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…)
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