Symposium | Surfaces, 15th–19th Centuries
From NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts:
Surfaces, 15th–19th Centuries
Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 27 March 2015
Organized by Noémie Etienne, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute of Fine Arts-NYU
This one-day symposium addresses the issue of surface in paintings, architecture and photography in Europe between the 15th and 19th centuries. The focus of this reflection is an examination of how
surfaces function: how do their specific properties challenge representation or the viewer? How do they determine the consumption and engagement with the object? Later variations such as graffiti, repairs, or traces of multiple hand, may also be of interest in understanding how the surface of an artwork is redefined over time.
P R O G R A M M E
9:30 Introduction, Noémie Etienne (Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute of Fine Arts-NYU)
9:45 Session I: An Anthropology of Surfaces
• Charlotte Guichard (Researcher, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris), Scratched Surfaces: Graffiti in Early Modern Rome
• Catherine Girard (Lecturer and Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Columbia University), Ambiguous Ref(l)ection: Experiencing French Rococo Paintings of Hunting Meals
• Juanita Solano (PhD Candidate) and Laura Panadero (MA Candidate in Conservation, Institute of Fine Arts-NYU), Search of Depth: Deterioration and Consumption of Daguerreotype and Albumen Photographs
11:45 Lunch Break
1:00 Session II: Making and Seeing
• Diane Bodart (Assistant Professor, Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University), Los borrones de Ticiano: The Venetian Brushstroke and Its Spanish Translations
• Francisco Chaparro (PhD Candidate) and Matthew Hayes (PhD Candidate, Institute of Fine Arts-NYU), ‘Distant Strokes’: The Surface and the Painter in Las Meninas
• Daniella Berman (PhD Candidate) and Kari Rayner (MA Candidate in Conservation, Institute of Fine Arts-NYU), ‘Is this the stuff of painting?’: The Question of Finish in Eighteenth-Century France
3:00 Break
3:30 Session III: Surface as Contact Zone: Texture and Touch
• Étienne Jollet (Professor, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), The Touch of Things: Surface Contacts in Chardin’s Still-lives
• Christina Ferando (Visiting Assistant Professor, Williams College, Williamstown), The Deceptive Surface: Perception and Sculpture’s Skin
• Susan Sidlauskas (Professor, Department of Art History, Rutgers, University), John Singer Sargent and the Physics of Touch
Call for Papers | Les Acteurs de la Rocaille
From H-ArtHist:
Les Acteurs de la Rocaille
Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA), Paris, 1–3 October 2015
Proposals due by 29 April 2015
L’étude des arts décoratifs fédère aujourd’hui une large communauté de chercheurs et engage, par-delà l’histoire artistique des objets et des décors, des spécialités et des compétences variées (littérature, critique, esthétique, sociologie, visual studies, gender studies). Dans la perspective des travaux d’envergure menés sur la production rocaille de certains grands ornemanistes (Jacques de Lajoüe, Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier, François Boucher), le colloque Les acteurs de la rocaille entend opérer un retour à l’objet tout en mettant à profit les récentes conclusions énoncées dans le domaine des sciences humaines.
Marquant le 300e anniversaire du début de la Régence, dont la rocaille fut l’une des expressions majeures, il explorera cet art libre et inventif dans le domaine du décor, des arts décoratifs et de l’architecture. L’objectif visé sera de mieux comprendre le rôle historique de chacun des acteurs de la rocaille tout au long du XVIIIe siècle, depuis sa conception jusqu’à sa diffusion, à Paris, en province et dans le reste de l’Europe.
Les propositions préciseront le nom de l’intervenant, ses coordonnées institutionnelles, le titre de la communication proposée, et un résumé de 500 mots maximum. Elles seront envoyées avant le 30 avril 2015 à l’adresse suivante: lesacteursdelarocaille@gmail.com. Un retour sur l’examen des candidatures sera donné à la fin du mois de mai 2015. Le colloque se tiendra à Institut national d’histoire de l’art les 1er, 2 et 3 octobre 2015.
Organisation scientifique: Michaël Decrossas (INHA), Alexia Lebeurre (Université Bordeaux Montaigne), Marie-Pauline Martin (Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS TELEMME UMR 7303), Claire Ollagnier (Labex – CAP / INHA, Ghamu).
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Note (added 22 March 2015) — Also see the call for papers for Reconsidering the Rococo: 18th to 21st Centuries / Penser le Rococo (XVIIIe–XXIe Siècle) at the University of Lausanne (5–6 November 2015).
New Book | The Challenge of Emulation in Art and Architecture
From Ashgate:
David Mayernik, The Challenge of Emulation in Art and Architecture: Between Imitation and Invention (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013), 296 pages, ISBN: 978-1409457671, $110.
Emulation is a challenging middle ground between imitation and invention. The idea of rivaling by means of imitation, as old as the Aenead and as modern as Michelangelo, fit neither the pessimistic deference of the neoclassicists nor the revolutionary spirit of the Romantics. Emulation thus disappeared along with the Renaissance humanist tradition, but it is slowly being recovered in the scholarship of Roman art. It remains to recover emulation for the Renaissance itself, and to revivify it for modern practice.
Mayernik argues that it was the absence of a coherent understanding of emulation that fostered the fissuring of artistic production in the later eighteenth century into those devoted to copying the past and those interested in continual novelty, a situation solidified over the course of the nineteenth century and mostly taken for granted today. This book is a unique contribution to our understanding of the historical phenomenon of emulation, and perhaps more importantly a timely argument for its value to contemporary practice.
David Mayernik is a practicing artist and architect, and an Associate Professor at the University of Notre Dame’s School of Architecture.
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C O N T E N T S
Preface
Introduction
1 On Imitation
2 On Emulation: A Part of Emulation, Or Something Else Again?
3 The Theater of Aspirations: Apprenticeship as Performance
4 An Atelier of Rivals: Constructive Competition
5 The Mosaic of History: Tesserae and Continuum
6 Metamorphosis: Found in Translation
7 On Invention
8 The End of Emulation
9 Coda: The Case for Emulation
Bibliography
Index
Enfilade 
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