Exhibition | Fashion Forward, 3 Siècles de Mode
The exhibition closes this week at the Arts Décoratifs. Writing for Worn Through (10 August 2016), Hayley-Jane Dujardin-Edwards provides a review.
Fashion Forward, 3 Siècles de Mode, 1715–2016
Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, 7 April — 14 August 2016
Dress and Petticoat (robe à la française), ca. 1740, silk damask satin ground silk brocaded and filé (Collections UFAC, Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris / photo by Jean Tholance)
The Musée des Arts Décoratifs is celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of its fashion collection from April 7 to August 14, 2016. In doing so we are responding to our public’s strongly expressed desire to at last be shown an all-embracing panorama of fashion history over several centuries. It will also be an unique opportunity to showcase the jewels and highlight the particularities of a national fashion and textiles collection curated in full dialogue with the other departments of a museum dedicated to all the decorative arts. Fashion Forward, 3 Centuries of Fashion, 1715–2016 brings together 300 items of men’s, women’s and children’s fashion from the 18th century to today, selected from the museum’s collections to provide a novel chronological overview.
The Arts Décoratifs fashion collection now comprises more than 150,000 works, ranging from ancient textiles to haute couture creations and emblematic silhouettes of ready-to-wear fashion, but also including accessories, major collections of drawings and photographs, and the archives of iconic creators such as Elsa Schiaparelli, Madeleine Vionnet and Cristobal Balenciaga. Now France’s foremost national collection, it is the result of the amalgamation of two admirable collections, that of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs since its creation in 1864, and that of the Union Française des Arts du Costume (UFAC), founded in 1948 and currently presided by Pierre Bergé, of which the Musée des Arts Decoratifs is the proud custodian.
To mark the 30th anniversary of the opening of the Musée des Arts de la Mode—founded in 1986 on the initiative of Pierre Bergé and the French textile industry with the support of Jack Lang, then culture minister—the Musée des Arts Décoratifs is paying tribute to this collective adventure and great ‘fashion moment’. Fashion Forward, Three Centuries of Fashion casts a new spotlight on one of the richest collections in the world, freed from its display cases in the Fashion galleries to be shown for the first time in the museum’s Nave.
The three hundred pieces, selected from a collection constantly enriched by donations and acquisitions, take us on a journey through time, highlighting the key moments in fashion history from the very late 17th century to the most contemporary creation. Freeing itself from the dictates of the conservation of works and the stringent conditions of their display, the exhibition is conceived as an ideal museum of fashion, featuring the finest examples of three centuries of creation habitually illustrated in reference books. It also provides a fascinating new insight into fashion’s evolution via its designers, clients and periods, because now more than ever at Les Arts Décoratifs, fashion is treated as an artistic field that has wide-ranging echoes in the museum’s other collections. Fashion is a history of evolving techniques, materials and designs but also a history of changing times and attitudes, a reflection of the art of living. Fashion is even more fascinating when it is not self-generating but dialogues with the arts of its time, as did great figures of Couture such as Charles-Frederick Worth, Jacques Doucet, Paul Poiret, Jeanne Lanvin, Madeleine Vionnet, Gabrielle Chanel, Christian Dior and Yves Saint Laurent.
In a completely novel manner, the exhibition recreates each of these ‘fashion moments’ in its human, artistic and social context, not didactically but via ellipses illustrating fashion’s constant elective affinities with the decorative arts. Eighteenth-century wood paneling, scenic wallpapers by Zuber, Paul Iribe’s drawings for the ‘Robes de Paul Poiret’, and the straw marquetry doors created by Jean-Michel Frank for the writer François Mauriac, provide perfect settings for fashion’s stylistic expressions and the metamorphoses of the body and style from the 18th century. The exhibition culminates in the effervescence and singular eclecticism of the global contemporary fashion scene, in which the names of the most original creators are now associated with the most ancient fashion houses.
Because the entire history of fashion is also a history of the body and style, the exhibition’s artistic direction was entrusted to the British dancer and choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, formerly one of the stars of the New York City Ballet and winner of a Tony award for his stage adaptation of An American in Paris in 2014, based on the film by Vicente Minelli. In collaboration with the scenographer Jérôme Kaplan and assisted by Isabelle Vartan, Christopher Wheeldon has succeeded in giving the collection a sensual, poetic dimension, breathing new life into these illustrious creations by transforming every stage of the exhibition into a world in itself. Each of these moments is enhanced by a unique collaboration with the dancers of the Opéra de Paris, in which a choreography gracefully casts new light on a silhouette, posture or attitude characteristic of this social and artistic evolution of the body.
Exhibition | Highest Heaven: Spanish and Portuguese Colonial Art
Now on view at the San Antonio Museum of Art:
Highest Heaven: Spanish and Portuguese Colonial Art
of the Roberta and Richard Huber Collection
San Antonio Museum of Art, 11 June 2016 — 14 September 2016
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, 23 October 2016 — 22 January 2017
Worcester Art Museum, 12 March — 9 July 2017
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia, 2 March — 3 Jun 2018
Curated by William Keyse Rudolph and Marion J. Oettinger
Our Lady of Candlemas with Donors, Bolivian, Potosí, 1799, oil on canvas (Roberta and Richard Huber Collection; photograph by Graydon Wood, Philadelphia Museum of Art)
Highest Heaven explores the paintings, sculpture, furniture, ivories, and silverworks of the Altiplano, or high plains, of South America in the 18th century. Through the work of both well-regarded masters and lesser-known artists, Highest Heaven highlights the role of art in the establishment of new city centers in the Spanish Empire and the propagation of the Christian faith among indigenous peoples. Drawn exclusively from the distinguished collection of Roberta and Richard Huber, the exhibition highlights the distinct visual language created by the cultural and creative exchanges that occurred between Spain and Portugal and their South American colonies. The exhibition will remain on view through September 4, 2016, before traveling to the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California in October, and to the Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts the following March.
The exhibition features more than 100 works, including religious paintings, carved and gilded wooden sculptures, intimate ivories, and silverwork, originally housed in ecclesiastical and private collections throughout the former colonial possessions of Spain and Portugal. The majority of these works were created for functional purposes, as articles of faith or symbols of civic order, and were displayed in a manner that enhanced religious understanding, brought social order, and spurred conversion among colonial populations. Highest Heaven examines these uses, focusing in particular on the translation of Christian imagery to the colonies and the ways in which these works and objects worked to establish an ordered society and were integrated into religious life. The exhibition includes approximately 20 recent acquisitions by the Hubers, many of which have never before been seen in a museum exhibition.
“A central component of our mission is to examine and communicate the historic and cultural contexts of artworks, along with the objects themselves. Highest Heaven is an exciting opportunity to not only investigate the aesthetic beauty of this art, but also the significant role that it played in the cultural, religious, and social lives of these peoples,” said Katherine Luber, The Kelso Director of San Antonio Museum of Art. “We are grateful to Roberta and Richard for their collecting vision and the chance to share this incredible collection with our audiences. San Antonio is a city rich in history and diversity, and we look forward to engaging our community with this work, which we think will have a particular meaning here.”
Pax Depicting the Ecce Homo, Peruvian, 18th century, silver (Roberta and Richard Huber Collection; photograph by Graydon Wood, Philadelphia Museum of Art)
The exhibition is co-curated by William Keyse Rudolph, Mellon Chief Curator and Marie and Hugh Halff Curator of American Art, and Marion J. Oettinger Jr, Curator of Latin American Art. Unlike many previous exhibitions of Colonial Art, which have arranged objects by media, Highest Heaven will be organized according to iconography. After an introductory section that explores a group of objects made for secular life, the exhibition considers the art works religiously, from the angels and archangels that foretold the coming of Jesus Christ, through imagery dealing with the life of Christ and spread of the gospel, to the importance of the Virgin Mary and the saints. Each section of the exhibition contains a mixture of works of art in all media, from paintings to sculpture to silverwork and ivories.
The Altiplano stretches from northern Argentina to the flatlands of Peru, and much of the exhibition focuses on works produced by workshops in the major cities of Cuzco and Lima in modern day Peru and Potosi in modern day Bolivia, where both European and native artists practiced. Paintings and sculpture served primarily to disseminate Christian images and faith to the New World, while works in ivory and silver underscored the wealth and prosperity of the growing Empire. Paintings also frequently depicted major colonial cities to both capture their urban fabric and educate those back home on the appearance and existence of the colonies.
With the extensive growth of trade across the Empire, works of art took on a range of styles that represented European traditions and local idioms. In some instances, European aesthetics and subjects were replicated directly. In others, European saints, idols, and figures took on the appearance of native populations, enhancing their relevance and influence. Yet, in other work, Christian symbols were incorporated into scenes of local rural and urban life. Together, these distinct yet interrelated approaches, created a new visual culture that represented the expansiveness of the Empire, and spoke to the integration of a diversity of peoples into a single faith.
“In contrast to other areas of Spanish colonial scholarship, such as New Spain (present-day Southwestern United States, Mexico, and Central America), much less is known about the artists, workshop practices, and even the names of South American artists,” said Luber. “Collectors are often the first to blaze the trail of discovery, and then the scholarship follows. A show like Highest Heaven opens up avenues of investigation. We are producing a catalogue that we hope will spur additional scholarship in the field. That’s part of what is so exciting about this exhibition.”
New York-based collectors Roberta and Richard Huber developed the collection of colonial South American art over the last 40 years. The Hubers continue to discover new artists and works, building on their holdings for personal enjoyment and public education and making their collection a living and evolving one. They first discovered the art and antiquities of the Spanish Empire when Richard Huber was relocated for work to Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1962. His and Roberta’s love for the period grew as they traveled and lived in other areas of South America. Today, they are committed to enhancing understanding of the diversity, depth, and intricacy of art produced by artists across the Altiplano during Spanish rule.
Erin Kathleen Murphy and William Keyse Rudolph with contributions by Thomas B. F. Cummins, Katherine Moore McAllen, and Katherine Crawford Luber, Highest Heaven: Spanish and Portuguese Colonial Art from the Roberta and Richard Huber Collection (San Antonio: San Antonio Museum of Art, 2016), 192 pages, ISBN: 978-1883502225, $40.
Exhibition | Power and Piety: Spanish Colonial Art
Traveling exhibition through Art Services International:
Power & Piety: Spanish Colonial Art
Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, 18 March — April 17 2016
Loyola University Museum of Art, Chicago, 20 August — 13 November 2016
Appleton Museum of Art, College of Central Florida, Ocala, 3 December — 26 February 2017
Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, 1 July — 24 September 2017
Figge Art Museum, Davenport, 14 October — 7 January 2018
Middlebury College Museum of Art, Middlebury, 26 January — 22 April 2018
Allentown Art Museum (Pennsylvania), 25 August — 9 December 2018
Juan Pedro Lopez, Our Lady Guidance, ca. 1762, oil on wood (Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection)
From the late 17th century until the 1820s, vast profits from cattle ranching and the cultivation and trading of tropical crops turned Spanish American elites from cities in the Caribbean basin into some of the wealthiest people in the New World. The production and trading of religious art during this period was centered on high-end pieces for churches, the local nobility, and wealthy individuals; their fine craftsmanship rivaled that of luxury goods imported from Europe. More affordable—and less refined—artworks were produced in large numbers for the homes of people of lesser means.
Painters, sculptors, gilders, silversmiths, and cabinetmakers created pieces of the finest craftsmanship to compete with luxury goods imported from Europe. They benefited from a vast supply of assorted raw materials from the Americas that included not only precious metals such as gold and silver, but also rare wood varieties with colors and grains of unmatched richness, and unique local pigments. Through 57 paintings, sculpture, silver pieces, furniture, and other decorative devotional objects, this exhibition showcases a wide range of artistic production and the finesse of local masters. It offers an exceptional opportunity to learn more about the daily life and religious practices of colonial Latin America and sheds light on the nature of commercial exchange in the region.
The works are drawn from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection—a component of the Fundación Cisneros which was founded to enhance the appreciation of art from Latin America—and is co-organized by the Museum of Biblical Art, New York, and Art Services International, Alexandria, Virginia.
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Note (added 25 August 2018) — The original posting did not include the Allentown Art Museum.
Exhibition | Miniature World in White Gold: Meissen Porcelain
On view now at the Wadsworth Atheneum:
Miniature World in White Gold: Meissen Porcelain by Johann Joachim Kaendler
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, 16 January 2016 — 16 January 2017
Curated by Vanessa Sigalas
Model by Johann Joachim Kaendler,Writing Cavalier, ca. 1740, hard-paste porcelain.
Johann Joachim Kändler was one of the most visionary artists in the history of porcelain, creating more than 2,000 models over the course of his career and consistently testing the limits of porcelain as an artistic medium. Kändler was one of the first artists to use porcelain as a sculpting material rather than as a surface for painted decoration. His designs and figures—more detailed and realistic than any earlier creations—were essential for the development of porcelain as an independent art form in Europe.
Miniature World in White Gold showcases a broad selection of the finely detailed and innovative porcelain sculptures Kändler designed over his 44 years at the Meissen Porcelain Factory in Germany, featuring examples of his animals, crinoline figures, exotic representations, and court and peasant figures.
Model by Johann Joachim Kaendler, Persian Woman with Elephant, ca. 1763–74, hard-paste porcelain.
The formula for hard-paste porcelain, which originated in China centuries earlier, was not discovered in Europe until the early 18th century—only decades before Kändler became a modeler at Meissen. The material was as valuable as gold during his lifetime (1706–1775), when dinner services and figurines were commissioned by aristocrats to ornament extravagant banquet and dining tables. While they initially served as table decoration and conversation pieces, porcelain figures soon became collectibles themselves and were displayed in cabinets as independent artworks.
Call for Papers | AAH 2017 at Loughborough University
Here are some of the intriguing thematic offerings proposed for the Association of Art Historians 2017 conference that could include eighteenth-century papers. Be sure to consult the conference website for things I’ve overlooked. –CH
43rd Annual AAH Conference and Bookfair
Loughborough University, 6–8 April 2017
Proposals due by 7 November 2016
AAH2017 will celebrate the expansive spectrum of histories, theories and practices that characterize art historical research today. Internationally, the field of art history is eclectic and inclusive, reaching across geopolitical, cultural and disciplinary divides to extend our understanding of the visual and material culture of many diverse periods and places. At Loughborough, we are engaged with art history, contemporary practice and visual culture, linking arts-based research with advances in design, technology, media and communication, centred on the development of more sustainable and equitable global communities.
Please email your paper proposals straight to the session convenor(s). Provide a title and abstract for a 25 minute paper (max 250 words). Include your name, affiliation and email. Your paper title should be concise and accurately reflect what the paper is about (it should ‘say what it does on the tin’) because the title is what appears most first and foremost online, in social media and in the printed programme.
Keynote Speakers
Amelia Jones (Robert A. Day Professor in Art and Design and Vice-Dean of Critical Studies at the Roski School of Art and Design) and Mark Hallett (Director of studies at the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art)
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Session 1 | 50 Years On: Art History in the UK since the 1960s
Geoff Quilley, University of Sussex, g.quilley@sussex.ac.uk
Meaghan Clarke, University of Sussex, m.e.clarke@sussex.ac.uk
Francesco Ventrella, University of Sussex, fv37@sussex.ac.uk
The current decade marks the 50th anniversary of many Art History departments across the UK. It was not until the 1960s that the majority of Art History departments still functioning today were instituted. This was not merely coincidental, but was part of the seismic shift in post-war higher education that saw the wave of building of new universities. The consequent democratisation of the teaching of Art History in 1960s Britain had enormous impact both on the politics of the discipline and also on its place within an overall higher education ‘framework’. This session will seek to revisit that ‘new vision’ for Art History within 1960s culture, by reflecting on the history of Art History over the past 50 years, and focusing on its role within UK higher education, and educational philosophy and policy more generally. This might consider several inter-related sets of issues, including: the mutual impact and influences between the new departments and the old institutions, and how they might have prepared the terrain for the ‘New Art History’; how Art History intersected with the teaching of art and design; the relation of Art History to other disciplines, both established and new. What were the effects of the influx of Art History degrees on related professional environments such as museums? Did public perceptions of the discipline change as an effect of its popularisation through the media? And what has been, and continues to be, the public role of Art History, and how has this changed over the past half-century?
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Session 3 | Art History as Créolité/Creolising Art History
Alpesh Kantilal Patel, Florida International University, Miami, alpesh.patel@fiu.edu
As part of the three-day workshop titled ‘Créolité and Creolisation’, which took place on St Lucia as one of the platforms of Documenta 11 (2002), participants explored the genealogy of terms such as ‘creolization’ and ‘Créolité’, and their potential to describe phenomena beyond their historically and geographically specific origins (however slippery they are). Surprisingly, there has been little engagement with the potential of creolisation as a way of doing or writing art histories differently since that time. This session aims to redress this lacuna.
Stuart Hall, one of the workshop participants, writes that what distinguishes creolisation from hybridity or diaspora is that it refers to a process of cultural mixings that are a result of slavery, plantation culture, and colonialism. Yet, Martinican-born poet and theoretician Édouard Glissant notes that creolisation can refer to a broader set of sociocultural processes not only in the Caribbean but also ‘all the world’ (Tout-monde). Drawing on Hall and Glissant, Irit Rogoff suggests that créolité can more broadly reference the construction of a literary or artistic project out of creolising processes.
What would it mean to re-imagine art history as Créolité? That is, hegemonic Western art history has created in its wake an array of ‘other’ art histories connected to regions such as Latin America, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, and South Asia to name a few. Of special interest in this session is not only considering such regional art histories as relational to each other, but also exploring how other constructions of identity—such as gender, sexuality, race, and class—are intertwined with them. Papers exploring contemporary and historical periods are both welcome; and those critically examining Glissant’s terms—such as ‘opacity’ and ‘globality’—to bear on the session theme are especially encouraged.
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Session 7 | Catastrophism and the Ecology of Art in Pre- and Early Modern Europe
Joanne W Anderson, The Warburg Institute, Joanne.anderson@sas.ac.uk
Jill Harrison, The Open University, Jill.harrison@open.ac.uk
Floods, fires, earthquakes, famines and plagues were catastrophic events in pre- and early modern Europe. They impacted heavily on environment and society by devastating resources, levelling infrastructure and displacing or destroying communities. The residual presence of such events in the cultural memory could be long term and institutionalised. As Erling Skaug has recently argued (2013) in relation to change in Giotto’s late oeuvre, ‘disasters of a certain magnitude tend to cause breaks and abrupt changes in a historical course—for better or worse.’
Catastrophism is an emerging and productive way of thinking about art’s relationship to climate and environment, and the circumstances of its production and interpretation. But it also has a venerable tradition within the discipline of art history itself. From Winckelmann’s climate theory in relation to the stylistic development of Greek sculpture (1755) to Millard Meiss’s theories about the Black Death and its instigation of an archaising pictorial system (1951), the ecology of visual representation is a persistent framework for critical enquiry. It has the potential to align local events with universal histories, for example a synecdoche for the Apocalypse or the Great Flood.
This panel welcomes papers that explore catastrophes of art in the classical sense. By focusing on pre- and early modern Europe, it aims to push art historians to rethink the role of such events in our understanding of art and its production. It will seek to discuss and offer fresh perspectives on the concept of catastrophism and its relevance for the ecology of art.
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Session 8 | Changing Regimes of Art Education: An International Look at Art History, Pedagogy, and Power Knowledge
Elke Krasny, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, elke.krasny@gmail.com
Barbara Mahlknecht, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, b.mahlknecht@akbild.ac.at
Art education is part of the archives of regimes of power knowledge. Despite the important role art education holds for producing and reproducing knowledge of art history and artistic practice, it has so far remained an understudied area in critical art history writing. The session’s focus is on the critical analysis of art history education at university and art academy level internationally. While art and art history are commonly understood as fields of global knowledge production and circulation, art education is still connected to the nation state and the changing regimes of its ideologies, economies, and politics. The session therefore asks to what extent the nation state is still the core structure forming canonical art histories and art education pedagogies? It also raises the question to what extent art history education is transformed via international, transnational, and global exchange. Some of the questions concern how art history education was formed by imperial and colonial regimes, totalitarian and fascist regimes at times of war, and the contemporary neoliberal regime in which both the global South and the global North are implicated.
The session invites papers giving case studies from different places and specific time periods. Of particular interest are transitional periods revealing the change from one regime to another. The focus is on the formation and institutional recognition of art history education in relation to art history’s critical history writing and the analysis of the archives of regimes of power knowledge.
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Session 10 | Damaged Art and the Question of Value
Kathryn Brown, Loughborough University, kathrynjbrown@mac.com
While entropy has often been used by artists as an aesthetic strategy, this session examines the values that attach to artworks that are damaged in the process of their execution, or that have been broken, vandalised, discarded, or otherwise rendered unfit for their original design or purpose. What aesthetic, historical and financial values attach to such works, and are those values divergent or mutually reinforcing? While ancient statuary is exhibited in fragments, what is the display value of more recent works that have not benefitted from restoration? For some collectors, prints pulled from cancelled plates are prized objects, while, for others, such works are considered counterfeit. Artists complain of failures to maintain the condition of public art that no longer meets their original conception and, in some cases, recommend destruction of that work.
Such examples problematise the values that attach to the material qualities of art objects and the ways in which such qualities relate to artistic intention and audience expectations throughout time. This session asks why some works have been considered worthy of restoration while others have been ignored? Might the preservation of damage to an object have evidential value that outweighs the restoration of that object’s material appearance? What types of destruction befall conceptual and performance artworks? From the activities of the Salvage Art Institute to the exhibition of paintings and sculptures marred by war, accident, or neglect, this session uses the concept of damage to investigate values that attach to the production, display, preservation, and financial value of artworks.
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Session 19 | Modern Lives – Modern Legends: Artist Anecdotes since the 18th Century
Hans Christian Hones, The Warburg Institute (Bilderfahrzeuge Project), hoenes@bilderfahrzeuge.org
Anna Frasca-Rath, University of Vienna, anna.sophie.rath@univie.ac.at
In John Nichols’ Biographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth (1785), one reads of how the painter died in the arms of his servant, his demise the result of overindulging in beefsteak. Seventy years later, a biography of John Flaxman tells of how the artist, in his childhood, showed his drawings to a famous painter—who asked if they were meant to represent flounders.
These are just two examples for a little-known tendency in the artistic literature of the 18th and 19th century: the re-adaptation of traditional anecdotes which had been repeated countless times since the trecento. Nichols’ story clearly refers ironically to Vasari’s description of Leonardo’s death in the arms of the French King, and Flaxman’s ‘flounders’ are an equally ironic take on the legend of Giotto’s discovery by Cimabue. Far from simply providing entertainment, they were also an opportunity for succinct commentary on the respective artist’s work—the ‘Englishness’ of Hogarth and the ‘flatness’ of Flaxman.
This panel explores these revisions and re-adaptations of traditional artist anecdotes and their function in the art theoretical debates of their time. What was the purpose of such re-writings? How does this flood of new anecdotes relate and react to the rise of ‘scholarly’ biographical writing? Which art-theoretical subtexts were carried in these ironic deflections from tradition? And how do they intersect with the equally prominent rise of depictions of anecdotal scenes from artists’ lives—Giotto painting sheep being just the most prominent example? Papers examine these and other questions in a broad geographical context between the 18th and 20th century.
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Session 25 | Prints in Books: The Materiality, Art History and Collection of Illustrations
Elizabeth Savage, Cambridge University, leu21@cam.ac.uk
Book illustrations, especially from the hand-press period (1450–1830), are an essential but traditionally overlooked source of art historical information. Although the hierarchies of fine art over popular art are dissolving, and modern disciplinary distinctions between text and image (or art and book) are giving way to cross-disciplinary and holistic approaches to printed material, printed images that happen to be inside books often fall outside the remits of art historical, literary, bibliographical and material research.
One reason is that practical and academic barriers impede access to the art historical information that book illustrations can provide. Due to incompatible cataloguing standards adopted by libraries and art museums, researchers can struggle to identify book illustrations across collections. Cataloguing protocols may reduce hundreds of significant woodcuts in a book to the single word ‘illustrated’; some world-leading graphic art digitisation initiatives exclude book illustrations. As the global digitised corpus expands, will book illustrations be more represented in print scholarship or will they continue to fall into the gap between art and book? As material objects and visual resources, should they be considered bibliographical, art historical or iconographical material? And how do such classifications influence their interpretation?
This interdisciplinary panel seeks to establish a platform for discussion about the position of printed book illustrations in graphic art scholarship. Theoretical and object-based papers related to any aspect of collecting, cataloguing and interpreting printed book illustrations, broadly defined, are welcome, as are papers that explore the materiality, iconography, historiography or art history of printed pictures inside books.
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Session 30 | Sculpture in Motion
Martina Droth, Yale Center for British Art, martina.droth@yale.edu
Sarah Victoria Turner, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, svturner@paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk
Sculpture is generally static. It tends to be thought of as solid, inert, and physically grounded. These qualities are deeply associated with some of its most traditional functions—to commemorate, memorialise, and provide permanent public symbols. But throughout its history, sculpture’s immobility has been held in tension with the fantasy of its potential motion and animation. This tension plays out in the dualities of its association with life and death. The potential of the statue coming to life, as in the Pygmalion myth, has been a constant reference point for sculpture and how it is written about.
This interdisciplinary session seeks to examine the various ways in which sculpture has been put in motion, literally or metaphorically, and to consider what drives this desire to animate sculpture. Areas of possible investigation include the devices and artistic strategies that induce motion or an illusion of life—for example, turning statues on rotating pedestals; viewing statues by candlelight; the tinting and colouring of sculpture to create life-like effects; sophisticated technologies and mechanical devices such as animatronics, automata, and kinetics; the ‘living statue’ and the tableau vivant; bringing sculpture to life in text; the suggestion of movement in photographs of sculpture; the appearance of sculpture in film. Proposals may address any period or area of sculpture, and can present case-studies or broader reflections.
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Session 31 | Speculative Libraries
Nick Thurston, University of Leeds, n.thurston@leeds.ac.uk
The symbolic status of ‘the library’—be it in the image of the great libraries of antiquity, the monastic libraries of the Middle Ages or the public libraries of Victorian Britain—has served as both a metaphor and allegory for knowledge, wealth, devotion and permanence. Yet all contemporary libraries are having their rationales, architecture, labour practices and holdings radically changed by the growth of networked computing and information science. What are the many and changing relationships between art practice, art’s discourses and libraries? And where, from the first proto-libraries of Sumer to counter-cultural archives of grey or illegal material, do we see the logic of the library reaching beyond the confines of libraries-as-such?
I invite submissions from historians, theorists and makers who can address these questions directly and who work within or across the fields of architecture studies, art history, art & design and library & information science. Our aim will be to take seriously all aspects of library culture and library-making as they relate to art, including: holdings, collections policies, librarianship, furniture, architecture and the role of libraries within their communities. From Martha Rosler Library (2005–6) to the open-access file-sharing on aaaaarg.fail, a trend can be traced for making libraries as or within contemporary art projects. As such, through this session’s broad discussion I hope we will also foster a sub-focus on the history, theory and techniques of speculative library-making, considered as the practice of constructing real or imaginary libraries as an artistic act.
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Session 32 | Standing Stones and the Origins of Architectural Modernity
Ralph Ghoche, Barnard College, Columbia University, rghoche@barnard.edu
Christina Contandriopoulos, UQAM University
Standing stones (menhirs) have captivated the imagination of architects and archaeologists since their rediscovery in the 17th century. By the 19th century, these primitive monuments were accorded a prominent place in the new narratives of architectural history, generating countless debates over their origin and function. Indeed, they emboldened many architects to challenge the prevailing neoclassical histories of architecture by moving the point of origin from the so-called ‘civilised’ societies of classical Greece and Rome, back to the ritualistic practices of Celts, Druids and Gauls. The interest in indigenous monuments was no less potent for architects in the 20th century. In the writings of Le Corbusier, Sigfried Giedion and Aldo van Eyck, here too these stone were employed as testaments of wholly distinct historical trajectories.
This session focuses on the impact of standing stones and primitive, indigenous monuments on architecture from the 17th to the 20th centuries. The question can be explored from multiple perspectives. From an historiographical standpoint, we are interested in the way that these stones informed new historical narratives in architecture. How was the new awareness of these stones employed to challenge Greco-Roman models? From the perspective of architectural production, how did they impact the primitive sensibilities of modernist architects? To be sure, the mute and enigmatic quality of menhirs provided Modernists powerful precedents for their own experiments in abstract signification. As prehistorical monuments, standing stones would seem to have provided designers with a way of achieving an emancipated architecture, free of the burdens of history.
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Session 35 | Textile, Art & Design: Reciprocity and Development
Alice Kettle, Manchester Metropolitan University, a.kettle@mmu.ac.uk
Uthra Rajgopal, Manchester Metropolitan University, u.rajgopal@mmu.ac.uk
The reciprocity and division of textiles and the fine arts are in continual negotiation. This session examines the nexus between the fine and decorative arts, craft making and commercial production. Many artists of the 20th century such as Abakanowicz, Dali, Delaunay, Matisse, Moore, Parker, Picasso, Paolozzi and Warhol (to name but a few) have been celebrated for their collaborations in sculpture and/or pattern making, but this approach presents one avenue of the artist’s intervention in textiles. This session will consider a wider view, asking how contributions of textile designers and artists working across a spectrum of geographical and historical periods, such as those working in Spitalfields, Lyon, Japan or India for example, or designers such as Dora Batty, Marian Clayden, Marion Dorn, Bernat Klein or John Piper influenced and collaborated with artists, fashion designers and art movements or contributed to the synergy of these practices.
In this session we welcome papers from academics, researchers, textile artists, textile and fashion historians, curators and archivists. The term textile can be interpreted in its widest sense. Suggestions for proposals of papers or panel discussions include but are not limited:
• The evolution and circulation of a particular motif in woven or printed textiles
• Artists/designers and textiles: an exploration of their oeuvre through pattern making
• The influence of textile designers in art/dress/fashion history
• Historical and contemporary collaborations between artists and textile designers
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Session 37 | The Power of Plasticity
Rowan Bailey, University of Huddersfield, r.bailey@hud.ac.uk
Sheila Gaffney, Leeds College of Art, sheila.gaffney@leeds-art.ac.uk
Plasticity is a powerful yet elusive concept of formation in the histories, theories and practices of making. In its traditional sense, it has been synonymised with the noun ‘plastic’—the plastic arts of sculpture and architecture within the modern schema—and the adjective ‘plastic’—the material and aesthetic registrations of a state of being malleable, pliant, ductile and adaptable. More recently, plasticity has gained cultural currency in science as a tool for articulating the brain’s thinking activity. The reception of plasticity within the histories of art, visual and material culture thus covers a broad and diverse spectrum. It not only refers to a condition of aptitude within the mind of the practitioner—derived from the Greek plassein: ‘to mould or form’—it also registers the transformation of materials from the molecular to the microscopic, the psychic to the aesthetic.
Whether operating through different tropes of formation in art historical/art writing, as material transformations in and through the making process, or as environmental states for the production and reception of form, this session seeks to explore the varied use, application and agency of the term ‘plasticity’ in a trans-disciplinary expanded field.
The panel proposes to address three dimensions to plasticity and their potential intra-relations, reflecting on objects of visual and material culture to bring about new configurations of plastic thinking in practice. Contributions that move beyond this framework are also welcome:
• Plasticity as a dynamic condition for the production and reception of form
• Plasticity and the transformation of materials
• Plasticity as a thinking tool in art, visual and material culture
Exhibition | Gardens, Art, and Commerce in Chinese Woodblock Prints
Ding Liangxian, Pomegranate and Magnolia with Bird, (detail), Qing Dynasty, 1700–50; woodblock print with embossing, ink, and colors on paper (multiblock technique with hand-coloring), 11 7/8 × 14 3/4 inches (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts)
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Press release (28 June 2016) from The Huntington:
Gardens, Art, and Commerce in Chinese Woodblock Prints
The Huntington, San Marino, CA, 17 September 2016 — 9 January 2017
Curated by June Li and Suzanne Wright
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens will present a major international loan exhibition exploring the art, craft, and cultural significance of Chinese woodblock prints made during their golden age, with works made from the late 16th century through the 19th century. Gardens, Art, and Commerce in Chinese Woodblock Prints brings together 48 of the finest examples gathered from the National Library of China, Beijing; the Nanjing Library; the Shanghai Museum; and 14 institutional and private collections in the United States. The exhibition presents monumental visual accounts of sprawling, architecturally elaborate ‘scholar’s gardens’, alongside delicate prints with painterly textures and subtle colors depicting plants, birds, and other garden elements so finely wrought they might be mistaken for watercolors. A highlight of the exhibition is The Huntington’s rare edition of the Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Calligraphy and Painting (ca. 1633–1703), acquired in 2014, and on public view for the first time in this exhibition.
Research informing the exhibition and an accompanying catalog reveals much about the history and significance of Chinese pictorial printing during the period, including its influence on better-known Japanese woodblock artists and collectors. Coveted for their artistic merit and technical virtuosity, Chinese illustrated books and pictorial works were collected by the literati and wealthy merchant classes in both China and Japan. The Ten Bamboo Studio Manual, for example, contains the inscriptions of five renowned Japanese artists, successive owners who treasured the artistically ambitious and visually creative volumes as an important resource.
Lotus Leaf, Lotus Root, and Two Jitou Capsules, with calligraphy by Sun Yuwang, Fruit 10, from Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Calligraphy and Painting, compiled and edited by Hu Zhengyan; woodblock-printed book, ink and colors on paper, each page 9 7/8 × 11 1/4 inches (San Marino: Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens)
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The founding curator of The Huntington’s Chinese Garden, June Li, is co-curator of the exhibition and co-author of the catalog, along with Chinese woodblock print specialist Suzanne Wright, associate professor of art history at the University of Tennessee.
Gardens, Art, and Commerce in Chinese Woodblock Prints unites several interests at The Huntington. It is the home of one of the most extensive collections of early printed books in the nation, various collections of prints by European and American artists, and one of the largest Chinese scholar’s gardens outside of China.
“This exhibition is utterly evocative of The Huntington’s transdisciplinary nature,” said Laura Skandera Trombley, Huntington president. “Woodblock prints were formative communication and aesthetic tools that served a number of purposes over time, from disseminating Buddhist teachings to depicting ideals of beauty. This perfect fusion of art and language, an integration of emotion and intellectual pursuit, is evidenced in The Huntington’s art and library collections, and is embodied in our stunning Suzhou-style Chinese Garden. We are enormously grateful for June Li’s commitment and guiding vision for this extraordinary exhibition.”
During the late Ming (1368–1644) and early Qing (1644–1912) dynasties, an increase in wealth, stemming in part from the salt, rice, and silk industries, led to higher levels of literacy and education. Consumer demand for printed words and images increased as merchants and scholars looked for ways to display their taste in drama, poetry, literature, and art. For these elites, gardens were central to a cultured life, appearing frequently in woodblock prints as subject or setting. By the 1590s, several enterprising publishers were successfully meeting the strong demand for woodblock prints. They hired renowned designers, carvers, and printers to produce sophisticated and exquisite works, raising the standards of printmaking. During the last decades of the Ming dynasty, several centers of printing around the lower Yangzi River delta grew in reputation, ushering in a golden age of Chinese pictorial printing.
“In the realm of Chinese art, pictorial woodblock prints are not as familiar as paintings, calligraphy, or ceramics,” said Li. “The subject of woodblock prints usually brings to mind Buddhist icons, Daoist deities, or folk images, rather than refined and artistic works. But, over the past few years, scholars researching the historical and artistic aspects of these prints have re-introduced a trove of beautiful works that are highly accomplished.”
Building on this story, Gardens, Art, and Commerce in Chinese Woodblock Prints is organized into thematic sections with explanatory panels in both English and Chinese. In the first gallery visitors will find an impressive nine-and-an-half-foot long hand scroll that was commissioned by the Song emperor Taizong (r. 976–97). An unusual Buddhist work that depicts landscape rather than images of deities, it is the earliest and only religious work in the exhibition, showing the lofty achievements of woodblock printers by the 10th century, with enormous clarity of line and painstaking attention to the details of mountains, streams, trees, and tiny figures. The accomplishments of such early printing established the technical foundation from which later Ming and Qing artists grew. Illustrations of the Garden Scenery of the Hall of Encircling Jade, an extraordinary set of 45 prints produced around 1602 to 1605, will be displayed in facsimile (the only evidence that remains of the original). Taken as a whole, the prints illustrate the enormous garden estate of a successful merchant, scholar, and book publisher of the early 17th century. The detailed prints show what seems to be acres of a fashionable garden, with a large, elegant hall framing scholars seated in conversation; a courtyard where figures re-enact a famous poetry game around a table; an enclosure for carefully sculpted penjing (bonsai trees); and more than a hundred names inscribed on buildings, ponds, and rocks. The print has an elevated viewpoint and changing perspectives that allow glimpses into interior spaces, revealing a cultivated life of books and men in scholars’ robes deep in discussion.
The exhibition next focuses exclusively on prints about gardens, both historical and fictional. Historical gardens include famous sites recorded by emperors, such as Suzhou’s Lion Grove, a popular tourist destination to this day. Another imperial work, a scroll more than 25 feet long (six feet of which will be displayed), shows urban gardens and the bustle of daily life in 18th-century Beijing.
The effects of exchanges between European missionaries and the Chinese also are explored in the exhibition. One publisher incorporated biblical illustrations into his ink catalog, produced around 1616. The Qianlong emperor in 1783–86 commissioned a set of large copperplate engravings in a European style that showed details of the European pavilions in his private retreat.
Another section of the exhibition explores the styles of print artists from the late 16th through the 18th centuries in publishing centers such as Hangzhou, Huizhou, Wuxi, and Suzhou. On view are several examples by different publishers illustrating a single popular story, The Story of the Western Chamber, making clear their varying visual and artistic interpretations. In some cases, prints were made to resemble known paintings. Sometimes famous painters, such as Chen Hongshou (1598–1652), designed works expressly for printing. The exhibition includes a rare early edition of Chen’s version of The Story of the Western Chamber, as well as a set of cards he designed for a drinking game.
The exhibition also looks at accomplishments in multi-color and embossed printing, such as beautifully printed guides offering suggestions for cultivating taste. These manuals prescribed appropriate pastimes for a cultivated life, instructed on calligraphy, and advised on chess strategy and drinking games for men, and embroidery patterns for women. They also illustrated musical and dramatic works such as the popular Peony Pavilion. Many of these leisure activities took place in the garden, and prints showing scholar’s rocks, which had become precious items for the discerning collector, will be represented by finely printed editions of well-known works including a rare edition of The Stone Compendium of Plain Garden. Two examples of actual scholar’s rocks from The Huntington’s collection will be on view to complement the book.
Additionally, four iPads in the galleries will allow for a deeper investigation of Illustrations of the Garden Scenery of the Hall of Encircling Jade (a work showing the large garden estate of the successful merchant and publisher Wang Tingna) and allow visitors to see all the leaves of The Huntington’s Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Calligraphy and Painting, a work that due to its delicate nature can only be viewed a few leaves at a time in the galleries.
Visitors of all ages can view Chinese woodblock printing techniques in a gallery featuring a replica of a printing table, along with carving tools, colored inks, paper, brushes, and burnishers. To better understand the multi-color printing process, a set of woodblocks and step-by-step prints replicating a page of the Ten Bamboo Studio Manual will be on view, a display commissioned from the Shanghai publisher Duo Yun Xuan especially for the exhibition.
T. June Li and Suzanne E. Wright, Gardens, Art, and Commerce in Chinese Woodblock Prints (San Marino: The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, 2016), 176 pages, ISBN 978-0873282673, $50.
June Li details the origins and provenance of The Huntington’s Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Calligraphy and Painting, a landmark of multi-block color printing, with particular emphasis on its appeal to 18th- and 19th-century Japanese collectors. Suzanne Wright traces the development of three distinct regional styles of woodblock-printed illustrations during the late Ming dynasty, with striking examples of each style drawn from the exhibition. The 176-page volume, published by The Huntington, features more than 150 illustrations, including full-color plates of each work in the exhibition.
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Exhibition Symposium | Word and Image: Chinese Woodblock Prints
The Huntington, San Marino, CA, 12 November 2016
The late Ming period witnessed an unprecedented production of woodblock images printed for many different purposes, including illustrations for drama and games, decorations for stationery paper or ink making, as well as pictorial works for the market. This symposium will explore the relationship and interaction between image and text in woodblock prints during the late Ming and early Qing periods. Register online here.
• Kai-Wing Chow (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), “Nature, Print, and Art: Commerce and Garden Culture in Late Imperial China”
• He Yuming (University of California, Davis), “Illustrating Encyclopedic Knowledge in the Ming”
• Richard Strassberg (University of California, Los Angeles), “The Kangxi Emperor’s Thirty-Six Views: The Making of an Imperial Publication”
• Meng-ching Ma (National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan), “‘Poetic Pictures’ in Late-Ming Illustrated Dramatic Publications”
• Suzanne Wright (University of Tennessee, Knoxville), “The Swallow Messenger: Text and Image”
• Hu Jun (Northwestern University), “A Panoply of Metaphor: Painting and Intermediality in the Late Ming”
Sotheby’s Museum Network to Launch in August
The 13-part series The Treasures of Chatsworth is currently in production and will debut in Autumn 2016
(Photo: Sotheby’s)
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Press release (5 August 2016) from Sotheby’s:
Sotheby’s announces the upcoming launch [scheduled for August 29] of an online destination to discover video content created by and about the world’s leading museums. The digital hub will be called Sotheby’s Museum Network, and it will be featured prominently on Sothebys.com as well as Sotheby’s Apple TV channel. The museums in this network will include internationally-renowned public institutions, such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate, and the National Palace Museum in Taiwan, as well as well as newer institutions founded by private collectors, including the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow.
In addition to syndicating museums’ own content, the Sotheby’s Museum Network will be the home of original programming conceived and produced by Sotheby’s. The Treasures of Chatsworth, a 13-part series on one of Europe’s greatest private houses and most significant art collections, is currently in production and will debut this autumn. Further information will be shared in the coming months.
Recent years have seen the opening of numerous private museums by passionate patrons, as well as record attendance at major exhibitions worldwide, reflecting a seemingly insatiable public interest in great art and collections. Sotheby’s Museum Network will reach a global audience for whom museums and foundations are a new entry point into the world of art, as well as seasoned collectors and connoisseurs who look upon these institutions as the ultimate source of authority on art and culture. It will ultimately encompass thousands of existing museum videos, which have never before been aggregated into one channel, making it easier for people to discover what they love as well as introducing new audiences to the great work that these institutions are creating worldwide.
“We are thrilled to host the extraordinary videos produced by our museum partners around the world,” commented David Goodman, Executive Vice President, Digital Development & Marketing. “The Museum Network is a response to a growing global audience that wants to experience the world of art and collecting. The network is a natural evolution of the existing ties we have with museums through programs like Sotheby’s Preferred, and we can now deepen those relationships with institutions and their benefactors as we expose their outstanding collections to millions of art lovers who engage via digital channels. The Treasures of Chatsworth is the perfect way to launch our drive into original video content creation centered on the arts and will be the first of many original films that will reveal the wonder of art and collecting.”
New Book | Inside Venice
From Rizzoli:
Toto Bergamo Rossi, with a foreword by Diane Von Furstenberg and Peter Marino, an introduction by James Ivory, and photographs by Jean-François Jaussaud, Inside Venice: A Private View of the City’s Most Beautiful Interiors (New York: Rizzoli, 2016), 310 pages, ISBN: 978-0847848164, $60.
The superb interiors of Venice are revealed in this lavishly photographed book, which is sure to appeal to Venice’s many admirers interested in the elegance and refinement of classical Old World interior design. The book is a luxurious presentation of the hidden architectural and interior design treasures of Venice, ranging from historical ninth-century buildings to contemporary renovations that blend old and new. Seventy-two properties, each photographed exclusively for the book, are profiled—mainly private apartments and palazzos, along with some churches, hotels, and other public spaces. Preservation expert Toto Bergamo Rossi selected each property for inclusion based on his detailed field knowledge gained over many years as director of the Venetian Heritage Foundation, whose mission is to safeguard Venetian cultural heritage as manifested in architecture, music, and fine art.
Exhibition | Rooms Hidden by the Water: Photographs from Venice
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From Kansallis Museo Finland:
Rooms Hidden by the Water: Photographs from Venice by Jaakko Heikkilä
National Museum of Finland, Helsinki, 29 April — 28 August 2016
The exhibition features approximately 50 photographs by Jaakko Heikkilä, taken between 2005 and 2015 in the palaces of Venetian nobility along with Venetian furniture from the late 1800s from the National Museum’s collections.
Jaakko Heikkilä (b. 1956) is an observer, renowned for photographing people and groups of people around the world. Heikkila photographs people in their own environment: at home, working, at museums, or as flickering shadows on walls. Heikkilä started photographing the Venetian nobility through a friend who opened the doors of the first palace for him. The photographs offer a unique opportunity to peek inside the palaces of the decreasing Venetian nobility and meet the residents and their life stories.
The Venetian nobility live a somewhat isolated life that is bound and protected by their history. The nobility consists of merchants from La Serenissima, the golden age of the Republic of Venice, which existed from the 500s to 1797. They represent Old Europe, the lost world, which is disappearing under the waves just like Venice is due to climate change.
Jaakko Heikkilä, Barone Alberto Franchetti, Alex Snellman, and Minerva Keltanen, Rooms Hidden by the Water: Photographs from Venice by Jaakko Heikkilä (Helsinki: Maahenki, 2016), 131 pages, ISBN: 978-9516162723, €43.
Exhibition | Antoine Watteau: The Draughtsman
Opening in October at the Städel Museum:
Antoine Watteau: The Draughtsman / Der Zeichner
Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, 19 October 2016 — 15 January 2017
Teylers Museum, Haarlem, 2 February — 14 May 2017
Jean Antoine Watteau, Standing Male Figure (Nicolas Vleughels?), ca. 1718–19 (Frankfurt: Städel Museum)
The French painter Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) is among the great masters of draughtsmanship. His sensitive studies in red, black and white chalk capture female and male models, observations of details and spontaneous ideas, and develop that world of cheerful companies and mutually attentive conviviality that would come to be called fêtes galantes (‘courtship parties’).
In cooperation with the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, the Städel Museum is planning an exhibition of drawings by Antoine Watteau for the autumn of 2016. Both institutions have in their possession substantial holdings of works by the artist, who can be considered one of the most outstanding draughtsmen in the history of French art. His innovative style—characterized by a combination of spontaneity, ease and intimacy on the one hand and observation of the utmost precision on the other—contrasts starkly with the formal tradition of the academically oriented artists of his time. With its psychological sensitivity, the new, virtuoso art reflects the spirit of the dawning Enlightenment.
Watteau is relatively little known in Germany, despite the fact that in the eighteenth century he was one of the Frederick the Great’s favourite artists. The last exhibition to be devoted here to Watteau took place in 1984. Among the works in the Stadel Museum’s painting collection is the earliest version of the Embarkation for Cythera, which—owing in part to the two further versions in the Louvre and Charlottenburg Palace—represents what is presumably the artist’s most famous pictorial invention. Enhanced by a small selection of further paintings, the Städel Museum’s Embarkation for Cythera will form the core of the presentation of approximately fifty choice drawings from the holdings of the participating institutions as well as a number of other prominent German, Dutch, and French collections. Approximately twenty drawings by such artists as François Boucher, Nicolas Lancret, or Jean-Honoré Fragonard will supplement this selection, bearing testimony to Watteau’s impact on later generations of artists.
Martin Sonnabend and Michiel Plomp, Antoine Watteau: Der Zeichner (Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 2016), 260 pages, ISBN: 978-3777426549, 35€.
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Note (added 19 October 2016) — The original posting listed the title of the exhibition as Antoine Watteau: Drawings / Zeichnungen and did not include the exhibition catalogue.
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