Exhibition | Nicholas Hawksmoor: Architect of the Imagination
From the Royal Academy of Arts:
Nicholas Hawksmoor: Architect of the Imagination
Royal Academy of Arts, London, 4 February — 17 June 2012
Nicholas Hawksmoor, Drawing for a detached chapel, Greenwich Hospital, 1711
© The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London
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350 years after his birth, the architecture of Nicholas Hawksmoor (1662–1736) continues to inspire and provoke the imagination. This exhibition brings Hawksmoor’s legacy to life by juxtaposing a range of images with quotes from architects, writers and critics, all relating to or inspired by Hawksmoor and his work. Represented are a diverse a range of figures including Sir John Soane RA, Charles Dickens, Peter Ackroyd, John Piper, Alan Moore and Leon Kossoff, along with film interviews with architect Ptolemy Dean, novelist Philip Pullman and poet Iain Sinclair, to dramatically bring to light the imaginative legacy of this most original architect.
March 2012 Issue of ‘The Art Bulletin’
Offerings bearing on the eighteenth century from the March 2012 issue:
• Anne M. Wagner, “Regarding Art and Art History,” The Art Bulletin 94 (March 2012): 8-9.
• Elizabeth King, J. M. Bernstein, Carolyn Dean, Caroline Van Eck, Finbarr Barry Flood, Dario Gamboni, Jane Garnett and Gervase Rosser, James Meyer, Miya Elise Mizuta, and Alina Payne, “Notes from the Field: Anthropomorphism,” The Art Bulletin 94 (March 2012): 10-31.
• Andrei Pop, “Henry Fuseli: Greek Tragedy and Cultural Pluralism,” The Art Bulletin 94 (March 2012): 78-98.
Abstract: The wash drawings and oil paintings of subjects from Greek tragedy by Anglo-Swiss painter Henry Fuseli (1741–1825), routinely categorized as romantic classicism, might be better explained in terms of the contemporary revival of Greek tragedy, made possible by the philosophical anthropology of Johann Gottfried von Herder and David Garrick’s theater of character. From this climate of experimentation with foreign cultures arose a morally detached spectator and a critique of Eurocentrism in the era of Captain Cook and the American Revolution. Fuseli’s classicism thus played its part in the formation of the modern liberal version of cultural pluralism.
Lecture | Chrisman-Campbell, When Fashion Set Sail
From the BGC:
Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell | When Fashion Set Sail:
Maritime Modes in Pre-Revolutionary France
Bard Graduate Center, New York, 3 April 2012
Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell will deliver a Françoise and Georges Selz Lecture on 18th- and 19th-Century French Decorative Arts and Culture on Tuesday, April 3, 2012. Her talk is entitled When Fashion Set Sail: Maritime Modes in Pre-Revolutionary France. Dr. Chrisman-Campbell is an independent scholar and a consultant for The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. She received her B.A. from Stanford University, her M.A. from the Courtauld Institute of Art, and her Ph.D. from the University of Aberdeen. Chrisman-Campbell has published numerous journal and magazine articles on 18th– and early 19th-century French fashion. She has also contributed to several books and museum catalogues, including Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700-1915 (Los Angeles: Prestel and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2010); Paris: Life & Luxury in the Eighteenth Century (Los Angeles: Getty Publishing, 2011); The Saint-Aubin ‘Livre de Caricature’ (Oxford: Studies in Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, forthcoming); and Seeing Satire (Oxford: Studies in Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, forthcoming).
One of the most iconic and enduring images of 18th-century extravagance is a French fashion plate depicting a woman wearing a miniature ship in her powdered and pomaded hair. This hairstyle—the coiffure à la Belle Poule—was not just an eye-catching novelty. It was one of many ship-shaped headdresses that celebrated specific French naval victories and, more importantly, advertised their wearers’ patriotism and political acumen. In addition to hairstyles, French women of the era wore hats à la maritime and garments adorned with nautical motifs, and the looms of Lyon produced textiles woven with scenes from naval battles. Sailing ships were also rendered in Sèvres porcelain, depicted on snuffboxes, and included in portraits of ladies of fashion. The vogue for nautical fashions and textiles during the reign of Louis XVI was a powerful testimony to the practical and symbolic role the sea played in the everyday lives of women at the most elite levels of French society, whether as a battlefield or a frontier. It also reflected the increasingly tempestuous nature of fashion itself in the pre-Revolutionary period.
Light refreshments will be served at 5:45 pm. The presentation will begin at 6:00 pm.
RSVP is required. Please click on the registration link at the bottom of this page or contact academicevents@bgc.bard.edu.
Please note that our Lecture Hall can only accommodate a limited number of people, so please come early if you would like to have a seat in the main room. We also have overflow seating available; all registrants who arrive late will be seated in the overflow area.
Coming in May | ‘The London Square: Gardens in the Midst of Town’
From Yale UP:
Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, The London Square: Gardens in the Midst of Town (London: The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2012), 348 pages, ISBN: 9780300152012, $65.
Modern-day London abounds with a multitude of gardens, enclosed by railings and surrounded by houses, which attest to the English love of nature. These green enclaves, known as squares, are among the most distinctive and admired features of the metropolis and are England’s greatest contribution to the development of European town planning and urban form. Traditionally, inhabitants who overlooked these gated communal gardens paid for their maintenance and had special access to them. As such, they have long been synonymous with privilege, elegance, and prosperous metropolitan living. They epitomize the classical notion of rus in urbe, the integration of nature within the urban plan—a concept that continues to shape cities to this day.
Todd Longstaffe-Gowan delves into the history, evolution, and social implications of squares, which have been an important element in the planning and expansion of London since the early 17th century. As an amenity that fosters health and well-being and a connection to the natural world, the square has played a crucial role in the development of the English capital.
Todd Longstaffe-Gowan is a landscape architect with an international practice based in London. He is gardens adviser to Hampton Court Palace and is currently redesigning the gardens of Kensington Palace in London.
Call for Papers | 2012 NEASECS Conference
The 2012 NEASECS Annual Conference
Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 11-14 October 2012
Proposals due by 30 April 2012
I would kindly call your attention to the Call for Papers for the 2012 NEASECS conference to be held at Wesleyan University in October. At the conference website, you will find descriptions of several panels that might be of interest, including my session on “Dislocated Sociability,” and several others chaired by HECAA members. It would be lovely to have a strong art historical contingent at the conference, so I hope that you will consider submitting a proposal.
With thanks, and all best wishes,
Laura Auricchio
Getty Research Journal 4 (2012)
The eighteenth century in the latest Getty Research Journal:
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Articles
• Adriano Amendola, “Frames for Drawings in Roman Collections: A Case Study,” Getty Research Journal 4 (2012): 45–56.
Using salient examples and on the basis of a comparative analysis of archival data from the Provenance Index® databases of the Getty Research Institute, this paper identifies the typologies of frames used to display drawings in Roman collections of the 17th and 18th centuries. The phenomenon of exhibiting framed drawings, which has not been fully studied up to now, began during the early 1600s when refined collectors began to display the drawings in their collections on the walls of their residences instead of keeping them in albums or drawers. The chromatic quality of the drawings was enhanced by the frames, which were gilded, black, wood-colored, or white, and usually quite simple in design, as in the Salvator Rosa type. In such frames, drawings could hold their own with paintings as part of an arrangement of works on a wall. With the dissemination of academic drawings of nudes, instituted by the most important Roman families during the course of the 17th century, framed drawings began to occupy an important position in collections, soon becoming the focal point of entire rooms devoted to a particular theme.
• Alden R. Gordon, “A Rare Engraving of an Italian Rococo Parade Apartment of 1736: Andrea Bolzoni’s Print of the Interior of the Palazzo Cervelli in Ferrara,” Getty Research Journal 4 (2012): 57–74.
Engraved images of real secular interiors are rare before 1790. Even more rare are illustrations of nonroyal houses in which the domestic and parade apartments are depicted fully furnished, with portable objects that were actually in use. An illustration by Andrea Bolzoni (1689–1760) accompanying the publication in 1736 of a poem by Jacopo Agnelli (1701 or 1702–99) celebrating a grand festival given by Fortunato Cervelli (1683–1755), the Holy Roman imperial consul in Ferrara, on the occasion of the marriage of Maria Theresa of Austria (1717–80), female heiress to the Habsburg dynasty, provides an exceptional record of Cervelli’s nonroyal suite of parade apartments decorated in a unique “chinoiserie” variant of the Rococo style. The actual decorative interiors represented were prompted by a special set of political and commercial circumstances designed to project the Habsburg interests abroad in the Papal States.
Web extra: Appendix (PDF, 14pp., 11.7 MB)—a transcription of and room-by-room commentary on the engraving
• Vimalin Rujivacharakul, “How to Map Ruins: Yuanming Yuan Archives and Chinese Architectural History,” Getty Research Journal 4 (2012): 91–108.
In 1860, the 18th-century European-style pavilions, along with the rest of the Yuanming Yuan imperial palace in Beijing, China, were burned down during an invasion of the palace by Anglo-French troops. Thereafter, with further looting and physical aggression, the former Qing dynasty architectural marvel continually deteriorated into complete ruin. By the turn of the 20th century, the only remaining visual reference of its original state was a set of 20 engravings that showed selected building facades. No plans, sections, or other architectural data were available. The situation changed dramatically in the 1930s. Within a few years, researchers of different backgrounds—Chinese, American, and French—began publishing their research on the European-style pavilions and displaying materials that had never appeared before the public. This article examines the sudden emergence of those visual archives and reveals some of their interestingly intertwined stories. Furthermore, by discussing ways in which the new archives contributed to a rereading of the old ruins, it also explores a long-standing paradox in architectural history: How, in reality, did historians connect what they saw on paper to the buildings that no longer existed?
Acquisitions & Discoveries
• Stephanie Schrader, Nancy Turner, and Nancy Yocco, “Naturalism under the Microscope: A Technical Study of Maria Sibylla Merian’s Metamorphosis of the Insects of Surinam,” Getty Research Journal 4 (2012): 161–72.
Call for Papers | Satire Across Borders
Satire Across Borders
Utrecht University, 17-18 January 2013
Proposals due by 1 June 2012
Satire has the ability to contest cultural boundaries in several ways. By addressing political topics or touching upon sensitive issues within a society (e.g. religious and sexual taboos), satirical works intervene in on going cultural debates. This is but one of the reasons why these works can be considered as interculturally charged. By mixing multiple media within one work, or by creatively transposing styles and techniques from one medium to another, satire shows that it can also contest medial boundaries, i.e. that it can be considered as intermedially charged as well. These two conditions, interculturality and intermediality, have framed the functioning of satire in the past and continue to do so in the present. They turn satire into a rather ambiguous phenomenon, for both its producers and its consumers. This assumed ambiguity of satire forms the point of departure of the international conference Satire Across Borders.
Satire’s ability to cross borders will be addressed from five different perspectives:
1) Time
In a historical perspective, satire seems to manifest itself at very specific occasions, for example during officially sanctioned festive activities (carnival, harvest rituals) or in moments of political crisis (during revolts, civil wars, religious upheavals etc.). How do these temporal conditions influence and define the functioning of satire? Is satire bound by such conditions, or does it also contest them?
2) Space
Although western society today seems to be rather tolerant towards satire, controversies still occur every now and then and censorship is sometimes called for. This suggests that the freedom of satirical expression is limited to certain zones, like the ritual context of carnival or the performative space of the television screen or, more generally, the (ideal) public space as one which establishes reciprocal understanding between its participants. What happens if satire crosses the borders of these zones? And can the establishment of these zones also lead to the inclusion or exclusion of certain audiences?
3) Target
One characteristic of satire is that it is always aimed at someone or something, i.e. that it has one or several targets. These can vary from royal figures and political/religious authorities to social taboos, cultural practices and moral values. Are there any general patterns to be discerned in the qualities of these targets themselves, and in the manner in which they are approached by satire? Does satire always contest its targets, or can it also legitimize them in one way or another?
4) Media
Satire is not bound to one medium or genre. On the contrary, it often combines multiple media or refers to the conventions of several styles or genres at the same time. How does this intermediality influence satire’s functioning in society? Does it limit or instead extend the potential audiences of satire? And what role do the material forms (manuscript, printing press, television, internet) of specific satirical works play in all this?
5) Rhetoric
Certain techniques, tactics and rhetorical figures recur time and again in satire, such as humour, irony, parody, burlesque and caricature. Such rhetorical techniques seem to play a pivotal role in the production and reception of satire. Historically speaking, to what extent can the use of them be called cyclical? And in what way do they contribute to satire’s ability to contest cultural boundaries?
The conference language will be English. (more…)
Exhibition | Landscape, Heroes, and Folktales: German Romanticism
My apologies, this exhibition almost slipped by me completely. Thanks, however, to a brief extension, these prints and drawings (all from the private collection of Charles Booth-Clibbor) are up for another week. -CH
Landscape, Heroes, and Folktales: German Romantic Prints and Drawings
British Museum, London, 23 September 2011 — 9 April 2012
Carl Wilhelm Kolbe, "I too was in Arcadia" (detail). Etching, 1801. Private collection.
German Romanticism was a philosophical and artistic movement in the late 18th and 19th centuries which was highly influential across the whole of Europe. Key figures included composers Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms, philosophers Hegel and Schlegel, and literary giants Goethe and Schiller. Artists in 19th-century Germany were seeking a cohesive national identity that had not existed before – through works often inspired by the German landscape, mythology and Germany’s ancient past.
The prints and drawings on display capture beautiful, poetic scenes, exploring landscapes and wildlife to heroes and folktales. Romantic artists took inspiration from earlier artists, including Albrecht Dürer and Raphael. The works show high standards of draughtsmanship, depict an amazing variety of subject matter and use a range of sophisticated print techniques, including the recently invented technique of lithography. Artists featured in the exhibition include Caspar David Friedrich, Philipp Otto Runge, Wilhelm Tischbein, Carl Wilhelm Kolbe, Julius Schnorr von
Carolsfeld, Friedrich Overbeck, Peter Cornelius, Karl-Friedrich Schinkel
and Johann Christian Reinhart.
Colloquium | Herder and the Arts
As noted at Le Blog d’ApAhAu:
Herder und die Künste: Ästhetik, Kunsttheorie, Kunstgeschichte
Herder et les arts: esthétique, théorie et histoire
Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin, 19-20 April 2012
Dans l’histoire de la pensée esthétique, les travaux de J. G. Herder (1744-1803) ont une importance centrale. Herder est en effet un lecteur assidu des théories de l’art produites par les auteurs de l’Antiquité et par les penseurs européens des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Contemporain de Diderot, Lessing et Winckelmann, inspirateur du jeune Goethe, Herder réfléchit tant sur l’histoire des arts que sur les fondements et limites de l’esthétique que Baumgarten, vers 1750, avait cherché à constituer en discipline philosophique à part entière. Le présent colloque cherche à éclairer les principaux textes que Herder a consacrés à l’histoire et à la théorie des arts.
19 April 2012
14h00 – 18h00
Élisabeth Décultot (CNRS/Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin) : Introduction
Gérard Raulet (Sorbonne, Paris) : Die Kunst “an die Seele zu gehen” — Kraft und
energeia in Herders erstem Kritischen Wäldchen
Daniel Dumouchel (Université de Montréal, Canada) : Fictions de pensée : origine de l’expérience esthétique et genèse de l’art dans Plastik de Herder
Wolfgang Adam (Universität Osnabrück) : Herder und die Plastik. Theorie und Autopsie
Léa Barbisan (Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin) : Von der taktilen zur haptischen Rezeption: Der Tastsinn in den visuellen Künsten von Johann Gottfried Herder bis Walter Benjamin
20 April 2012
10h00 – 13h00
Mario Marino (Adam Mickiewicz Universität Poznan) : Kunst, Geschichte und Gesellschaft. Zur Verschränkung von Ästhetik und Geschichtsphilosophie bei Herder
Elisabeth Décultot (CNRS et Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin) : “Voll vortrefflicher Grundsätze ; aber …. ”. Herders Auseinandersetzung mit Winckelmann
Ayse Yuva (Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin) : Ecriture et histoire : le caractère anti-systématique des Sylves critiques
15h00 – 18h00
Christian Helmreich (Universität Göttingen/Université Paris 8) : Herders Lyrik. Über die Möglichkeit von Poesie im philosophischen Zeitalter der Sprache
Carlotta Santini (Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin) : L’enfance des Grecs et l’épos homérique. Poésie et chants imaginés du monde dans la pensée herderienne
Ralph Häfner (Universität Freiburg) : Herders Ästhetik im Spiegel seiner Bibliothek
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Lieu : Centre Marc Bloch, Friedrichstrasse 191, 10117 Berlin (métro : Stadtmitte), 3e étage, Georg-Simmel-Saal
Le colloque est organisé avec le soutien du programme « Aisthesis » de l’ANR et de la DFG
Coordination : Elisabeth Décultot (CNRS, Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin) et Gerhard Lauer (Universität Göttingen)
Exhibition | Workshop Drawings of Silversmith Robert-Joseph Auguste
Thanks to Hélène Bremer for noting this exhibition. The following description comes from the Nissim de Camondo (an English summary from Art Media Agency is available here). . .
Dessins d’orfèvrerie de l’atelier Robert-Joseph Auguste (1723-1805)
Musée Nissim de Camondo, Paris, 16 November 2011 — 1 April 2012
Curated by Yves Carlier
Salt cellar design, workshop of Robert-Joseph August
Inv 24 722B (Paris: Les Arts Décoratifs)
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Reçu maître à Paris en 1757, Robert-Joseph Auguste porte à partir de 1777 le titre d’orfèvre ordinaire du roi et devient le principal fournisseur de la Couronne jusqu’à la Révolution. Rien ne nous étant parvenu de ces fournitures, son œuvre est mieux connu par les pièces d’orfèvrerie et les services entiers qu’il réalisa pour les cours de Lisbonne, Londres, Copenhague, Saint-Pétersbourg et Stockholm.
Sélectionnés pour leur rapport avec des pièces connues de Robert-Joseph Auguste, les douze dessins présentés ont été donnés en 1925 au musée des arts décoratifs par le baron Robert de Rothschild (1880-1946) avec dix-huit autres provenant de l’atelier de l’orfèvre et faisant partie de la même vente (Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 4 avril 1925).
De techniques variées (mine de plomb, plume, sanguine, lavis), ces œuvres rares rendent compte des différentes manières de Robert-Joseph Auguste et de la variété de sa production pour les grands services d’orfèvrerie qui lui sont commandés par Christian VII du Danemark, Catherine II de Russie ou Georges III d’Angleterre (pot à oille, saucière, salière, couverts …).
Les quatre dessins de la vente de 1925 conservés dans une collection particulière viennent compléter de manière exceptionnelle cet ensemble. Deux d’entre eux figurant un seau à bouteille et une verrière portent notamment la signature « auguste f. » d’une écriture correspondant à celle de Robert-Joseph Auguste.
En regard de cet accrochage sont exposées les prestigieuses pièces d’orfèvrerie de Robert-Joseph Auguste livrées pour les cours de Russie et du Portugal et conservées dans les collections du musée des arts décoratifs.
Enfin, dans la salle à manger du musée Nissim de Camondo, les deux paires de compotiers du service dit de Moscou réalisées par Auguste pour l’impératrice Catherine II ont retrouvé leur place d’origine sur les dessertes. Dressée avec faste pour l’occasion, la table est ornée du pot à oille à la magnifique hure de sanglier exécuté par l’orfèvre pour un client portugais aux armoiries récemment identifiées.
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Additional information (in English) is available here (as a PDF).
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