Enfilade

New Book | Gainsborough’s Cottage Doors

Posted in books by Editor on June 19, 2013

From Paul Holberton:

Hugh Belsey, Gainsborough’s Cottage Doors: An Insight into the Artist’s Last Decade (London: Paul Holberton, 2013), 120 pages, ISBN: 978-1907372506, £25 / $40.

81D9YJ6NfwL._SL1500_The work of Thomas Gainsborough is characterized by a series of subjects that preoccupied him, which with time he was able to hone and define more clearly. Inspired by the recent identification of a third autograph version of his masterpiece The Cottage Door, this book examines the significance of the multiple versions of designs that the artist produced during the 1780s. It demonstrates that without the pressure of exhibiting his work annually at the Academy and without a string of sitters waiting for their finished portraits, Gainsborough’s work became more personal, more thoughtful and searching.

A study of his unconventional background, training and early development as an artist provides some clues as to why Gainsborough came to use painting in this very personal way. It was not until the 1780s, however, that his creative energies really changed in this direction. He had never been happy with the constraints of the Royal Academy and he was at odds with the dictatorial opinions promoted by its president, Sir Joshua Reynolds. In removing himself from the Academy he cast off the shackles of producing paintings, competitive in their design and colouring, which inhibited the artist’s natural goals of likeness, subtlety and balanced tonality. He could now be choosey about the commissions he accepted, paint for his own pleasure and satisfy his own curiosity. He began to turn to portrait compositions that he had developed and refined over a number of years. With subtle alterations they could be made suitable for a variety of sitters. The margin between ‘fancy’ pictures and portraits became blurred and the categorization of some of these paintings changed while they were on the easel. Always finding composition difficult, rather than begin something new he often revisited earlier designs that had pleased him. He would paint them again and make slight changes of tone and emphasis that would radically change the concept and intention of the design.

Richly illustrated with beautiful new photography, this study of the last phase of the artist’s work is a totally fresh interpretation of not only the Cottage Door theme, which Gainsborough revisited over nearly 20 years, but other key late works such as Mrs Sheridan and Diana and Acteon. The subject matter in some of these late work veers towards the autobiographical and provides an invaluable insight into the artist’s personality and his very worrying concerns.

Hugh Belsey is currently Senior Research Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art with the task of writing the definitive catalogue of portraits by Thomas Gainsborough.

Exhibition | Revisiting The Cottage Door: Gainsborough’s Masterpiece

Posted in books, exhibitions by Editor on June 19, 2013

From The Huntington:

Revisiting The Cottage Door: Gainsborough’s Masterpiece in Focus
The Huntington Library, San Marino, 1 June — 2 December 2013

c

Thomas Gainsborough, The Cottage Door, ca. 1780
(San Marino: The Huntington)

The Cottage Door (ca. 1780), one of the treasures of The Huntington’s collections, is among Thomas Gainsborough’s most famous paintings. The idealized scene of rustic country life was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1780, but both the subject and the composition continued to haunt the artist, and he repeated the design twice during the course of the decade. All three paintings are shown together for the first time in this special display, providing a unique opportunity to compare the subtle differences among them. Both of the later versions, on loan from private collections, are less finished than The Huntington’s canvas, and there are variations in tone and detail that give each a particular mood and a different emphasis.

A new book by Gainsborough specialist Hugh Belsey, Gainsborough’s Cottage Doors: An Insight into the Artist’s Last Decade, complements the installation. Inspired by the recent attribution of the third version, it examines how Gainsborough freed himself from the constraints of the Royal Academy and was able to make radical changes to his work during the last years of his
life.

Call for Articles | Collecting Italian Art North of the Alps

Posted in Calls for Papers by Editor on June 18, 2013

From RIHA Journal:

RIHA Journal Special Issue: Collecting Italian Art North of the Alps 1600–1800
Submissions due by 1 December 2013

The Italian schools occupied central positions in early modern art collections, a tradition that continued through the 19th and 20th centuries. The primacy of Italian art became a cornerstone for museum practice as well as a founding principle for the nascent art history discipline. This issue takes a closer look at the beginning of this tradition in the 17th and 18th century. Since the 1960s (and before), scholars have taken an interest in the Grand Tours of princes, aristocrats and connoisseurs. More recent research has added to the picture by discussing the collecting activities of artists, architects, diplomats, dealers and scholars, and of women collectors and travellers. Further advances in the last few years have included investigations of the Italian art market(s), early modes of display, legal and illegal ways of export and curatorial strategies in the early princely collections and private museums. Although pictures and sculptures have been most in focus, scholars are also bringing these questions with a new interest to collections of the applied arts, prints and drawings (including architectural and decorative drawings).

The issue could include (but does not have to be restricted to) studies of individual collectors and collectors, primary and secondary art markets, the history and theory of display, the export and physical transportation of art, auctions, bequests, the supply of and demand for particular schools, changing attitudes to individual artists, the rise of the interest in the “primitivi,” looting, copying, and the political and nation-building dimensions of collecting.

Suitable submissions will be sent to two expert peer reviewers for blind review. Articles should be no longer than 50,000 characters (including spaces) or 8,000 word, both measures including footnotes and captions. Up to 10  illustrations will be accepted. Contributions in English, French, Italian or German are welcome. Please follow the RIHA Journal Style Guide. Please send your contributions, including a 250-word abstract, to the editors at linda.hinners@nationalmuseum.se by 1 December 2013.

Kind regards,
Martin Olin, Assistant Director, Swedish Institute in Rome. Guest Editor of “Collecting Italian Art North of the Alps”
Magdalena Gram, RIHA Journal Local Editor
Linda Hinners, Assistant Local Editor, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

Conference | Torino Britannica: Political and Cultural Crossroads

Posted in conferences (to attend) by Editor on June 18, 2013

From the Seminar on Collecting and Display:

Torino Britannica: Political and Cultural Crossroads on the Grand Tour in the Early Modern Age
The British School at Rome and the Centro Studi Reggia di Veneria Reale in Turin, 19-21 June 2013

Traditional views of the cultural and political phenomenon broadly known as the ‘Grand Tour’ focus on a stereotype of the eighteenth-century British aristocratic traveller resolute on acquiring both cultural artefacts and diplomatic and political know-how from the antique European states, especially those in Italy. More detailed analysis of specific features of the Grand Tour allows for a more insightful assessment of this important historic development during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. This conference will introduce and explore a significant aspect of the Grand Tour long neglected by scholars but which formed an integral part of the education and cultural formation of many British travellers: their sojourn at Turin, capital of the Savoy-Piedmont Polity. The conference will also address another overlooked, yet critical feature of this international movement – the Italian side of and contribution to the Grand Tour experience – a phenomenon which may be called a ‘reverse’ Grand Tour; namely, the movement of artists, writers and other protagonists travelling from Turin to Britain and enriching the cultural exchanges between the two.

Visitors to Turin were confronted with an entirely different experience from that of the other classic Grand Tour sites, including Florence, Rome, Naples and Venice. While these obligatory stopovers were famous for viewing (and purchasing) antiquities, for studying the great repositories of cultural treasures, and for participating in society, a sojourn at Turin, by contrast, became regarded as exceptional, offering the visitor an altogether more pragmatic learning experience. The Savoyard capital boasted important modern royal urban and architectural enhancements, public features that placed Turin in the vanguard of European capitals. Due to the tight controls the Savoy dynasty exercised – by way of a highly efficient bureaucracy – over all cultural, military, religious, ceremonial and social activities throughout its realm, but particularly in Turin, the city was also admired as a model of public functionality and even rationality not seen elsewhere in Italy. The biggest draw for British visitors, however, was undoubtedly the Turin Royal Academy (l’Accademia Reale), which offered an up-to-date and prestigious education in military and diplomatic culture to a wide range of young Europeans who frequented it for extended periods, permitting a cosmopolitan exchange among future statesmen.

As a military power and a flourishing princely court of strategic diplomatic stature, Turin was fully integrated into European affairs, including its important diplomatic and cultural relations with Britain, which peaked in the century following the foundation of the Royal Academy in 1678. Foreigners began to flock there, and the manner in which these European elites shared a common culture formed by their mutual experience of the Academy is one of the questions the conference will address. A model example of an elite military school, the Academy taught not only martial arts and equitation but also mathematics, geography, history, languages (Italian and French), continental social skills and gentlemanly virtues necessary for diplomacy and salon conversations of fashionable society. Fundamentally different from the other Italian Grand Tour sites, which were visited primarily for their historical art treasures, antiquities, musical and theatrical offerings, or even landscape and climate, Turin offered a course of study for the modern man. Torino Britannica will explore these differences while illuminating the significance of the Torinese experience of the Grand Tour in the larger historical narrative of this important British political and cultural phenomenon. In line with the most recent scholarship on the Grand Tour, its intention is to highlight the need to recover these less celebrated and previously underappreciated pathways along which cultural and artistic trends were spread across Europe in the early modern period.

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W E D N E S D A Y ,  1 9  J U N E
Rome, British School at Rome

9.15     Opening Remarks, Christopher Smith (British School at Rome) and Andrea Merlotti (Centro Studi, Reggia di Venaria Reale)

Session 1 — Britain in Turin: Politics at the Savoy Court / Britannia a Torino: politica alla corte dei Savoia

Chair: Paola Bianchi (Università della Valle d’Aosta)

9.30  Edward Chaney (Southampton Solent University), Torino Britannica and the Cultural Memory of Egypt: Stuarts, Savoys and the Divine Right of Kings

10.00  Toby Osborne (Durham University), England and Savoy: The Culture of Dynastic Affinity

10.30  Andrea Pennini (Università di Torino), Un’altra via possibile? Progetti matrimoniali fra Stuart e Savoia nel Seicento

11.00  Break

11.30  Edward Corp (Université de Toulouse), The Court of Turin and the English Succession, 1712-1720

12:00  Christopher Storrs (University of Dundee), British Diplomats at the Savoy Court and International Politics

12.30  Paolo Cozzo (Università di Torino), “La metropolitaine des catoliques”. La cappella dell’ambasciata di Savoia nella Londra di Giorgio II.

13.00  Lunch

Session 2 — Turin: Gateway to the British Grand Tour / Torino: porta del Grand Tour britannico

Chair:  Karin Wolfe (British School at Rome)

14.30  Paola Bianchi (Università della Valle d’Aosta), Cosmopolitismo e pragmatismo confessionale: gentiluomini britannici in Accademia Reale

15.00  Andrew Moore (Attingham Trust and Paul Mellon Senior Fellow, 2011-13), Thomas Coke: Playhouse, Rope Dancing and the Venaria Real

15.30  Andrea Merlotti (Centro Studi Reggia di Venaria Reale), Salotti, conversazioni, logge. I viaggiatori inglesi nella sociabilità aristocratica torinese del Settecento

16.00  Discussion

16.30  Break

17.00  Exhibition: James Hakewill’s Grand Tour Drawings in the British School at Rome Library

18.00  Keynote address: Cesare De Seta (Università degli studi di Napoli Federico II), Viaggi, viaggiatori e pittori a Torino tra Sei e Settecento

19.30  Reception

20.00  Dinner

T H U R S D A Y ,  2 0  J U N E
Rome, British School at Rome

Session 3 — The British in Turin: Art and Diplomacy / Britannici a Torino: arte e diplomazia

Chair: Joanna Kostylo (British School at Rome)

10.00  Karin Wolfe (British School at Rome), John Molesworth: British Envoy and Cultural Intermediary in Turin

10.30  James Rothwell (National Trust), Silver from London and Turin: The Collection of the 2nd Earl of Bristol, Envoy Extraordinary to the Court of Savoy 1755-58

11.00  Break

11.30  Jonny Yarker (British School at Rome), Domenico Duprà: A Turinese Painter and the British

12.00  Christopher Johns (Vanderbilt University), Chinoiserie in Piedmont: An International Language of Diplomacy and Modernity

12.30  Discussion

13.00  Lunch

14.30  Departure from the British School at Rome for Turin

F R I D A Y ,  2 1  J U N E
Turin, Reggia di Venaria, Aula magna del Centro restauro

Session 4 — Britain and Turin: Architectural Crossroads on the Grand Tour / Britannia e Torino: percorsi architettonici del Grand Tour

Chair: Costanza Roggero (Politecnico di Torino)

10.00  Tommaso Manfredi (Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria), Architetti e Re nell’Europa del Grand Tour: da Wren a Juvarra

10.30  Cristina Ruggero (Bibliotheca Hertziana, Roma), L’album juvarriano per Lord Burlington a Chatsworth

11.00  Giuseppe Dardanello (Università di Torino), Esperienze dell’Inghilterra nella cultura architettonica e figurativa nel Piemonte del Settecento

11.30  Edoardo Piccoli (Politecnico di Torino), Englishmen in Turin, 1747-1748

12.00  Paolo Cornaglia (Politecnico di Torino), Il giardino inglese in Piemonte a fine Settecento: declinazioni pittoresche, anglo-cinesi e paesaggistiche

12.30  Discussion

13.00  Lunch

Session 5 — Turin in Britain: Cultural Exchange in the Age of the Grand Tour / Torino in Britannia: scambi culturali nell’età del Grand Tour

Chair: Andrea Merlotti (Centro Studi della Reggia di Venaria)

15.00  Alastair Laing (National Trust), A Plurality of Pluras: Members of the Plura Family and Their Work for the British

15.30  Olga Zoller (Independent Scholar), Crossing Professional and National Limits: the Pioneering Role of the Versatile Architect-Engineer Giovanni Battista Borra (1713-1770)

16.00  Cristina Bracchi (Archivio delle Donne in Piemonte), Baretti inglese: la didattica e la critica

16.30  Francesca Fedi (Università di Parma), Alfieri in Inghilterra

17.00  Annarita Colturato (Università di Torino), Con talento e intraprendenza: musicisti piemontesi a Londra nel secondo Settecento

17.30  Discussion

18.00  Concerto: Benvenuto Robbio di San Raffaele (1735-1794), Sonate 1, 2, 3 e 5 dalle Sei Sonate a Violino o Cembalo Solo — Silvia Colli, violino; Gioele Gusberti, violoncello; Mario Tonda, clavicembalo

Call for Papers | Maritime Culture in the Age of J.M.W. Turner

Posted in Calls for Papers by Editor on June 17, 2013

From the Royal Museums Greenwich:

Maritime Culture and Britain in the Age of J.M.W. Turner
Royal Museums Greenwich, London, 21–22 March 2014

Proposals due by 6 September 2013

The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805, by Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1822–24. Repro ID: BHC0565 ©National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, Greenwich Hospital Collection Repro ID BHC0565 © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, Greenwich Hospital Collection

J.M.W. Turner, The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805, 1822-24 © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

To coincide with a major exhibition of the work of J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), Royal Museums Greenwich will host an innovative, interdisciplinary conference exploring the cultural impact of the sea in the 19th century. The exhibition will be the first full-scale examination of Turner’s lifelong preoccupation with the sea, and features many of the artist’s most celebrated works, from his transformative Academy paintings of the late 1790s and early 1800s to the unfinished, experimental seascapes he produced towards the end of his life.

Paintings on display will include Fishermen at Sea (Tate), The Wreck of a Transport Ship (Museu Calouste Gulbenkian), The Battle of Trafalgar (Royal Museums Greenwich), The Fighting ‘Temeraire’ (National Gallery), Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth (Tate) and Whalers (Metropolitan Museum of Art). By placing these and other works alongside those by other British, European and American marine artists, the exhibition will give visitors the opportunity to discover the myriad ways in which Turner responded to the maritime art of the past while challenging his audiences with new ways of representing the sea. (more…)

Exhibition | Turner and the Sea

Posted in exhibitions by Editor on June 17, 2013

From the Royal Museums Greenwich:

Turner and the Sea
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, 22 November 2013 — 21 April 2014
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA, 4 June — 1 September 2014

BHC0565_950

J.M.W. Turner, The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805, 1822-24 (detail)
© National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

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This major exhibition is the first full-scale examination of Turner’s lifelong preoccupation with the sea. Including iconic works spanning the artist’s whole career from his transformative Academy paintings of the late 1790s and early 1800s, to the unfinished, experimental seascapes he produced towards the end of his life, this show will re-evaluate the compelling appeal of the sea for Turner and his contemporaries.

By placing his works alongside those by other major British, European and American artists, this exhibition will give viewers the opportunity to see the ways in which Turner responded to the art of the past, while challenging his audiences with a new and exciting maritime vision.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see works gathered together from across the world, including major loans from Europe and the USA; and to reconsider Turner’s extraordinary ability to represent the power of the sea in all its aspects: dramatic, contemplative, beautiful and sublime.

In connection with the exhibition, Greenwich will host a conference, 21–22 March 2014.

Note (added 2 September 2013)The exhibition press release is available here»

Exhibition | The Loves of Aaron Burr: Portraits in Corsetry and Binding

Posted in exhibitions, today in light of the 18th century by Editor on June 16, 2013

From the exhibition press release:

The Loves of Aaron Burr: Portraits in Corsetry and Binding
Installation by Camilla Huey
Morris-Jumel Mansion, New York, 2 May — 12 September 2013

484Couture artist Camilla Huey has produced gowns and corsets for celebrities such as Oprah, Janet Jackson, and Katy Perry in her famed garment district atelier, The House of Execution, a magical studio where fashion and history mingle. After almost ten years of extensive research, she began creating corsets to personify eight fascinating but nearly forgotten women writers of the 18th and 19th centuries. Huey has been invited to exhibit these exquisitely constructed pieces in the period rooms of the Morris-Jumel Mansion, Manhattan’s oldest residence, which also serves as the backdrop for many of the women’s eventful lives, truly fulfilling the project’s vision.

The Loves of Aaron Burr: Portraits in Corsetry and Binding resurrects the lives of eight women of letters involved in the adventures of Aaron Burr, Vice President to Thomas Jefferson and the assassin of Alexander Hamilton. Appropriately staged at the Morris-Jumel Mansion, where Burr spent a brief, though ill-fated, marriage to Madame Jumel, the exhibition tells the compelling stories of these women through the craft of bookbinding and the art of couture corsets. Each ‘portrait’ is comprised of a period appropriate corset bound around hand transcribed letters and ephemera, symbolizing each woman’s ‘body of work’ in sheer volume.

Esther Burr (1732-1758), Aaron Burr’s mother, silk and velvet corset
Margaret Moncrieffe (1763-?) Aaron Burr’s first love, damask corset cradling a first edition of her book, The Memoirs of Mrs. Coughlan
Theodosia Burr (1746-1794), first wife of Aaron Burr, corset encased in isinglass
Mary Emmons (1760-1835), consort of Aaron Burr, leather and quill corset
Leonora Sansay (1773-?) confidant and mistress, leather caned corset with signatures of onion skin paper, steel and mirrored armature
Theodosia Burr Alston (1783-1813), daughter of Aaron Burr, silk corset, steel boned with signatures of 100% cotton rag paper stitched in silk
Jane McManus Cazneau (1807-1878) American journalist and lobbyist, accused as correspondent in Jumel v. Burr divorce
Eliza Jumel (1775-1865), second wife of Aaron Burr, 10-year-old revolutionary era corset bound within an illuminated boned bodice

Photos are available from an article at the New York Daily News»

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main-17651The Morris-Jumel Mansion is Manhattan’s oldest residence, built in 1765 as a summer retreat by British Colonel Roger Morris for his wife, Mary Philipse. The original estate reached from the Harlem River to the Hudson, with commanding views of the New York Harbor, the New Jersey Palisades, and Westchester. During the Revolutionary War the house served as headquarters for General George Washington drawn by the house’s superior military vantage point. In 1810 the estate was purchased by French wine merchant and importer Stephen Jumel and his wife Eliza. Remarkably the Jumel’s are noted as having restored the house to its original grandeur, throwing a party to which all of New York Society was invited to feast on oysters and drink the superb offerings of M. Jumel’s cellar, including excellent champagnes, as noted in the diary of Mayor Philip Hone. The Mansion is a National Historic Landmark and a New York City Landmark, managed by the Historic House Trust of New York City. Now a museum, it’s located between 160th and 162nd Streets east of St. Nicolas Avenue in historic Harlem Heights.

New Book | Il Disegno nell’Europa del Settecento

Posted in books by Editor on June 16, 2013

Available from Artbooks.com:

Piera Giovanna Tordella, Il disegno nell’Europa del Settecento: Regioni teoriche ragioni critiche (Florence: Olschki, 2012), 284 pages, ISBN: 978-8822262332, $65.

122790The book follows the theoretic and critical evolution of European drawing and of its complex configuration in the eighteenth century, with the aid of texts by German, French, English, Dutch and Italian authors. The theme is naturally variegated and connects the activity of intellectuals, philosophers, writers, poets, artists, connoisseurs and collectors. The scene is often animated by original interpreters that crossed conceptual and aesthetic horizons populated by acclaim and disapproval.

Exibition | Allan Ramsay: Portraits of the Enlightenment

Posted in books, catalogues, exhibitions by Editor on June 15, 2013

From The Hunterian:

Allan Ramsay: Portraits of the Enlightenment
The Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow, 13 September 2013 — 5 January 2014

Allan Ramsay, "Lady Anne Campbell, Countess of Strafford, 1743 (Glasgow, The Hunterian)

Allan Ramsay, Lady Anne Campbell, Countess of Strafford, 1743 (Glasgow: The Hunterian)

In 2013 The Hunterian will stage a major new exhibition dedicated to one of Britain’s most accomplished 18th-century painters. Allan Ramsay (1713-1784) is best known as a portrait painter whose elegant style set him apart from other portraitists of the time. Born in Edinburgh, his career took him from a small Scottish clientele to the Hanoverian court of King George III. Away from his studio, Ramsay was in close contact with a number of influential figures, and his published writing includes works on taste, politics and archaeology. The exhibition centres on a selection of portraits from across Ramsay’s thirty years as a painter and also features drawings, watercolours, published books, pamphlets, letters and other materials which demonstrate Ramsay’s fascinating place in the intellectual and cultural life of Edinburgh, London, Paris and Rome in the mid 18th century. The exhibition also includes key loans from UK public and private collections and new research, examining the intellectual context in which Ramsay painted a number of his most important portraits, including that of Hunterian founder Dr William Hunter.

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From ArtBooks.com:

Mungo Campbell, ed., Allan Ramsay: Portraits of the Enlightenment (New York: Prestel, 2013), 200 pages, ISBN: 978-3791348780, $60.

coverAllan Ramsay’s accomplished canvases and refined drawings offer us some of the defining portraits of the Enlightenment. He was as well equipped to offer a deep sense of engagement with his Enlightenment sitters through his intellectual and cultural upbringing as he was trained to create elegantly constructed paintings through his extended education as a painter in Italy. Establishing himself in London and Edinburgh, Ramsay was admired for his understanding of contemporary political, cultural, and intellectual issues, as well as for his portraits of key protagonists in these debates. This beautiful volume brings together Ramsay’s most celebrated sitters, such as Rousseau, Hume, and William Hunter, along with numerous drawings and prints to consider his critical role in the British Enlightenment. Many of the artist’s rarely seen portraits of women are included. Alongside exquisite reproductions, the volume presents fascinating new research exploring the unique sensitivity of Ramsay’s
painting, the development of his technique, and
familial influences on his work.

Call for Papers | Visions of Enchantment

Posted in Calls for Papers by Editor on June 15, 2013

From the conference website:

Visions of Enchantment: Occultism, Spirituality and Visual Culture
University of Cambridge, 17-18 March 2014

Proposals due by 31 October 2013

This two-day event is a collaboration between the Department of History of Art, University of Cambridge and the Arts University Bournemouth and is organised in association with the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism. The conference seeks to investigate the formative role that occultism and magic have played in Western and non-Western visual and material culture. It aims to present original research in this field as well as to establish a productive dialogue between academics with a particular research interest in occultism and visual
culture.

We invite proposals from a variety of disciplines and perspectives, provided that they present innovative insights into visual, symbolic or material aspects of the esoteric tradition. Acceptable topics may include, but are by no means limited to, the following areas:
• Alchemy and Hermetic symbolism
• Astrology and astrological illustrations
• The visual and material culture of witchcraft, black magic and sorcery
• Talismans, totems, fetishes and other apotropaic objects
• Occult and spiritual aspects of Jewish, Christian, Islamic and Hindu art
• Theosophy and modern visual culture
• The visual and material culture of other occult movements and societies
• Surrealism and the occult
• The influence of occultism and the spiritual on other avant-garde movements
• Occult art, counter-culture and radical/subversive politics
• Women artists and the occult
• Gendered, sexual and ‘queer’ ramifications of esoteric art
• Photography, spiritism, séances and automatic drawings/paintings
• The supernatural in performance, cinema, experimental film and video-installations
• Occultism and magic in contemporary visual culture

Papers should be 20 minutes in length and will be followed by a 10-minute Q&A session. Abstracts of no more than 500 words and a short bio-sketch of no more  than 150 words should be sent as a single Word.doc to
enchantment2014@gmail.com by 31 October 2013. Early applications are encouraged.

We plan to publish the proceedings of this conference. Please indicate therefore whether you would be interested in further developing your paper for a publication of collected essays after the event.

Confirmed keynote speakers:
M. E. Warlick (University of Denver)
Emilie Savage-Smith (University of Oxford)
Marco Pasi (University of Amsterdam)
Sarah Turner (University of York)

For more information, please visit www.visionsofenchantment.com.

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