New Book | Speaking Ruins: Piranesi, Architects, and Antiquity
From the University of Michigan Press:
John A. Pinto, Speaking Ruins: Piranesi, Architects, and Antiquity in Eighteenth-Century Rome (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012), 352 pages, ISBN: 978-0472118212, $65.
As they had during the Renaissance, ruins in the eighteenth century continued to serve as places of exchange between antiquity and modern times and between one architect and another. Rome functioned as a cultural entrepôt, drawing to it architects of the caliber of Filippo Juvarra, Robert Adam, Charles-Louis Clérisseau, and Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Through their collaboration, on-site exchanges, publications, and polemics, architects contributed notably to fashioning a more critical and sophisticated view of the material heritage of classical antiquity, one that we associate with the Enlightenment and the origins of modern archaeology. In this lavishly illustrated volume stemming from his Thomas Spencer Jerome Lectures at the University of Michigan and the American Academy in Rome, distinguished architectural historian John A. Pinto traces an extraordinary path through the development of European architecture. This period saw the transformation of history and archaeology. Texts were treated more skeptically as scholars placed greater reliance on artifacts as sources of information, and architects such as Giovanni Battista Piranesi increasingly played a crucial role in the recording and visual presentation of ancient art and architecture.
Piranesi and other eighteenth-century architects active in Rome explored the full creative potential of ancient architecture, its dual metaphorical function as both palimpsest and template. Their responses to the ruins of Rome, as well as other parts of the classical world, created a significant body of historical knowledge, but also propelled them to create new and dazzling designs, such as the Trevi Fountain, Santa Maria del Priorato, and Syon House. Their elaborate study and accurate renderings of ancient sites enriched contemporary understanding of the material heritage of classical antiquity; their informed conjectures and flights of fancy gave it wings. Their encounters on sites such as Hadrian’s Villa and Pompeii, where the ruins spoke with great eloquence, greatly enriched the architectural discourse of the Enlightenment. Speaking Ruins emphasizes the close relationship between the intensifying archaeological explorations in this period especially in Rome and vicinity, but also in Greece and the Levant, and the development of post-Baroque styles in architecture, shading gradually into romanticism and neoclassicism.
Speaking Ruins is an investigation of the legacy of classical antiquity. As a study of the classical tradition, it should be of particular interest to classicists and archaeologists, while its argument that eighteenth-century Rome provided a crucible for the developing disciplines of archaeology and art history will engage the interest of a wide range of humanistic scholars. Speaking Ruins tells a fascinating story, with Piranesi and his works centrally involved.
Jacket image: G. B. Piranesi, Fragments of the Temple of the Sun on the Quirinal, from Campus Martius (1762), courtesy of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.
Lecture | Connecting the East India Company and the Caribbean
Chris Jeppesen is the AHRC cultural engagement fellow working on a project entitled “East Meets West: Caribbean and Asian Colonial Cultures in British Domestic Contexts” with The East India Company at Home team, The Legacies of British Slavery team, and the British Library. From the British Library:
Chris Jeppesen | Uncovering Connections between the East India Company and the Caribbean
British Library, London, 3 July 2013
Chris Jeppesen, Research Associate at the UCL Department of History, talks about his recent work on the Library’s collections tracing links between the East India Company and the Caribbean through the movement and correspondence of families.
Historians have tended to draw a binary between British involvement in India and the Caribbean. Rarely, do they acknowledge the intricate connections between the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds that facilitated the transfer of people, capital and goods during the late eighteenth/early nineteenth centuries. Chris’s ongoing research project based between UCL and the Library, has sought to uncover some of the connections between the East India Company and the Caribbean and to suggest ways that other interested researchers can expand our understanding of these links.
Crucial to many exchanges were family networks that spanned India, Britain and the Caribbean, allowing members access to opportunities that promised wealth and prestige. This talk will seek to demonstrate how by following one family – the Martins of Antigua – through the Library’s collections, one can start to uncover the all too often ignored links between India and the Caribbean.
Organised with support from the Eccles Centre for American Studies. This talk is part of the Summer Scholar’s programme. To book a space please email: summer-scholars@bl.uk
Wednesday, 3 July 2013, 12.30-14.00, Foyle Suite, Centre for Conservation, The British Library. Free, booking essential.
Exhibition | Secrets of the Royal Bedchamber
Press release for the exhibition at Hampton Court:
Secrets of the Royal Bedchamber
Hampton Court Palace, 27 March — 3 November 2013
Curated by Sebastian Edwards
Queen Charlotte’s embroidered state bed, displayed in the
Prince of Wales’s Bedchamber at Hampton Court Palace
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This spring independent charity, Historic Royal Palaces, has transformed Hampton Court’s Baroque Palace with a special exhibition full of intrigue, drama and surprise. At its heart are six magnificent, royal beds. For the first time the world’s largest and rarest collection of early state beds are presented in one dramatic display, telling the story of how and why the bedchamber became the most public and important destination in the Palace. The exhibition also offers a chance to view architect John Vanbrugh’s Prince of Wales’s Apartments, opened for the first time in 20 years.
Bed of George and Caroline, Prince and Princess of Wales, ca. 1715, displayed in the Queen’s State Bedchamber at Hampton Court Palace
Through the stories of their royal owners and servants, visitors are able to explore the elaborate, sometimes bizarre bedchamber rituals and unusual sleeping arrangements. Discover what took place where heirs were born, marriages consummated, monarchs were struck down and died – all while important affairs of state were conducted in this most personal of rooms. Most strange of all, these events took place before an audience of courtiers, politicians and family members, who turned everyday life for the monarch into a grand performance.
Inspired by the French fashion of the levée, the monarch would meet courtiers and ministers during an elaborate morning ceremony, during which the most privileged of his servants, woke, washed and dressed the king. Courtiers would fight for the illustrious and intimate positions of ‘groom of the stool’ or the ‘necessary woman’ to get close to the monarch. For an extraordinary century, the state bedchamber became the most sought after room in the palace for the rich and the powerful, where privileged access brought honour or the king’s favour. At its heart was the great, state bed, from where the monarch could conduct affairs of state.
These remarkable state beds have undergone extensive conservation and restoration over some fifty years. Each bed has a dramatic, and often poignant, tale to tell. For the first time the tragic story behind Queen Anne’s magnificent velvet state bed is revealed. Ordered by a dying queen in her final year, childless after many sad losses, she faced the prospect of her dynasty ending with her death; left unused and forgotten, it was described by the thrifty George III as a ‘venerable old relic’. Another splendid bed featured is the infamous ‘Warming Pan Bed’, the state bed of James II’s Queen, Mary of Modena, and the scene of the royal birth that sparked the quiet revolution that led to the end of the Stuart line.
An exceptional but modest survivor is the unique ‘travelling bed’ of George II which comes apart into 54 pieces, a testament to a time when the king and his court were often on the move. King Georg took his bed as far afield as his second home in Hanover and even to the battlefields of Europe. Each state bed reveals the intense competition between monarchs, and their courtiers, who expressed their taste and magnificence through their beds — the largest and most expensive objects in their homes. These beds could cost the price of a London townhouse and yet, incredibly, might never have been slept in!
This new exhibition, supported by Savoir Beds, creates an experience which takes a contemporary twist on the distinctive Baroque style of the palace. Through new research and interpretation, visitors are plunged into an immersive, interactive world of the Stuart Court, showcasing rarely displayed and amazing objects from the Royal Collection and other important lenders, all within the backdrop of the beautiful architecture of the State Apartments.
Historic Royal Palaces’ exhibition curator, Sebastian Edwards, said, “Visitors to the exhibition will discover that, far from being restful places of privacy, the state bedchamber was the seat of power – the equivalent of the modern day boardroom, from which the business of the Kingdom was conducted. Events which took place in and around these beds had enormous consequences for society, politics and history. Courtiers were knighted, wars were brokered, marriages consummated and mistresses wooed all in the shadow of the royal bed. These are extraordinary beds – but not as we know them today.”
Call for Papers | Persistent Spaces: 18th- and 19th-Century Cities
Persistent Spaces: Politics, Aesthetics, and Topography in the 18th- and 19th-Century City
Université Paris Diderot, 12-13 December 2013
Proposals due by 13 October 2013
Keynote Speakers: Lynda Nead (Birkbeck College) and Stéphane Van Damme (Sciences Po Paris)
The aim of this two-day conference is to bring together young researchers to explore the city and its ideologies from a fully interdisciplinary perspective. We would like to combine approaches from the fields of literature and the arts, sociology, philosophy, law, science and engineering in order to create a dialogue between disciplines and methodologies. This conference would also establish a dialogue between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We will seek to highlight the individual specificities of these two periods, but also to understand the echoes, continuities and breaks between them.
From the Enlightenment to the late nineteenth century and before urbanism was fully established as a discipline, the city was constantly being configured and reconfigured by the joint influences of architects, civil engineers, political organizations, associations and the informal ‘practices’ of inhabitants. Writers and artists also play a major part in this process, both picking up on these developments and changing them through the aesthetics they deploy. The conference will shed light on the city as a topography of struggle, a site of conflicting and interpenetrating layers, changing yet also persisting through time and space, and continually shaped by tensions between authority and resistance.
Topics may include, but are by no means limited to:
• Authority, ideology, urban planning and everyday ‘practices’
• Coherence or fragmentation of the urban space (home and workplace, centre and slums, etc.)
• Geographical juxtapositions / temporal superimpositions of spaces
• Population, mobility and living conditions
• Technological developments and urban networks
• 18th/19th-century continuity and breaks
• 18th-century ideas persisting and materializing in the 19th century
• Comparisons between / specificity of London and Paris
Papers will last for 20 minutes and will be followed by 15-minute discussions. Abstracts no longer than 300 words should be sent to Clemence Follea (clemence.follea@gmail.com) or Clement Martin (clemm.martin@gmail.com) by October 13th, 2013, along with a brief biographical note, which should not exceed 50 words. The scientific committee examining the papers is composed of doctoral students from Paris Diderot University: Claire Deligny; Clémence Follea; Clément Martin; Roisin Quinn-Lautrefin; Estelle Murail; and Marie Ruiz.
The conference will take place at Paris Diderot University (Paris, 13e arrondissement), on the 12th-13th December 2013. This event is supported by the Laboratoire de Recherches sur les Cultures Anglophones (Université Paris Diderot).
Exhibition | Anton Graff: Faces of an Era
The exhibition opened last weekend on the two-hundredth anniversary of the artist’s death (22 June 1813). From the Museum Oskar Reinhart:
Anton Graff: Gesichter einer Epoche
Museum Oskar Reinhart, Winterthur, 22 June — 29 September 2013
National Gallery in Berlin, 25 October 2013 — 23 February 2014
Anton Graff, who was born in Winterthur, was the most important portrait painter in the German-speaking world around 1800. He influenced the image of the bourgeoisie and nobility and the image of poets and thinkers on the brink of Modernism like no other. When he died in 1813, he left behind around 1800 portraits depicting a panorama of transitioning European society.
In celebration of the 200th anniversary of his death, the Museum Oskar Reinhart in Winterthur and the National Gallery in Berlin are honouring the work of Anton Graff in a comprehensive exhibition for the first time in 50 years. After a first stop at the Museum Oskar Reinhart from 22 June to 29 September 2013, the exhibition will be able to be seen in the National Gallery in Berlin between 25 October 2013 and 23 February 2014. The exhibition and the richly illustrated catalogue, which will be published by the Munich-based Hirmer Publishers, came about thanks to the cooperation of both institutions.
Marc Fehlmann and Birgit Verwiebe, eds., Anton Graff: Gesichter einer Epoche (Munich: Hirmer Publishers, 2013), 336 pages, ISBN: 978-3777420509, 40€.
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From Berlin’s Alte Nationalgalerie:
Bis in das Innere der Seele“ zu schauen, darin bestand, den Worten des Philosophen Johann Georg Sulzer zufolge, die Meisterschaft des großen Porträtisten Anton Graff. Der überaus produktive Künstler zählt zu den herausragenden Bildnismalern des späten 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhunderts. Sein größtes Verdienst war, die Berühmtheiten seiner Epoche zu porträtieren. Ihm ist das Panorama des deutschen Geistes zu danken, das die Bildnisse der bedeutendsten Dichter und Denker umfasst, wie etwa Lessing, Nicolai, Mendelssohn, Sulzer, Wieland, Gellert, Herder und Schiller.
Anton Graff, Self-portrait with the Green Eye-shade, 1813 (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie)
Graff wurde 1736 in Winterthur geboren und nahm dort seinen ersten Kunstunterricht. In Augsburg, Ansbach und Regensburg bildete er sich weiter. 1766 – 30jährig – wurde er in Dresden kurfürstlich-sächsischer Hofmaler und Mitglied der Akademie. Regelmäßig führten ihn Reisen nach Berlin, Leipzig und in die Schweiz. Gegen Ende seines Lebens wurde Graff gleichsam zu einer Symbolfigur für den Kreis junger Romantiker in Dresden. 1813, mit 76 Jahren, starb der Maler.
Graff hat seine Zeitgenossen nicht im Gestus der Repräsentation festgehalten. Vielmehr lag ihm daran, das Wesen des Einzelnen auszuloten, seine Individualität zu entdecken, seine seelischen und geistigen Qualitäten wiederzugeben. Auch heute noch spricht die innere Gestimmtheit der aufgeklärten geistigen Elite in Deutschland unmittelbar aus Graffs meisterhaften Werken. Mit Bildnissen von Königen und Fürsten, vom aufstrebenden Bürgertum, von Staatsmännern, Gelehrten, Künstlern, Kaufleuten, Geistlichen schuf er eine Galerie der deutschen Gesellschaft an der Schwelle zur Moderne.
Ein halbes Jahrhundert hat es keine Ausstellung zum Werk Graffs gegeben. Nun, anlässlich des 200. Todestages, wird sein Werk wieder umfassend präsentiert.
Die Retrospektive „Anton Graff. Gesichter einer Epoche“ entstand in Kooperation mit dem Museum Oskar Reinhart, Winterthur. Dort sind rund 80 Werke vom 22. Juni bis 29. September 2013 zu sehen. In der Alten Nationalgalerie Berlin wird die Ausstellung anschließend in erweiterter Form mit rund 140 Werken vom 25. Oktober 2013 bis 23. Februar 2014 gezeigt.
2012 Dissertation Listings
From caa.reviews:
Dissertation Listings
PhD dissertation authors and titles in art history and visual studies from US and Canadian institutions are published each year in caa.reviews. Titles can be browsed by subject category or year.
Titles are submitted once a year by each institution granting the PhD in art history and/or visual studies. Submissions are not accepted from individuals, who should contact their department chair or secretary for more information. Department chairs: please consult our dissertation submission guidelines for instructions. The annual deadline is January 15 for titles from the preceding year.
In 2003, CAA revised the subject area categories of art history and visual studies used for all our listings, including dissertations. These categories are listed in the Dissertation Submission Guidelines.
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The index for 2012 lists nine eighteenth-century dissertations completed, including:
• Currie, Christopher, “Art, Illusion, and Social Mobility in Eighteenth-Century France: Hyacinthe Rigaud and the Making of the Marquis de Gueidan” (UNC Chapel Hill, M. Sheriff)
• Ferng, Jennifer, “Nature’s Objects: Geology, Aesthetics, and the Understanding of Materiality in Eighteenth-Century Britain and France” (MIT, M. Jarzombek)
• Fripp, Jessica, “Portraits of Artists and the Social Commerce of Friendship in Eighteenth-Century France” (Michigan, S. Siegfried)
• Medakovich, Molly A., “Between Friends: Representations of Female Sociability in French Genre Painting, 1770–1830” (UNC Chapel Hill, M. Sheriff)
• Riggs, Marion, “Architectural Translations: Giuseppe Barberi (1746–1809) between Rome and Paris” (Princeton, J. Pinto)
and forty dissertations in progress, including:
• Beachdel, Thomas, “Landscape Aesthetics and the Sublime in France, 1750–1815” (CUNY, P. Mainardi)
• Bell, Andrea, “French Artist in Rome: An Examination of Eighteenth-Century Drawing Albums” (IFA/NYU, T. Crow)
• Chadwick, Esther, “The Radical Print: Experiments in Liberty, 1760–1830” (Yale, T. Barringer)
• Charuhas, Christina, “Constructing Eighteenth-Century Bermuda: Utopia in the Transatlantic Imagination” (Columbia, E. Hutchinson)
• Contogouris, Ersy, “Of Marble and Flesh: The Attitudes and Representations of Emma Hamilton” (Université de Montréal, T. Porterfield)
• Cox, Alison, “Images of Mourning and Melancholia in France, 1780–1830” (UNC Chapel Hill, M. Sheriff)
• Crawford, Katelyn D., “Transient Painters, Traveling Canvases: Portraiture and Mobility in the British Atlantic, 1750–1780” (Virginia, M. McInnis)
• Fox, Abram, “The Great House of Benjamin West: Family, Workshop, and National Identity in Late Georgian England” (Maryland, College Park, W. Pressly)
• Girard, Catherine, “Hallali! Hunting and the Violence of French Rococo Art, 1699–1755” (Harvard, E. Lajer-Burcharth)
• Gohmann, Joanna M., “Living Together: People and Their Animals in Eighteenth-Century French Art, 1700–1789” (UNC Chapel Hill, M. Sheriff)
• Knowles, Marika, “Pierrot’s Costume: Theater, Curiosity, and the Subject of Art in France, 1665–1860” (Yale, C. Armstrong)
• Laux, Barbara M., “Claude III Audran, Modern Ornemaniste of the Rococo Style” (CUNY, J. Sund)
• Lenhard, Danielle, “Reading with One Hand: Suggestive Folds and Subversive Consumption in Jean-Honore Fragonard’s ‘The Bolt’” (Stony Brook University, J. Monteyne)
• Logie, Rose, “The Self-Conscious Artist: The Strange Formality of Watteau’s Oeuvre” (Toronto, P. Sohm)
• Oliver, Elizabeth Lee, “Mercantile Aesthetics: Art, Science, and Diplomacy in French India (1664–1757)” (Northwestern, S. H. Clayson)
• Sezer, Yavuz, “The Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Library Movement: Architecture, Reading, and the Politics of Knowledge” (MIT, N. Rabbat)
• Smith, Hilary Coe, “The Role of the Auction Catalogue in the Growth of the Parisian Art Market, 1675–1789” (Duke, H. Van Miegroet)
• You, Ji Eun: “The Afterlife of Luxury: the Material Culture of Interior Furnishing during the French Revolution 1789-1795” (UNC Chapel Hill, M. Sheriff) [not included in the 2012 list at caa.reviews, this entry serves as a useful reminder that the list should not be understood to be comprehensive]
• Veen, Kasie, “The Spectacle of New Ruins in Britain and France, 1760–1840: Landscape Gardens and the Diorama” (UT Austin, M. Charlesworth)
• Viggiani, Daniela, “L’édition de L’Abecedario Pittorico de Pietro Maria Guarienti (1678–1753), une source pour l’histoire de l’art portugais” (Université de Montréal, L. De Moura Sobral)
• Wile, Aaron, “Charles de La Fosse and His Generation: Painting, Authority, and Experience at the Twilight of the Grand Siècle, 1680–1715” (Harvard, E. Lajer-Burcharth, H. Zerner)
Exhibition | Candida Höfer at the Borghese Gallery
As noted at Art Daily (23 June 2013) . . .
Candida Höfer per La Galleria Borghese
Villa Borghese, Rome, 20 June — 15 September 2013
Curated by Mario Codognato, Anna Coliva, and Marina Minozzi
Candida Höfer, Villa Borghese Roma I, 2012. C-print. Print size: 71 x 86 inches (180 x 217.2 cm). © Candida Höfer/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn© Candida Höfer by SIAE 2013.
The famous Galleria del Lanfranco hosts seven works by the artist Candida Höfer portraying the original reconstruction of the Borghese collection, recently restored for the I Borghese e lʼAntico exhibition (December 2011 – April 2012, curated by Anna Coliva and Marina Minozzi for Galleria Borghese and by Jean-Luc Martinez and Marie Lou Fabréga-Dubert for the Louvre) which brought back to the Gallery the most important ancient masterpieces that once belonged to the collection, mostly collected by Cardinal Scipione Borghese at the beginning of the seventeenth century and currently making up the core of the Paris Louvre Museum antiques collection, following the sale imposed by Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte on his brother-in-law Camillo Borghese in 1807. Candida Höferʼs work therefore represents the only existing evidence of the collection in its original setup, which will never be replicated again: some kind of miracle that will never repeat itself.
The underlying concept of the exhibition is that out of the reconstruction of an art masterpiece such as the Galleria Borghese collection in its original makeup, another work of art was created. In that occasion Candida Höfer – known for her incomparable way of perceiving places and reproducing them through her camera – had therefore documented the mounting of the exhibition halls through the photos that are now in display in their original location, the Galleria itself. The exhibition curated by Mario Codognato, Anna Coliva and Marina Minozzi is a unique event, enabling visitors to virtually walk through the halls of “the most beautiful villa in the world” — Antonio Canovaʼs definition — and experience the fascinating atmosphere generated by the exceptional return to their place of origin of the masterpieces of one of the most distinguished and prestigious archaeological collection of all times.
Candida Höfer features among the most relevant artists of German contemporary photography. She was born in Eberswalde, Germany, in 1944 and is a leading exponent of ‘the School of Dusseldorf’. She started her artistic career in 1975 taking part in several international exhibitions, such as Documenta in Kassel in 2002 and Biennale in Venice in 2003, where she exhibited her work in the German Pavillion. Her works feature in the collections of many international museums, such as Centre Pompidou in Paris, Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Kunsthalle in Hamburg, Museum of Modern Art in New York, Kunthalle in Basel. Höfer is renowned for her shots of public spaces, such as museums, libraries, archives, theatres, offices, banks, waiting rooms, underground stations and other culturally and socially crowded places which however stand out due to the total absence of human presence. As a matter of fact, it is a ‘non-presence’ rather than an absence: the portrayed locations seem to be suspended, waiting, ready to welcome the human being, the real protagonist, enjoying those museums and frequenting those libraries. In her pictures Candida Höfer exclusively uses natural light. This peculiarity turns the picture of a place from a mere documentation to a true portrait by personifying it, interpreting its surfaces as if they were a live element, devoid of any human presence and captured in a single moment that will survive forever thanks to her work.
The seven large-size photos – roughly 180 x 200 centimeters – exhibited in the Lanfranco Hall, portray the Villa and reproduce the setting of the seventeenth and eighteenth century when sculptures belonging to the celebrated Borghese archaeological collection were still displayed in the Museum halls. Masterpieces such as The Three Graces and The Sleeping Hermaphroditus feature in Höfer’s photos alongside modern masterpieces such as the The Rape of Proserpina by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and the famous Pauline Bonaparte as Venus Victrix by Antonio Canova. However, the true protagonists of these pictures are not only these extraordinary sculptures but also the Galleria as a whole: its history, its furniture, its works: all these elements make Candida Höferʼs photographs unique and the exhibition a one-off opportunity. Hoferʼs photos stir emotions thanks to their historical background, their perspective and the brightness of the place itself, defining its original aspects and raising the images to an eternal, absolute dimension.
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Ian Wardropper Honored as a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters
Press release (11 June 2013) from The Frick Collection:
On Monday, June 10, Ian Wardropper, Director of The Frick Collection, received the insignia of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in a private ceremony held during a reception at the museum. Antonin Baudry, Cultural Counselor of the French Embassy, officiated at the ceremony. The Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) was created in 1957 to recognize eminent artists and writers, as well as individuals who have contributed significantly to furthering the arts in France and throughout the world. The Order is given out twice annually to only a few hundred people worldwide. Among the Americans who have received this award in the past are Paul Auster, Ornette Coleman, Agnes Gund, Marilyn Horne, Judith Jamison, Jim Jarmusch, Richard Meier, Robert Paxton, Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, and Uma Thurman.
A specialist in European sculpture, decorative arts, and twentieth-century design and decorative arts, Ian Wardropper held key positions first at the Art Institute of Chicago and then at The Metropolitan Museum of Art before being named Director of The Frick Collection in 2011. At The Frick Collection, Wardropper co-curated last year’s Gold, Jasper, and Carnelian: Johann Cristian Neuber at the Saxon Court, the first exhibition on the work of a remarkable eighteenth-century court goldsmith. On view now at the Frick is an exhibition featuring drawing and prints from French masters spanning the entire second half of the nineteenth century: The Impressionist Line from Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec: Drawings and Prints from the Clark. These works represent the diverse interests of Realist, Impressionist, and Post-Impressionist artists in a rapidly changing world. (more…)
Christopher Gibbs and a Remarkable Georgian Sofa
With its trompe-l’oeil needlework, this sofa is extraordinary (items depicted include a gameboard and cards, a box, a basket of yarn, a bird on a branch, and a bag). The one-page essay in The World of Interiors by the antiques dealer Christopher Gibbs, accompanied by stunning photographs, underscores just how compelling an object can be as a subject. -CH
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Christopher Gibbs, “Travels Since His Aunt,” The World of Interiors (June 2013): 144-49.
Discovered who knows where by Modernist muse Eugenia Errázuriz, this 18th-century sofa caught Christopher Gibbs’ eye over 50 years ago on a visit to her London home. With its extraordinary shape and trompe-l’oeil needlework, it subsequently attracted various owners before finding Christopher once more [via the antique dealer Edward Hurst]. Gibbs explains how it transports him back to a formative time, in the June issue of The World of Interiors. Photography: Tim Beddow.
Fellowship | Culture, Art, and Society in the Times of Juvarra
From the call for applications:
Fondazione 1563 Fellowship | Culture, Art, and Society in the Times of Juvarra
Applications due by 31 July 2013
Fondazione 1563 per l’Arte e la Cultura, an Operating Body of Compagnia di San Paolo, pursues among its statutory objectives “the implementation of research and advanced education activities in humanities.” The Foundation is entrusted with the management and the promotion of the Historical Archives of Compagnia di San Paolo and the development of studies on the Age and the Culture of Baroque, in order to encourage research in humanities and to facilitate the access of young scholars to
academic and cultural institutions.
The fellowships intend to promote studies on Baroque literary, philosophical, musical, theater, artistic and architectural culture and on the political, social, and technical-scientific history of the Age of Baroque, also from a comparative international perspective. Research proposals for the 2013-14 call will need to pertain to the following theme: “Culture, art and society in the times of Juvarra.”
The career of Filippo Juvarra (1678-1736) is marked by two cultural experiences that he contributed to in terms of shapes, images, suggestions and models. On the one hand was Rome in the early 18th century and the inner circle of Cardinal Ottoboni, who was open to the reforms put forward by the Academy of Arcadia and who promoted the renewed primacy of the artist championed by the “Accademia di San Luca” in line with a reflection on the complexity of Baroque tradition. On the other hand there was Vittorio Amedeo II and his request to Juvarra to be part of a plan to create and consolidate a modern State, a project that would reflect in contemporary politics and society, as well as literature, philosophy, music, theater, architecture and the visual arts.
The call is open to researchers born on or after 1st January 1975 holding a University or master’s degree from an Italian University or equivalent from foreign Universities. Priority will be given to applicants holding a Ph.D. or equivalent from Italian or foreign universities. The fellowship will refer to the following fields of study: social history, political history, economic history, history of science and technology, history of literature, history of philosophy, history of music, history of theater, art history, history of architecture. . .
More information is available here»
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