New Installations Open at the Getty
From the Getty:
New Galleries for Neoclassical, Romantic, and Symbolist Sculpture and Decorative Art
Getty Center, Los Angeles, opened 31 August 2010
A suite of newly designed sculpture and decorative arts galleries in the West Pavilion at the Getty Center takes visitors through a survey of European sculpture, decorative arts, and paintings, 1700–1900. Recent acquisitions are prominently featured, including Pietro Cipriani’s Medici Venus and Dancing Faun and Jean-Désiré Ringel d’Illzach’s nine-foot-high Vase covered with life casts of spiders, juniper branches, and scraps of lace. Other engaging highlights include Johannes Andreas Beo’s secrétaire and a bust of French socialite Juliette Récamier by Joseph Chinard.
Following in the footsteps of the recently reinstalled North Pavilion galleries, the new chrono-thematic configuration juxtaposes sculptures, paintings, decorative arts, and prints from similar periods in contextualized displays. The galleries progress chronologically from around 1700 to around 1900, reflecting the development of styles associated with that span.
The Invention of a New Classical Style, 1700–1830. The excavations of ancient archaeological sites in Greece and in Italy and the wish to break with the no-longer-fashionable styles of Baroque and Rococo sculpture led in the 1700s to a fervent desire to create modern sculpture imbued with the characteristics of ancient sculpture. An ideal canon of beauty that included pure forms and silhouettes, this new classical style in Europe is defined by the predominant use of white marble and the adaptation of mythological subject matter.
Late Neoclassicism in European Art and Design, 1780–1830. In the wake of the French Revolution in 1789, Napoleon Bonaparte’s adoption of Neoclassicism as an official imperial style, coined the Empire style, contributed to the popularity of Neoclassical ideals in France and its imitation by European rulers. The curvilinear silhouettes that had dominated the decorative arts were replaced by rectilinear lines, incorporating ancient motifs.
Romanticism to Symbolism, 1830–1900. The Romantic movement, which emphasized the irrational in man and the sublime in nature, had its roots in the literary, visual, and musical arts. Toward the end of the 19th century, a group of French and Belgian artists developed a style known as Symbolism, which reflected the spiritual and mystical philosophies of the day.
Call for Papers: MAHS Conference in Grand Rapids
Midwest Art History Society 2011 Conference
Grand Rapids, MI, 14-16 April 2011
Proposals due by 15 October 2010
Grand Rapids Art Museum
The 2011 MAHS conference will take place in Grand Rapids, Michigan, April 14-16. The scheduled plenary speakers are Jim Dine and Rebecca Zorach. Sessions will take place at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids Art Museum, and the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art. Panels on the eighteenth century are included below. Proposals of no more than 250 words and a recent CV should be submitted electronically by October 15 to the respective chairs noted at the end of each description. A full list of sessions is available here»
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European Art and Architecture, 1600-1800
This session will consider topics concerning European visual art or material culture from 1600 to 1800. Work in all media (painting, sculpture, architecture, prints, or decorative arts) is welcomed as the focal point of the topic.
Valerie Hedquist, University of Montana, Valerie.hedquist@umontana.edu
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Prints and Drawings
Papers are invited dealing with any topic addressing prints and drawings as distinct genres within art history and art criticism. A variety of methodological approaches is welcomed. This session will be hosted in the Jansma Prints and Drawings Center in the Grand Rapids Art Museum.
Cindy Buckner, Grand Rapids Art Museum, cbuckner@artmuseumgr.org
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The Body in Art
From Paleolithic sculpture to 21st C performance and film, the human form has been central to art. This session seeks papers that examine the use of the body in both historical and contemporary art production and practice. Topics may include portraiture, the body as the site of political, social or psychological identity, the glorified or abject body, the nude, the clothed body, and the role of fashion in art.
Suzanne Eberle, Kendall College of Art & Design, eberles@ferris.edu
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Conservation and Appearances of Art Objects and Art Historical Interpretations
The visual appearance of a work of art object results not only from the techniques and materials used during its creation, but also the cumulative, sometimes complex physical history which results in its present condition. How does our knowledge about the technique, materials, and state of conservation inform our particular art historical interpretation of an object? How are we challenged to reconstruct the former appearance, meaning, and even the function of an artwork based on our understanding of its current state? Topics touching on these issues from a wide diversity of objects, media, historical periods and cultures are sought for submission and discussion.
Kenneth Bé, Gerald Ford Conservation Center, kbe.lute@gmail.com
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The Garden as Ideal
Because of the way gardens foreground the complex relationship between art and nature, they typically give physical form to various ideals regarding nature and its role in the constructed environment. This panel invites papers addressing gardens throughout history as these spaces shaped visions of how the world – or at least a portion of the world – should be ordered. Presentations might address issues of paradise, the garden as a sacred space, themes of knowledge construction, notions of nature perfected, the function of geometry, or the picturesque.
Craig Hanson, Calvin College, CraigAshleyHanson@gmail.com
Call for Papers: Cultural Production of Natural Knowledge
The Cultural Production of Natural Knowledge, 1700-1850
Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick, 30 October 2010
Paper proposals due by 29 September 2010
This one-day interdisciplinary workshop seeks to understand the cultural and aesthetic frameworks within which medical and scientific knowledge was created, represented and communicated in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. We aim to place these within the contexts of the wider global circulation of people, texts and things, and the expanding market for medical knowledge and scientific objects. We envisage that the workshop will focus on the following themes, but we invite speakers to interpret these flexibly. First, we wish to discuss the cultural discourses surrounding the collection and collation of new facts from the field. Questions that might be discussed could include: Who acted as intermediaries in the transmission of information, and how did they do so? What factors influenced the extent to which informants’ contributions were included, or excluded, by the travellers who collected new knowledge? How did these processes of collection and inscription relate to those that took place in the metropole, where texts were edited and streamlined for publication, objects were marshalled into museum collections, and paintings were produced and displayed? What was the relationship between natural knowledge and place / space, and how did this relate to contemporary aesthetic theory?
Second, we aim to relate these cultural contexts to the production and consumption of texts, collections and visual representations. Who read these texts or studied collections, and how did they relate to them? How were scientific and medical ideas created and disseminated in literary texts, epistolary culture, travel writings, works of art, and other cultural productions? What were the points of intersection between aesthetic discourse and medical and scientific knowledge? Bringing together scholars of literature, history and art history, this workshop will discuss the cultural production of knowledge, texts, and visual representations of natural knowledge.
We invite papers of 20-25 mins in length. Please send proposals (300 words) to: Emily Senior, E.F.Senior@Warwick.ac.uk and Sarah Easterby-Smith, Sarah.Easterby-Smith@alumni.Warwick.ac.uk. The deadline for proposals is Wednesday 29 September 2010.
Emily Senior and Sarah Easterby-Smith
University of Warwick
E.F.Senior@Warwick.ac.uk
Sarah.Easterby-Smith@alumni.Warwick.ac.uk
Email: e.f.senior@warwick.ac.uk
Visit the website at http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/emforum/confworks/naturalknowledge/
The Royal Society Turns 350 in November!
On now at the National Portrait Gallery:
Science, Religion and Politics: The Royal Society
National Portrait Gallery, London, 11 September — 5 December 2010
Sir Godfrey Kneller, "Portrait of Sir Christopher Wren," 1711 © National Portrait Gallery, London.
Marking the 350th anniversary of the foundation of the Royal Society, this display celebrates a key moment in the development of modern science. The Society was founded on 28 November 1660 when a dozen men gathered to hear the young Christopher Wren give a lecture on astronomy. In the discussion that followed they decided to form ‘a Colledge for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning’. They rejected the classical ideal that knowledge could be acquired through contemplation alone. Instead, they drew on the ‘new philosophy’ devised by Sir Francis Bacon to pursue knowledge through first hand observation, data collection and experimentation. This revolutionary approach to investigating the world laid the foundations for three and a half centuries of scientific discovery and innovation. The display features key figures in the early history of the Royal Society including Sir Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, Samuel Pepys and Sir Isaac Newton. The Royal Society has generously loaned two important early portraits from its collection.
New British Studies Center Opens at Rutgers
As reported earlier this year by Fredda Sacharow in Rutgers Today. From the website of the new British Studies Center at Rutgers:
“What’s in a name?” Juliet famously asks in Shakespeare’s iconic tale of young love. For the Rutgers British Studies Center – nee the Rutgers British Studies Project – a name not only confers new, formal status, but also suggests that the state university is positioning itself to become a pre-eminent venue for interdisciplinary scholarship on topics from Beowulf to Tony Blair. Bolstered by a $407,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Rutgers British Studies Center symbolically opened its doors earlier this semester with programs designed to attract academics across multiple fields, including history, English, anthropology, art history, and political science.
“We want to be a destination for the region – scholars based in New York and Pennsylvania, for example, will say, ‘Okay, here’s a place where you can come and interact with others in your field and outside of it,’ ” says Alastair Bellany, director of the fledgling center and a professor of history in Rutgers’ School of Arts and Sciences. “We hope to start a high-quality conversation: There will be arguments, there will be debates, but the interaction will all be productive. Colleagues from other fields will help you fill in the gaps in your own knowledge.”
They began modestly in the fall of 2006, a small band of English and history professors divided by disciplines but united in their passion for all things British. Hoping to turn intermittent conversations over coffee into something more formal, they began scheduling faculty workshops, importing visiting scholars, and co-sponsoring daylong conferences under the auspices of what became known as the British Studies Project.
Then, a milestone: The inaugural public lecture, by John Brewer, drew a substantial audience in October 2007, including a healthy contingent of graduate students. The professor of history at Cal Tech and an influential modern historian of 18th-century British politics, society, and culture spoke on “Taste and Modernity: Sensibility and Spectacle in Late Georgian Britain” . . . .
The full article is available here»
Call for Papers: Conference on Florentine Patricians
A Forgotten World: Florentine Patricians as Patrons, Collectors, Cultural Brokers under Medici Rule (1530-1743)
University of Groningen, The Netherlands, 3-5 March 2011
Proposals due by 1 December 2010
This first international conference on the cultural habitus of Florentine patricians during the principate of the Medici originates from a research project at the University of Groningen, started in 2007 by prof.dr. H.Th. van Veen. The flourishing cultural life of the Florentine patricians during the principate of the Medici has either been forgotten or ignored for a long time. There has been little interest in patricians as commissioners of palaces, villas and chapels, as participants in academies and confraternities, and in patrician engagement in art, literature, theatre and music. In the twentieth century historians have systematically portrayed the patricians as sycophant courtiers, only interested in gaining noble titles and estates. The fact that reality was much more complex and dynamic, has become clear only in the last two decades. Through groundbreaking research in the field of socio-economic history, prosopography and political science, the image we have of the Florentine patrician is now changing, These studies show that patricians, as a group, were still holding on to most of the economic and institutional power they had obtained in the fifteenth century. The studies also show that patrician diplomatic missions played an important role in the arranging of marriages and foreign politics of the Medici. Remarkably, this historical revisionism is taken up by very few art historians, even though we now know that the contribution of patricians to the cultural dynamics of early modern Florence was highly significant.
The ambition of this conference is to discuss the cultural contribution of patricians to Florentine society and to approach it from an interdisciplinary perspective. The main question we will address is: how can we designate the dynamics, already observed in economical and political studies, in the cultural field? Other relevant questions are: how can we compare the cultural activities and ways of self-representation of the patricians, to those of the Medici? Did patricians facilitate or emulate the grand dukes? Or were they even seeking to rebel against them? Were the cultural objectives of the patricians homogeneous in character, or did they differ from one family to another? By stimulating the debate on an international level, we hope to shed more light on the nature and intentions of patrician art patronage and their collecting activities in this period. (more…)
Exhibition: The Lake District
From the Wordsworth Museum:
Savage Grandeur and Noblest Thoughts, Discovering the Lake District, 1750 — 1820
The Wordsworth Museum & Art Gallery, Grasmere, England, 1 June 2010 — 12 July 2011
Catalogue by Cecilia Powell and Stephen Hebron, ISBN: 9781905256426, £19.95
From the mid 1700s until the early 1800s, British people who would normally have travelled abroad for recreation were confined to these shores. The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars made it dangerous for the British to travel in Europe and the conflicts created an upsurge in patriotic feeling. Artists and writers began to explore areas of natural beauty in Britain and their discoveries inspired a wide range of drawings, watercolours, oil paintings and engravings as well as prose and poetry of the highest quality. This work resulted in prints of the pictures and eventually what we might now call coffee table books, containing descriptions and pictures. These inspired more enthusiasm for the British landscape and an increasing number of people made their way to The Lake District.
Horrors like these at first alarm,
But soon with savage grandeur charm,
And raise to noblest thoughts the mind.
-from Dr John Dalton’s Descriptive Poem, first published in the 1750s
It became fashionable to travel through areas of wild and rugged scenery and visitors delighted in the thrilling experiences that the Lake District offered and its beauty and interest were ever more enthusiastically proclaimed. The Wordsworth Trust’s new exhibition explores the ways in which artists and writers discovered, portrayed and celebrated the Lake District in the years 1750-1820, a period of radical developments in both art and literature. The exhibition includes over 100 pictures and books from the period and shows how the British were inspired to invent the ‘staycation’. Savage Grandeur is the first exhibition which draws its content entirely from the Wordsworth Trust’s own collection. The exhibition will be complemented by a computer-generated guide to the scenery depicted in selected exhibits.
Thomas Arne and The Newberry Consort
Rule Britannia! Celebrating the Tercentenary of Thomas Arne
The Newberry Consort, Chicago, 1-3 October 2010
The Newberry Consort, Chicago’s premier early music ensemble, kicks off its new season with a tribute to one of eighteenth-century England’s most popular and successful composers. Thomas Arne’s works run the gamut from pleasure garden songs for Vauxhall to the first Italian-style opera seria written in English. Plumbing the Newberry Library collections, we’ve recreated his colorful orchestrations for strings, baroque flute, and continuo to perform our selection of Shakespeare songs, opera arias, and chamber pieces. You’ll be invited to join in singing the evening’s finale!
Friday, October 1, 2010, 8:00 pm, Sanctuary, Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago
Saturday, October 2, 2010, 8:00 pm, Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, Hyde Park
Sunday, October 3, 2010, 3:00 pm, Lutkin Hall, Northwestern University
Pre-concert lectures begin one hour before the concerts. Student tickets: $5 at the door, cash only. General admission: $28 in advance, $30 at the door. Purchase tickets online at http://www.newberryconsort.org or call 312.255.3610
Exhibition: Paper Museums at the Louvre
From the Louvre:
Musées de papier: L’Antiquité en livres, 1600-1800
Musée du Louvre, Paris, 25 September 2010 — 3 January 2011
Pietro Santi Bartoli Receuil de peintures antiques trouvées à Rome © Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
Les antiquaires des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles ont souvent rassemblé leur savoir dans d’imposants recueils figurés d’antiquités, sortes de « musées de papier » donnant à voir, sous forme de gravures ou de dessins, un nombre considérable d’œuvres antiques. Les images de l’art antique contenues dans ces musées de papier ont directement alimenté une série de phénomènes majeurs dans l’histoire de l’art du XVIIIe siècle : essor du goût pour l’antique et mode néoclassique, naissance de l’historiographie de l’art, élargissement de la notion d’Antiquité à des aires géographiques et culturelles nouvelles.
L’exposition révèle l’extrême fécondité de ces recueils de dessins et gravures. Elle mène le visiteur du Museo cartaceo de Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1657) – érudit qui rassembla une célèbre collection de reproductions d’œuvres antiques – jusqu’aux années 1760-1800, marquées par les ouvrages illustrés de Caylus, de Winckelmann et de Séroux d’Agincourt. Elle donne un aperçu des systèmes de classement de ces recueils et montre comment, à la suite notamment des fouilles d’Herculanum, la littérature antiquaire s’enrichit de publications somptueuses. Enfin, elle présente les multiples objets et instruments qui ont accompagné le travail antiquaire et ainsi préparé la naissance de deux disciplines modernes : l’histoire de l’art et l’archéologie.
Cette exposition a été réalisée avec le concours exceptionnel de la Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Vasi Exhibition Opens at the University of Oregon
The following is an edited version of the UO press release:
Giuseppe Vasi’s Rome: Lasting Impressions from the Age of the Grand Tour
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon, Eugene, 25 September 2010 — 3 January 2011
Princeton University Art Museum, 2011
Curated by James Tice and James Harper
Giuseppe Vasi’s Rome: Lasting Impressions from the Age of the Grand Tour opens this fall at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon. Vasi was an eighteenth-century Italian engraver and architect who is best known for his cityscapes of Rome. The exhibition is curated by UO faculty members James Tice and James Harper. Tice is an architecture professor and a research fellow at Studium Urbis, an international study center in Rome devoted to study of the city’s urban history. Harper is associate professor of art history. He worked at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art and the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University before joining the UO faculty in 2000.
Giuseppe Vasi’s Rome is the first major exhibition to be devoted solely to Vasi’s work. Coinciding with the 300th anniversary of his birth, the exhibition combines graphic imaging technology with new research on how he observed and documented his city. Vasi lived and worked in Rome, where he was a contemporary of such other notable vedutisti as Giovanni Paolo Panini, his student Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and cartographer Giovanni Battista Nolli.
The exhibition traces the emergence of Vasi’s graphic chronicles within their cartographic and artistic traditions, and explores their impact on ways of seeing and interpreting the city as a work of art. Also featured in the exhibition is a new media component that builds on two websites designed by Tice and Erik Steiner, who was assistant director of the InfoGraphics Lab in the UO Department of Geography at the time he worked on the sites. The exhibition invites viewers to use touch screens and iPads to view Vasi’s work, compare them to those of other artists of the period and explore Rome, then and now, through georeferencing.
A 200-page catalogue features essays from Mario Bevilacqua, Vincent Buonanno, Allan Ceen, Adrianne Hamilton, Read McFaddin, John Moore, John Pinto, and the curators. In conjunction with a series of educational programs, the museum will host a symposium on November 12; “Una Roma Visuale: New Research on Giuseppe Vasi and the Art, Architecture and Urbanism of Rome” will bring together scholars to address the topics of prints, painting, sculpture, architecture, urbanism and cartography. John Pinto will deliver the keynote address.
Following its presentation at the Schnitzer Museum, the exhibition will be on view at the Princeton University Art Museum.
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