Enfilade

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