, sound and video components as well as innovative theatrical devices; and a full-scale re-creation of an early 20th-century theatre maquette will mark the finale of the exhibition. (more…)
Catalogue of French Porcelain
From the March 2010 issue of Apollo Magazine:
Geoffrey de Bellaigue, French Porcelain in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, 3 volumes (London: The Royal Collection, 2009), 1291 pages, 2400 illustrations, ISBN 9781905686100, £500.
Reviewed by Selma Schwartz; Curator of Porcelain and Special Projects, Waddesdon Manor, The Rothschild Collection, Buckinghamshire, posting added 21 February 2010.
In the preface to his catalogue for the exhibition ‘Sèvres Porcelain from the Royal Collection,’ held at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, in 1979- 1980, Sir Geoffrey de Bellaigue wrote that “eventually a catalogue raisonné will be published” and that the catalogue “represents, in a sense, an interim report on a selection of pieces.”
Now, 30 years later, and over 100 years after the publication of Sir Guy Francis Laking’s ‘Sèvres Porcelain of Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle,’ we finally have the monumental three-volume work (1,291 pages, with 2,400 illustrations – nearly all in colour) that scholars, collectors and amateurs of Vincennes/Sèvres porcelain have been anticipating eagerly for such a long time and the likes of which will probably never be seen again. Expectation and curiosity about the publication have been heightened principally for two reasons. The first being that although Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace are open for public visits, a large quantity of the porcelain is not on display in public areas. The second is the renown that the author (or compiler, as he refers to himself in the text) rightly enjoys for meticulous and profound scholarly research.
The catalogue covers all the French porcelain in the Royal Collection, including that from Paris factories made in the 18th and 19th centuries, which, however, makes up only 37 of the 368 entries. Sèvres porcelain, as it was known after the manufactory moved to the town in 1756 from the château of Vincennes, is the star of the catalogue. The Royal Collection holds what is probably the finest and certainly the largest collection of this porcelain in the world, most of it acquired by that voracious collector George IV . . .
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Now Available: Audio Replay of CAA in Chicago
From CAA News, 5 March 2010:
The 2010 Annual Conference in Chicago, one of the best attended in recent years, had an incredibly diverse array of sessions. Audio recordings for eighty-one of those panels are now available for sale. A set of MP3 audio recordings from the Chicago conference is available for only $149.95, either as a download or on interactive CD-ROMs. Individual sessions, available only as downloads, are $24.95 each. Please visit Conference Media to view the list of sessions and to order.
Available sessions include such timely topics as “Lifeloggers: Chronicling the Everyday” and “Autofictions, Avatars, and Alter Egos: Fabricating Artists.” Thematic art-historical topics, on analyzing repetition in ancient art and on violence and narrative in early modern art, also make appearances, as do state of the field talks on the art history of the African diaspora and on American-art textbooks. Included in the mix are pedagogical topics involving “Autonomizing Practices in Art, Art History, and Education” and “WTF: Talking Theory with Art and Art-History Undergrads,” among others.
Whether you took part in, attended, or missed a particular conference session, these recordings are a must-have for your library, research, or teaching. Listen to them while walking across campus, while driving in your car or using public transportation, or while relaxing in your home.
In addition to the Chicago sessions, you can also purchase session audio recordings from the 2006–9 conferences in Boston, New York, Dallas–Fort Worth, and Los Angeles. See http://conference.collegeart.org/audio for details.
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