Eighteenth-Century Encounters: Lövstabruk, Sweden
by Michael Yonan
In traveling through the forested plains of eastern Sweden, one encounters a Nordic rural idyll. Abundantly verdant, dotted with charming red houses, and home to the occasional moose, it is a region seemingly far removed from the bustle of Stockholm or the university culture of nearby Uppsala. The presence of scattered Viking runestones in the landscape only adds to the feeling of having traveled far from the modern world. Yet as one enters the front gates of Lövstabruk, a beautifully preserved eighteenth-century mining estate, it becomes apparent this was in its time no remote backwater but that, instead, it kept in touch with the most current continental developments in the sciences and arts.
Truthfully, the realization didn’t come entirely as a surprise when I visited Lövstabruk in May. Virtually every Swedish dix-huitièmiste speaks of the town with great affection, and many conveyed the belief that one finds there something very Swedish indeed. That interested me greatly, since one of Sweden’s more remarkable eighteenth-century qualities was its cosmpolitanism, its participation in cultural developments we associate mostly with other places. The best known to art historians is the Swedish connection to France. Yet that’s just the beginning of a much larger history of Swedish cultural exchange, of which Lövstabruk is a prime example.
To understand this place, one needs to be familiar with the Swedish institution of the bruk. The word has no exact English equivalent; it can mean forge, mine, or mill. In Sweden the bruk was a major impetus for small-scale civic development based on Sweden’s immensely rich mineral and metal deposits. The largest of the nation’s many mines was the Great Falun Mine (Stora Kopparberg), which operated for a millennium and at its peak supplied Europe with two-thirds of its copper. Lövstabruk was an ironworks that processed ore from the nearby mine at Dannemora. Interestingly, the region’s miners were a mixture of native Swedes and émigré Walloons who relocated to work in the industry. One can find in Sweden today the legacy of mass Walloon migration in the occasional French or French-sounding name.
For art historians, Lövstabruk is most interesting because of its material legacy. The nobles overseeing the estate originated in the Netherlands, and it was they who expanded Lövstabruk’s footprint after a 1719 fire. Notable among them was Charles de Geer (1720–1778), who began collecting books and natural specimens for the library at Lövsta. De Geer published a comprehensive multivolume study of insects—modeled after Réaumur and Linnaeus—and oversaw an extensive building campaign that resulted in many of Lövstabruk’s architectural glories. The manor house contains a series of rococo rooms hung with dozens of beautiful eighteenth-century portraits. The musical culture at Lövstabruk was also world-class; the de Geers collected musical scores from Amsterdam and Paris for use in local concerts. But the jewel of Lövstabruk is unquestionably the library, designed by Swedish architect Jean-Eric Rehn (1717–1793). Housed in a separate little building immediately overlooking the central waterway and garden, the library gives the impression of having been left untouched since 1780. It
perfectly evokes the nobleman–scholar–entrepreneur ideal so
cherished during the Enlightenment.
Postal deliveries to this little Swedish town must have been incredible indeed, containing as they did drawings by Watteau and Boucher, scores by Handel and Vivaldi, and the latest volumes of Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie. I spotted Mme de Graffigny’s Lettres d’une péruvienne and books by Montesquieu and Rousseau on the library’s shelves. This give-and-take between such a distinctively local institution, the bruk, and the larger international culture is what makes Lövstabruk so distinctive. Recently, historian Göran Rydén has described Lövstabruk as an architectural metaphor for eighteenth-century Sweden as a whole: “a local community reaching out to a much wider global setting,” as well as “a place consuming commodities from other global places.”1 That interaction between the local and the global produces a “provincial cosmpolitanism,” to use Rydén’s term, the effects of which shaped the formation of Swedish society. To a visitor like me, it seems correct to claim that Lövstabruk was a microcosm of the eighteenth-century world.
1. Göran Rydén, “Provincial Cosmopolitanism: An Introduction,” in Sweden in the Eighteenth-Century World, ed. Göran Rydén (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), p. 5.
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Michael Yonan is the president of HECAA and author of Empress Maria Theresa and the Politics of Habsburg Imperial Art (Penn State Press, 2011). From January to June 2014 he was research fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala.
Call for Papers | SCSECS 2015 Session, Devices for Making Art
Paper, Paints, Crayons and Camera Obscura: Devices for Making Art in the Eighteenth Century
Session at the Annual Meeting of the South Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Marriott Grand, Point Clear, Alabama, 26–28 February 2015
Proposals due by 15 September 2014
Chair: Christina K. Lindeman, clindeman@southalabama.edu
While the focus of art historical study has concentrated on the finished portrait, painting, and print, this panel seeks papers that explore the historical, social and cultural context of the devices, implements, and things that made art in the eighteenth century. Possible paper topics include: new technologies that produced art products; trade and market of materials; art treatises or literary accounts on using devices. Interdisciplinary papers are welcome.
More information about the conference is available from the SCSECS newsletter, available as a PDF file here»
Also see the SCSECS website.
Exhibition | William Blake: Apprentice and Master
William Blake, Nebuchadnezzar, ca. 1795–1805, colour print,
ink, and watercolour on paper, 54.3 x 72.5 cm (London: Tate)
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From the Ashmolean:
William Blake: Apprentice and Master
Ashmolean, Oxford, 4 December 2014 — 1 March 2015
Curated by Michael Phillips and Colin Harrison
This major exhibition focuses on the extraordinary life and work of William Blake (1757–1827), printmaker, painter and revolutionary poet of the prophetic books. It examines his formation as an artist, apprenticeship as an engraver, and his maturity during the 1790s when he was at the height of his powers as both an artist and revolutionary poet. We also explore his influence on the young artist-printmakers who gathered around him in the last years of his life, including Samuel Palmer, George Richmond and Edward Calvert.
One of the most popular English artists, William Blake is still one of the least understood. His radical politics were reflected in his extraordinary technical innovations, especially in the field of printmaking and the illuminated book. This exhibition brings together more than 90 of Blake’s most celebrated works and offers new insights into his remarkable originality and influence.
At a young age William Blake showed artistic promise and, at the age of 15, was apprenticed to James Basire, the official engraver to the Society of Antiquaries. Under Basire’s tutelage, Blake was sent out to study London’s gothic churches and, most particularly, the monuments and decorations in Westminster Abbey—an experience which was to prove formative for his later style and imagery. The first section of the exhibition looks at Blake’s early work, exemplifying his already unorthodox approach.
After studying at the Antique School of the Royal Academy, Blake opened a print shop with his former apprentice colleague, James Parker, and from this point he began to associate with the leading writers and intellectuals of radical politics such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine, who gathered at the house of publisher, Joseph Johnson. Blake was soon producing prints of startling originality, which anticipate by nearly a century the monotypes made by artists such as Edgar Degas from the 1880s onwards. The exhibition examines Blake’s technical innovations in the creation of his illuminated books, which brought a new sophistication to colour printing. Among the works on display are several of the most extraordinary illuminated books, including The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and a complete set of the plates from Europe: A Prophecy, together with some of the finest separate plates, among them Nebuchadnezzar and Newton.
Apprentice and Master will also look at Blake’s later career when, encouraged by his friendship with the young artist, John Linnell, he developed an interest in the great artist-printmakers of the Renaissance such as Albrecht Dürer and Lucas van Leyden. It was Linnell who commissioned the last of Blake’s great series of watercolours, the illustrations to the Book of Job and to Dante. It was these works, and above all the small woodcut illustrations to Virgil’s Pastorals, which inspired the young artists Samuel Palmer, George Richmond, and Edward Calvert, known as the Ancients. During the last three years of his life, they visited Blake and his wife in their two-room flat off the Strand. This exhibition juxtaposes many of the works the Ancients would have seen on these visits, with their own early works. Among the most notable are Palmer’s greatest creations, the six sepia drawings of 1825; and Calvert’s exquisite woodcuts of the late 1820s.
William Blake: Apprentice and Master has been curated by Dr Michael Phillips (Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies, University of York) and Mr Colin Harrison (Senior Curator of European Art, Ashmolean Museum).
Michael Phillips is currently writing a biography of William Blake in Lambeth during the anti-Jacobin Terror in Britain, entitled Blake and the Terror. His edition in facsimile of Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell was published by the Bodleian Library and the University of Chicago Press in 2011. He was guest curator of the William Blake Exhibition that opened in Paris at the Petit Palais from 1 April to 28 June 2009 and editor of the catalogue. He was also guest curator of the major Blake exhibition at Tate Britain and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2000–2001, and is currently guest curator of the Blake exhibition opening in December 2014 in the new galleries of the Ashmolean Museum of the University of Oxford, William Blake: Apprentice & Master, where Blake’s printmaking studio at No. 13 Hercules Buildings, Lambeth, will be recreated.
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Michael Phillips, William Blake: Apprentice and Master (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2015), 200 pages, ISBN: 978-1854442888, £21 / $40.
Exhibition | Robert Le Vrac Tournières: Portaitriste au XVIIIe siècle
From the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen:
Robert Le Vrac Tournières: Portaitriste au XVIIIe siècle
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen, 14 June — 21 September 2014
L’exposition d’été du musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen dépend étroitement du chiffre 3 : 3 artistes (deux portraitistes et un paysagiste), 3 siècles (les XVIIIe, XIXe et XXe), 3 époques, 3 temps de l’histoire de l’art mais aussi de l’histoire du musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen.
Robert Le Vrac Tournières (1667–1752) et Marie-Gabrielle Capet (1761–1818) furent de ramarquables portraitistes, chacun dans leur genre : Tournières fut un des grands maîtres du portrait au temps de Louis XV et Capet porta le genre de la miniature (précieux portraits peints sur ivoire) à un point éblouissant. Joan Mitchell (1925–1992), quant à elle, demeure l’un des grands peintres abstraits de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle.
La muséographie des trois salles est spécialement conçue pour chaque artistes : elle met en valeur les compositions de Tournières, suggére l’atmosphère d’un cabinet d’amateur pour les miniatures de Capet et joue des vastes espaces lumineux pour les paysages de Mitchell. Il se trouve aussi que chacun de ces artistes tient une place importante dans l’histoire du musée pour des raisons très différentes. Tournières, car des oeuvres insignes de ce maître sont récemment entrées dans les collections. Capet, car ce qui est probablement son chef-d’oeuvre est conservé au musée après y avoir été volé puis restitué. Joan Mitchell est un temps fort des collections contemporaines de Caen. Ces trois peintres sont le point de départ de trois expositions au cours desquelles sont évoqués leur histoire, leur oeuvre, leur art. Une façon de réconcilier le hasard et la raison.
Robert Le Vrac Tournières, né et mort à Caen (1667–1752), a eu une longue et brillante carrière presque exclusivement parisienne. Pendant près d’un demi-siècle, c’est une clientèle aristocratique et bourgeoise qui fréquente son atelier où il propose un art hérité de Rigaud, sans exclure une production de petits tableaux dans le goût nordique, tout comme des allégories décoratives. Jalon important de l’histoire du portrait français. Tournières n’a jamais fait l’objet d’exposition monographique. Il appartient au musée de Caen, qui possède un ensemble significatif de ses oeuvres, d’organiser une manifestation qui restitue l’étendue de son art, en regroupant des oeuvres provenant essentiellement des grandes collections publiques.
Eddie Tassel and Patrick Ramade, Robert Le Vrac Tournières: Les facettes d’un portraitiste (Cologne: Snoeck Verlagsgesellschaft, 2014), 96 pages, ISBN: 978-9461611840, 18€.
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As reported by Didier Rykner for La Tribune de l’Art (July 2014), the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen purchased at Christie’s (New York, 30 January 2014) Robert Le Vrac Tournières’s 1704 Self-portrait with Pierre de la Roche, which had previously been in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The painting sold for $37,500.
Exhibition | Marie-Gabrielle Capet: Une Virtuose de la Miniature
From the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen:
Marie-Gabrielle Capet: Une Virtuose de la Miniature
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen, 14 June — 21 September 2014
L’exposition d’été du musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen dépend étroitement du chiffre 3 : 3 artistes (deux portraitistes et un paysagiste), 3 siècles (les XVIIIe, XIXe et XXe), 3 époques, 3 temps de l’histoire de l’art mais aussi de l’histoire du musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen.
Robert Le Vrac Tournières (1667–1752) et Marie-Gabrielle Capet (1761–1818) furent de ramarquables portraitistes, chacun dans leur genre : Tournières fut un des grands maîtres du portrait au temps de Louis XV et Capet porta le genre de la miniature (précieux portraits peints sur ivoire) à un point éblouissant. Joan Mitchell (1925–1992), quant à elle, demeure l’un des grands peintres abstraits de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle.
La muséographie des trois salles est spécialement conçue pour chaque artistes : elle met en valeur les compositions de Tournières, suggére l’atmosphère d’un cabinet d’amateur pour les miniatures de Capet et joue des vastes espaces lumineux pour les paysages de Mitchell. Il se trouve aussi que chacun de ces artistes tient une place importante dans l’histoire du musée pour des raisons très différentes. Tournières, car des oeuvres insignes de ce maître sont récemment entrées dans les collections. Capet, car ce qui est probablement son chef-d’oeuvre est conservé au musée après y avoir été volé puis restitué. Joan Mitchell est un temps fort des collections contemporaines de Caen. Ces trois peintres sont le point de départ de trois expositions au cours desquelles sont évoqués leur histoire, leur oeuvre, leur art. Une façon de réconcilier le hasard et la raison.
Marie-Gabrielle Capet: Une Virtuose de la Miniature
L’an dernier, le musée a pu retrouver, presque par miracle, une miniature volée en 1925 : le Portrait de Jean-Antoine Houdon sculptant le buste de Voltaire, chef-d’oeuvre de la grande miniaturiste Marie-Gabrielle Capet (1761–1818). Avec comme prétexte cet heureux évènement, l’exposition se propose de rassembler le meilleur de la production de l’artiste ; des miniatures, mais aussi des tableaux issus de collections publiques et privées, françaises et étrangères, qui permettront d’illustrer un style qui fascina son époque, exactitude illusionniste de la touche et rendu vibrant de la lumière. L’ensemble permet d’évoquer l’influence capitale de ses maîtres, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard et son époux François-André Vincent.
Marie-Gabrielle Capet (1761–1818): Une Virtuose de la Miniature (Cologne: Snoeck Verlagsgesellschaft, 2014), 2014) 104 pages, ISBN: 978-9461611659, 18€.
The Art Bulletin, June 2014
The eighteenth century in the current issue of The Art Bulletin:
The Art Bulletin 96 (June 2014)
Marcia Pointon, “Casts, Imprints, and the Deathliness of Things: Artifacts at the Edge,” pp. 170–95.
The practice of making death masks was extensive throughout Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, yet their interest to scholars has been confined to their preparatory role in the production of portrait sculpture, the dissemination of phrenology, and as a figure for the indexicality of photographic images. The meanings generated, past and present, by casts of faces and other body parts can be investigated by addressing their materiality. As three-dimensional artifacts, positives deriving from negatives, casts have been understood as deathly in that they present an absence. In what does this deathliness consist, and how is it communicated?
Joanne Rappaport, Review of Daniela Bleichmar, Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment (The
University of Chicago Press, 2012), pp. 241–43.
Conference | Fifth Annual Feminist Art History Conference
From the conference webpages:
Fifth Annual Feminist Art History Conference
American University, Washington, D.C., 31 October — 2 November 2014
The Fifth Annual Feminist Art History Conference, sponsored by the Art History Program of American University, offers participants a space in which to engage with the expanding legacy of Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, two pioneering feminist art historians and professors emerita of art history at AU. This year’s conference includes sixty-eight papers in seventeen sessions. The papers have a global focus that spans a broad range of topics and time periods; together they illustrate the diverse ways in which feminist research and interpretation continue to inform art historical analysis and scholarship.
All events this year will take place on the American University campus. Please see the 2014 program posted online. This year’s keynote speaker, Dr. Lisa Gail Collins, is Professor of Art History at Vassar College. Her talk, titled “Here Lies Love: Feminism, Mourning, and a Quilt from Gee’s Bend,” is drawn from her current book project on history, memory, creativity, and community.
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The eighteenth-century offerings are modest, but these two caught my attention. –CH
• Heather Belnap Jensen, “Parures, Pashminas, and Portraiture, or, How the Bonaparte Women Fashioned the Napoleonic Empire”
• Anne Nellis Richter, “The Marchioness of Stafford and the Cleveland House Gallery, 1812”
New Book | Selling Silks: A Merchant’s Sample Book
From the V&A:
Lesley Ellis Miller, Selling Silks: A Merchant’s Sample Book (London: V&A Publishing, 2014), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-1851777815, £35.
In 1764, British Customs confiscated a book containing hundreds of silk samples of different qualities from French agents who were attempting to sell them illegally in London. The merchant’s sample book acquired in 1972 by the V&A may be this very book, a fascinating record of the eighteenth-century French and English silk industries and their commercial practices.
Alongside a full and faithful reproduction of the whole album, Lesley Miller sets in context the role of the book as a marketing tool from the premier European silk-weaving centre of Lyon and as a model for Spitalfields manufacturers. This publication makes accessible the contents of an extremely rare and fragile object. Translations of French inscriptions, identification of how samples have migrated from one page to another, and technical analysis of some of the silks, as well as a glossary and biographical data on the Lyonnais suppliers make this an invaluable resource for historians, collectors and designers.
Lesley Ellis Miller is Senior Curator of Textiles and Fashion at the V&A. She is a specialist in the silk industry of eighteenth-century Lyon. She is author of a monograph on the fashion designer Cristobal Balenciaga (V&A 2007) and is currently working on the refurbishment of the V&A’s galleries of European seventeenth- and eighteenth-century decorative arts.
Sample pages are available here»
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From La Bibliothèque des Arts:
Lesley Ellis Miller, Soieries: Le livre d’échantillons d’un marchand français au siècle des Lumières, translated by Anne de Thoisy-Dallem (Lausanne: La Bibliothèque des Arts, 2014), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-2884531818, €49.
Par sa grande rareté, le livre d’échantillons reproduit ici pour la première fois et dont l’original est conservé au Victoria & Albert Museum de Londres, présente un intérêt unique. C’est une véritable révélation qui offre une source d’informations capitale sur la création des soieries en France au XVIIIe siècle.
La provenance de ce livre d’échantillons est originale à elle toute seule. En effet, il fut saisi en 1764 par les Douanes anglaises qui luttaient contre les importations illégales de textiles, qu’organisaient des agents français. Nous sommes aussi en plein roman d’espionnage et de contre –espionnage industriel, comme l’explique l’auteur Lesley E. Miller, conservatrice en chef du Département des Textiles et de la Mode au Victoria and Albert Museum. Son texte vivant nous immerge dans la vie quotidienne des soyeux lyonnais des années 1760. Elle apporte un éclairage très documenté sur la fabrication et sur le commerce des textiles à cette époque qu’elle a étudiée pendant plusieurs années. L’auteur brosse également un panorama illustré de la mode et de l’usage des soieries françaises en Europe sous l’Ancien Régime.
Une analyse technique rigoureuse de chacun des échantillons confère à ce livre le caractère d’un ouvrage de référence qui satisfera les attentes les plus exigeantes. Mais c’est le charme immense qui se dégage de la partie « fac-similé » qui fait de ce livre d’échantillons, reproduit intégralement, un véritable objet de séduction. L’original, relié en carton et en parchemin ne pèse pas moins de 8,400 kg ! Source inépuisable d’inspiration, ces centaines de «morceaux d’étoffe » aux noms pleins de poésie, aujourd’hui disparus, touchent par la fraîcheur de leurs tons et la richesse des motifs.
En dehors des spécialistes et des professionnels de la mode et des textiles, ce livre s’adresse également à tous les amateurs des arts décoratifs.
The French edition was recently featured at La Tribune de l’Art.
Conference | Political Portraiture in the United States and France
From the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery:
Political Portraiture in the United States and France, 1776–1814
Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., 25–26 September 2014
The Montana State University Foundation and the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery are pleased to invite scholars, students, connoisseurs, and friends of American-French cultural exchange to attend an international conference, Political Portraiture in the United States and France during the Revolutionary and Federal Eras, ca. 1776–1814.
The conference will mark the bicentennial of an important historical event: British capture of Washington, D.C. in 1814 and the burning of the Capitol along with Congress’s state portraits of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. European and North American scholars from universities and museums will discuss aspects of diplomatic strategy, democratic representation, and republican identity as promoted in portraits.
The conference is made possible by generous support from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and the Henry Luce Foundation. This event is free and open to the public. Seating is limited, so please make a reservation at your earliest convenience.
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T H U R S D A Y , 2 5 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 4
9:00 Welcome and Opening Remarks
Kim Sajet, Director of the National Portrait Gallery
Waded Cruzado, President of Montana State University
Brandon Brame Fortune, Chief Curator of the National Portrait Gallery
Todd Larkin, Associate Professor of Montana State University
9:45 Session 1. State Portraits in the United States and France
Chair: Olivier Bonfait, Professeur d’histoire de l’art moderne, Université de Bourgogne
• Cristina Martinez, University of Ottawa, “Allan Ramsay’s Portrait Enterprise: The Propagation and Reception of a Ruler’s Image”
• David O’Brien, University of Illinois, “Republicanism in Portraits of Napoleon Bonaparte”
• Heather McPherson, University of Alabama, “Man + Horse: Repurposing the Equestrian Portrait in the Post-Revolutionary Era”
11:30 Session 2. The Portrait Copy, Painted and Printed
Chair: Xavier Salmon, Conservateur général, Directeur du département des arts graphiques, Musée du Louvre
• Wendy Bellion, University of Delaware, “Romans in New York: British Statuary and Atlantic Revolutions”
• Laurent Hugues, Monuments historiques, Direction régionale des affaires culturelles de Languedoc-Roussillon, “Les dons de portraits du roi sous Louis XVI”
• Stéphane Roy, Carleton University, “Prints, Paintings and National Characters: Washington’s Likeness in a Transnational Perspective”
• Xavier Salmon, Musée du Louvre, “Portraiturer les souverains entre 1800 et 1831: L’exemple de François Gérard”
1:30 Lunch Break
3:00 Session 3. The Portrait as a Diplomatic Gift
Chair: Brandon Brame Fortune, Chief Curator, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.
• Ellen Miles, National Portrait Gallery, “Gilbert Stuart’s Lansdowne Portrait of George Washington: From Private Diplomatic Gift to State Portrait”
• Todd Larkin, Montana State University, “What Ever Happened to the U.S. Congress’s State Portraits of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette? The Politics of Pictorial Display, Displacement, and Destruction at the Capitol, 1800–1814”
• Gaye Wilson, Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, “Preparations for Diplomacy: Gilbert Stuart’s Pendant Portraits of President Jefferson and Secretary Madison”
• Cyril Lécosse, Université de Strasbourg, “Rivalries and Dissentions within the Maison de l’Empereur: The Portraitists of Napoleon and the Production of Diplomatic Gifts”
F R I D A Y , 2 6 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 4
9:00 Session 4. Republicanism and the Politician’s Portrait
Chair: Philippe Bordes, Professeur d’histoire de l’art moderne, Université de Lyon
• Matthew Fisk, Independent Scholar, “The Semiotic Origin—and Paradox—of the Federalist Ideal in John Trumbull’s Portrait of General George Washington (1780)”
• Guillaume Mazeau, Université de Paris, “The Physionotrace in Europe and North America (1780–1800): A Tool for Visualizing a New Political Culture”
• Gerrit Walczak, Technical University Berlin, “Representative Democracy and Popular Insurgency: Collective Portraiture under the National Convention”
• Kathryn Calley Galitz, Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Signs of Power: Bonaparte and the Concordat of 1801”
11:15 Session 5. Patriotism and the Family Portrait
Chair: Amy Freund, Assistant Professor of the History of Art, Texas Christian University
• Melissa Hyde, University of Florida, “Family Matters in French Royal Portraiture”
• Kevin Murphy, Vanderbilt University, “Family Ties in the Revolutionary Atlantic: The Lafayettes and Washingtons, LaGrange and Mt. Vernon”
• Marlen Schneider, University of Leipzig, “Politicizing Portraiture: Formal Aspects of French Family Portraits between the Ancien Régime and the Republic”
• Todd Porterfield, Université de Montréal, “Against Portraiture: Representative and Planetary Bodies”
1:15 Lunch Break
2:45 Session 6. The Face and Body of Paris, Philadelphia, New York, and Washington: Splendor and Squalor, Leisure and Labor in the Early Modern Metropolis
Chair: Margaretta Lovell, Professor of the History of Art, University of California
• Jeffrey A. Cohen, Bryn Mawr College, “A Tale of Four Cities: Representations, Fabric, and Ambitions”
• Min Kyung Lee, College of the Holy Cross, “From Portrait to Plan: Mapping Capital Cities in the Late Eighteenth Century”
• Laura Turner Igoe, Temple University, “Corruption and Failure in the Body Politic: John Lewis Krimmel’s Images of the Centre Square Waterworks and the Bank of Pennsylvania”
• Dell Upton, University of California, “On the Back of the Engraving: Obverse and Reverse in Philadelphia’s Federal-Era Urban Imagery”
4:45 Closing Remarks
Call for Papers | Arts décoratifs et transmissions des savoirs en France
From ApAhAu:
Arts décoratifs et transmissions des savoirs en France du XVIIe au XXIe siècle
Université Bordeaux Montaigne, 12 March 2015
Proposals due by 26 September 2014
En France, la création de l’Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture en 1648 institutionnalise la primauté des beaux-arts sur les arts dits mécaniques. Alors que l’Académie et ses imitations provinciales instruisent les peintres et les sculpteurs, les artistes/artisans apprennent leurs métiers au sein des corporations, des manufactures ou bien encore des « écoles de dessin » qui se multiplient à partir de 1750. En effet, le dessin est un enjeu majeur dans l’apprentissage de ces arts, dits décoratifs à partir du XIXe siècle. À cette époque, l’ouverture de départements spécialisés dans les musées, l’accroissement du nombre de revues, les réformes pédagogiques au sein des écoles de dessin témoignent d’un désir d’étudier les objets d’art, de reconsidérer la hiérarchie entre arts mineurs et arts majeurs, mais aussi d’en renouveler la production d’un point de vue esthétique et technique. L’idéal de la fusion des arts et celui de l’artisan-créateur sont toutefois confrontés aux nécessités d’une production en série qui réduit la part de créativité d’une main d’œuvre bon marché. La question du statut des arts demeure centrale au XXe siècle, prolongée notamment à travers la notion plus récente de design industriel. Néanmoins, les réflexions entamées au XIXe siècle permettent un élargissement des domaines d’enseignement : vers le costume, l’affiche, le vitrail, l’éclairage autour de 1920 ; ensuite, vers le graphisme, la presse, la publicité ; puis vers l’informatique. Ajoutons enfin, l’entrée timide des arts décoratifs au sein de l’enseignement universitaire de l’histoire de l’art.
L’histoire des arts décoratifs est parcourue de débats et cette notion est en perpétuelle évolution. C’est pourquoi cette journée d’étude propose d’explorer ce domaine comme champ d’un savoir digne d’être l’objet d’une transmission. Il s’agit d’interroger les enjeux de l’enseignement délivré aux élèves et de comprendre, au sein de l’enseignement de l’histoire de l’art, la fonction occupée par les arts dits décoratifs par rapport aux beaux-arts. Les travaux historiographiques sur le sujet étant encore relativement peu nombreux, il serait utile de faire un état de la recherche. Cet appel s’adresse donc à tous les chercheurs et, en particulier, aux étudiants de master, aux doctorants et aux jeunes docteurs. À travers l’étude des sources écrites et des institutions, pourront être abordés le contenu des connaissances délivrées aux artistes ou aux étudiants, les méthodes pédagogiques mises en œuvre, la rhétorique des discours, les politiques éditoriales et les éventuelles récupérations idéologiques à l’œuvre dans la transmission d’un savoir relatif aux arts décoratifs.
La réflexion pourra s’articuler autour des problématiques suivantes, qui ne constituent cependant pas une liste exhaustive: (more…)
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