New Book | The Secret Life of the Georgian Garden
Forthcoming from I. B. Tauris:
Kate Felus, with a foreword by Roy Strong, The Secret Life of the Georgian Garden: Beautiful Objects and Agreeable Retreats (London: I. B. Tauris, 2016), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-1784535728, $28 / £18.
Georgian landscape gardens are among the most visited and enjoyed of the UK’s historical treasures. The Georgian garden has also been hailed as the greatest British contribution to European Art, seen as a beautiful composition created from grass, trees and water—a landscape for contemplation. But scratch below the surface and history reveals these gardens were a lot less serene and, in places, a great deal more scandalous. Beautifully illustrated in colour and black and white, this book is about the daily life of the Georgian garden. It reveals its previously untold secrets from early morning rides through to evening amorous liaisons. It explains how by the eighteenth century there was a desire to escape the busy country house where privacy was at a premium and how these gardens evolved aesthetically, with modestly-sized, far-flung temples and other eye-catchers, to cater for escape and solitude as well as food, drink, music and fireworks. Its publication coincides with the 2016 tercentenary of the birth of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, arguably Britain’s greatest ever landscape gardener, and the book is uniquely positioned to put Brown’s work into its social context.
Kate Felus is a garden historian and historic landscape consultant. She researches designed landscapes of all periods, specializing particularly in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century parks and gardens.
Call for Papers | Décor and Architecture
From H-ArtHist:
Décor and Architecture in the 17th and 18th Centuries:
Between Adherence and Autonomy / Entre union et séparation des arts
University of Lausanne, 24–25 November 2016
Proposals due by 30 May 2016
During the early modern period, décor was considered to be one of the most fundamental elements of architecture. Thanks to décor, architecture could elevate itself beyond simple masonry and claim a superior status. Décor was thus defined as a necessary prerequisite for architecture, rather than a marginal component. However, despite its privileged status, many authors mistrusted it, fearing the harmful effect which an uncontrollable proliferation of ornament would surely have on architecture. This conference aims to question how the relations between decor and architecture were defined and implemented in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Our perception of these relations has often been informed by teleological approaches: indeed, the radical ideas conveyed by certain 20th-century texts, which define décor as an unnecessary bi-product of architecture, have acted as a distorting prism. History of art, for its part, has often separated décor-related studies from architecture-related ones, suggesting a de facto rupture between these fields and potentially biasing our understanding of the artistic production of the early modern period by reducing its scope. As various case studies have shown, the conditions to which the invention of a décor was subjected varied greatly from one building to another. The architects’ prerogatives differed according to the circumstances and constraints imposed on them: while some were largely involved in the invention of the décor, others delegated its conception to artists or workmen.
The following questions—as well as many other similar ones—may be used as a framework for the presentations:
• The term ‘décor’ defines a vast field with no distinct boundaries, potentially covering everything from sculptures, stucco work, paintings, panelling, mirrors and furniture to architectural orders. How did theorists, artists, connoisseurs and patrons define the relations between décor and architecture? In what circumstances was it felt that décor had exceeded its mandate and thus presented a threat to architecture? Were all excesses systematically condemned?
To this discussion of theory can be added several practice-related questions:
• Who was in charge of the invention of a décor and what consequences could a possible sharing of tasks have on the architectural project? To what extent were theoretical principles implemented on the building site? Case studies focusing on architects, artists or workmen could question their part in the creation of a décor.
Finally, historiography raises its own issues:
• How have the discourses developed in the 17th and 18th centuries been understood and interpreted in later times? How has the reception of these discourses biased our perception of the relations between décor and architecture in the 17th and 18th centuries?
Paper proposals which exceed the set chronological limits may be taken into account by the scientific board, if they shed pertinent light on the questions raised in the conference. Papers will be 30 to 40 minutes long, followed by 15- to 20-minute discussions. Paper proposals of up to 300 words—accompanied by a brief résumé and list of publications—should be sent to Matthieu Lett (matthieu.lett@unil.ch) and Carl Magnusson (carl.magnusson@unil.ch) before 30th May 2016.
Organisers
Matthieu LETT (université de Lausanne, université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense)
Carl MAGNUSSON (université de Lausanne, The Courtauld Institute of Art)
Scientific Committee
Marianne COJANNOT-LE BLANC (université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense)
Alexandre GADY (université Paris-Sorbonne)
Dave LÜTHI (université de Lausanne)
Christian MICHEL (université de Lausanne)
Werner OECHSLIN (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich)
Antoine PICON (Harvard University)
Katie SCOTT (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
Snite Museum Acquires Early Portrait of Josephine de Beauharnais
Among the recent acquisitions at the Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame:
Michel Garnier, Portrait of Josephine de Beauharnais, 1790, oil on mahogany panel, 12.75 x 10.5 inches (Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame; gift of Michael and Susie McLoughlin, 2015.079)
This unusual portrait of Josephine de Beauharnais (1763–1814), the future wife of Napoleon Bonaparte and empress of France, joins depictions of other political figures in the Snite Museum’s collections. This may be the earliest known portrait of the young socialite, probably commissioned by her first husband Alexandre de Beauharnais.
Josephine was born to a plantation owner on the island of Martinique and married the governor’s son, who served as an officer in both the American Revolution and the French Revolutionary Army, in 1779. Running afoul of Robespierre, both Alexandre and Josephine were imprisoned during the Reign of Terror; Josephine alone escaped the guillotine. The widow with two children married Napoleon in 1796 but bore him no children. Concerned for the succession of the throne, Napoleon divorced her in 1809.
Painted on the occasion of the Fête de la Federation (the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille on July 14), the artist shows Josephine in an oval, à l’antique (in profile) against a fairly simple background dressed in a fashionable red, white, and blue ensemble that suggests her solidarity with the revolutionaries. During the festivities, she and her husband represented the Island of Martinique, signaled by her exotic headgear described as à la créole. Seventy years later this work served as a model for another painting made by the artist Hector Viger who used it as a source for his fictionalized scene of Josephine and their two children visiting Alexandre in the Luxembourg prison.
Exhibition | Gravelot: Designing Georgian Britain
Now on view at Gainsborough House:
Gravelot: Designing Georgian Britain
Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, Suffolk, 27 February — 5 June 2016
Hubert-François Bourguignon, better known as Gravelot, was one of the most influential designers of the eighteenth century. Born in Paris in 1699, he studied in Rome before returning to the French capital and working under the painter François Boucher. In 1732 he emigrated to London, where he remained until 1745. During this period he played a central role in introducing Rococo style into British art and design and was drawing master to the young Thomas Gainsborough RA.
This exhibition draws upon the impressive body of work by Gravelot in the Gainsborough’s House permanent collection. It showcases his extraordinary versatility as a draughtsman, which the eighteenth-century commentator on art George Vertue described as “a great and fruitful genius for designs.” The prints and drawings that feature in the display demonstrate Gravelot’s ability to operate across a variety of categories, producing work for a wide array of media: from book illustrations, graphic satire and printed ephemera, to snuff boxes, walking canes, silverware, medals and other forms of material culture. They also reveal the diverse sources from which Gravelot derived inspiration: from contemporary life and politics, to the natural world, historical narratives and classical literature.
Exhibition | Jannis Kounellis at Monnaie de Paris
From the Monnaie de Paris:
Jannis Kounellis
Monnaie de Paris, 11 March — 30 April 2016
Jannis Kounellis, Libertà o Morte. W Marat W Robespierre, 1969.
At Monnaie de Paris (the Paris Mint), Jannis Kounellis has composed a dramatic sculpture throughout the thousand square metres of the 18th-century exhibition rooms of this Palace beside the Seine. Eminently present, concrete, irreducible, the new exhibition by Kounellis imposes a direct experience on visitors, without intermediaries.
“I come to Paris empty-handed, like an old painter.” This is what Kounellis said a few months ago in response to the invitation by Monnaie de Paris, which hosts this figure of contemporary art, at the origin of the Arte povera movement. As a painter, Kounellis designed his exhibition at Monnaie de Paris as a fresco. He had already, in 1972, crossed the boundaries of painting with Da inventare sul posto, a work accompanied by a dancer and a violinist.
In the 18th-century Monnaie de Paris salons, the paintings are staged through an installation of metal trestles. This army of cold metal will captivate visitors with its size and the contrast with the architecture and décor of the Palace: columns, marble, ornaments, gilt…
Jacques-Denis Antoine, Hôtel de la Monnaie, 1767–75
(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Jannis Kounellis offers a true experience to visitors. He had already positioned living energy alive, animal or human, at the centre of his work with the incomparable 12 live horses in 1969. But also in Nabucco in 1970 or quarters of hanging meat, or the Stommeln Pullheim Synagogue exhibition where fish evolved into a plate threatened with a knife in 1991.
Kounellis is inspired by Monnaie de Paris, the oldest company in the world and part of the heart of the last factory in Paris where know-how and industry intermingle to create his ‘new project’. The artist appeals to the visitor and raises the question of how a work is produced. It is in the technique, in the craft of the workshops, in the intuitive use of shapes and at the modelling stage that the artist’s project for Monnaie de Paris is born. The work Libertà o Morte. W Marat W Robespierre, 1969 will be presented in the exhibition as well as Da inventare sul posto which will echo the beating heart of the coin presses of Monnaie de Paris, embodying the strength, the rhythm, the orchestration.
A special public program will be performed by Etel Adnan with poetry and musical sessions on 17 March and 28 April at 7pm. Transmitted live on RAM Radioartemobile and broadcast on the Monnaie de Paris website, these rendez-vous will form part of a unique selection of radio archives.
Christophe Beaux, Jannis Kounellis, and Chiara Parisi, Jannis Kounellis (Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2016), 64 pages, ISBN 978-3775741590, 30€. In French and English.
Conference | Keeping History Above Water
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One centerpiece of this upcoming conference on rising sea levels and historic preservation will be the NRF’s 74 Bridge Street Probe, a case study of possible mitigation adaptations for the ca. 1728 Christopher Townsend House and the surrounding colonial-era ‘Point’ neighborhood, which sits perilously close to mean sea level, and in which NRF owns about a dozen other eighteenth-century houses. From the conference website:
Keeping History Above Water: Sea Level Rise and Historic Preservation
Newport, Rhode Island, 10-13 April 2016
Keeping History Above Water will be one of the first national conversations to focus on the increasing and varied risks posed by sea level rise to historic coastal communities and their built environments. This is not a conference about climate change, but about what preservationists, engineers, city planners, legislators, insurers, historic home owners and other decision makers need to know about climate change—sea level rise in particular—and what can be done to protect historic buildings, landscapes and neighborhoods from the increasing threat of inundation.
Over four days, specialists from across the United States and abroad will share experiences, examine risks, and debate solutions with an emphasis on case studies and real world applications. Keeping History Above Water will approach sea level rise from a multi-disciplinary perspective in order to develop practical approaches to mitigation, protective adaptation, and general resilience.
For anyone concerned with preserving historic coastal communities, Keeping History Above Water offers an opportunity to hear from leaders in the field, participate in workshops on practical solutions, tour threatened areas and structures in Newport and its environs, and simply connect over this area of shared concern.
The Newport Restoration Foundation
Founded as a not-for-profit institution in 1968 by Doris Duke, the Newport Restoration Foundation (NRF) preserves, maintains, and interprets the early architectural heritage of Aquidneck Island and the fine and decorative art collections of Doris Duke. Since its founding, NRF has restored and preserved more than 80 eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century buildings, 74 of which are currently rented as private residences to tenant stewards and maintained by a full-time crew of carpenters and painters. This is one of the largest collections of period architecture owned by a single organization anywhere in the United States. More importantly, the majority of these structures are being lived in and used as they have for more than three centuries, making them an enduring and defining feature of the historic architectural fabric of Newport and a source of great pride for the community.
As a leader in the preservation of early American architecture, the NRF is well positioned to provide a forum for the exchange of information across disciplinary boundaries for collaborative problem solving in the areas of most critical concern to the field of historic preservation today.
Conference Partners
National Trust for Historic Preservation
Preserve Rhode Island
Roger Williams University
Salve Regina University
URI’s Coastal Resource Center
Union of Concerned Scientists
Call for Papers | Seeing Through? The Materiality of Dioramas
From H-ArtHist:
Seeing Through? The Materiality of Dioramas, 1560–2010
University of Bern, 1–2 December 2016
Proposals due by 31 May 2016
Dioramas are at the crossroads of artistic and scientific practices. They bring together artists, scientists, and collectors, thus providing an opportunity to reflect on the polyvalence of these actors and the definition of their expertise. In 1822, Louis Daguerre coined the term ‘diorama’ when describing his theater. The word diorama means literally ‘seeing through’. In accordance with this etymology, dioramas embody a sense of transparency and life-likeness. In addition to providing theatrical and visual experiences, dioramas are multidimensional installations that incorporate paintings, objects, stuffed animals or mannequins. Habitat groups mixing taxidermy and painted backgrounds were designed for natural history museums, while anthropological dioramas were disseminated all over Europe during the second half of the nineteenth century. They were usually life-sized and site specific, but they could also be reduced to maquettes.
To date, these installations have been studied by scholars from various disciplines, mainly as side topics. Media historians have considered them primarily as proto-cinematic, whereas within the fields of anthropology, museum studies and postcolonial studies, they are generally analyzed as displays that reflect political taxonomies and stereotyped representations.
However, dioramas are not merely images or displays: they are also physical objects made of multiple materials, such as plaster, wood, paper, paint, glass, fur, wax, and metal. The discipline of art history thus provides us with the opportunity to approach the materiality of these installations. Indeed, dioramas are composite and hybrid things, created through cultural interaction and physical encounter. Multiple hands as well as various visions are involved in the process of their creation—and later on, during their conservation. Dioramas therefore allow for the study of contact zones and material exchanges between private and public spheres, as well as between Western and non-Western contexts. Finally, dioramas as objects of study within the field of art history enable us to address values such as authenticity and realism in various contexts.
Part 1 A Genealogy, 1560–1822
This session will explore the diorama’s prehistory before its ‘invention’ by Daguerre, starting with objects, installations, and machinery created for churches and theaters between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Three-dimensional installations, such as groups gathering natural history specimen (taxidermic animals, skeletons) will be of greatest interest. Presentations may focus on wax museums, and more broadly on hyperrealistic figures that were displayed in groups and used for entertainment as well as for pedagogical or medical purposes. Early forms of panoramas, and diaphanoramas will also be of primary importance, such as the creations of the Swiss landscape painter Franz Niklaus König, first exhibited in Bern in 1811.
Part 2 Dioramania, 1822–1970
The second session will consider the numerous dioramas created during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Habitat Groups and anthropological dioramas became very popular in international fairs and museums until the mid-twentieth century. They were common in both Western and non-Western cultures, and were especially prominent in the Middle East. In some cases, dioramas were intended to represent national identities and in others, they became forms of resistance used, for instance, by African-American or Native American communities. The contributions to this section may explore the creation of specific sets of installations in fairs, museums, and public space, as well as the politics of dioramas.
Part 3 Re-appropriation, 1970–2010
As of the 1970s, state-sponsored museums created displays of traditional craftsmanship through life-size dioramas, such as the Dubai Museum or the Jewels and Costume Museum in Amman. Native American community centers, such as The Mashantucket Pequot Museum in Connecticut, have been using life-size dioramas since the late 1990s. They are also being reinterpreted by contemporary artists, as shown, for example, in the photographs of Hiroshi Sugimoto. In that perspective, the re-exhibition of dioramas would be a topic of interest. Finally, writing the history of dioramas today might also be a way to reframe the creation of artistic movements such at Surrealism or Dada, as well as the work of such artists as Marcel Duchamp, Edward Kienholz, and Joseph Cornel, by filling in important gaps in the history of art, and the history of installations.
Submissions
An abstract of approximately 500 words and a brief CV should be sent to Noémie Etienne (netienne@getty.edu) and Nadia Radwan (nadia.radwan@ikg.unibe.ch) by May 31. Responses will be given by June 30. The colloquium will be held in English.
New Book | The Empress of Art: Catherine the Great
From Pegasus Books:
Susan Jaques, The Empress of Art: Catherine the Great and the Transformation of Russia (New York: Pegasus Books, 2016), 384 pages, ISBN: 978-1605989723, $21.
Ruthless and passionate, Catherine the Great is singularly responsible for amassing one of the most awe-inspiring collections of art in the world and turning St. Petersburg in to a world wonder. The Empress of Art brings to life the creation of this captivating woman’s greatest legacy.
An art-oriented biography of the mighty Catherine the Great, who rose from seemingly innocuous beginnings to become one of the most powerful people in the world. A German princess who married a decadent and lazy Russian prince, Catherine mobilized support amongst the Russian nobles, playing off of her husband’s increasing corruption and abuse of power. She then staged a coup that ended with him being strangled with his own scarf in the halls of the palace, and she being crowned the Empress of Russia.
Intelligent and determined, Catherine modeled herself off of her grandfather in-law, Peter the Great, and sought to further modernize and westernize Russia. She believed that the best way to do this was through a ravenous acquisition of art, which Catherine often used as a form of diplomacy with other powers throughout Europe. She was a self-proclaimed “glutton for art” and she would be responsible for the creation of the Hermitage, one of the largest museums in the world, second only to the Louvre. Catherine also spearheaded the further expansion of St. Petersburg, and the magnificent architectural wonder the city became is largely her doing. There are few women in history more fascinating than Catherine the Great, and for the first time, Susan Jaques brings her to life through the prism of art.
Susan Jaques is a journalist specializing in art. She holds a BA in history from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA. She is the author of A Love for the Beautiful: Discovering America’s Hidden Art Museums and lives in Los Angeles, where she’s a gallery docent at the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Call for Papers | HECAA at CAA 2017, New York
Superpowers in the Global Eighteenth Century: Empire, Colonialism, and Cultural Contact
HECCA Session at the Annual Meeting of the College Art Association, New York, 15–18 February 2017
Chair: Tara Zanardi (Hunter College / CUNY)
Proposals due by 5 April 2016 (in order to meet CAA’s 18 April due date)
The long eighteenth century witnessed European countries vying for global command, from fighting over territories in quick skirmishes or lengthy wars, forming new colonial outposts, pirating cargo, outwitting trade regulations, funding scientific expeditions that fueled the creation of natural history museums and collections and the improvement of cartographic knowledge, enacting free trade policies, and instituting competing trading companies. With the inauguration of new commercial routes for maritime travel and trading strategies, all in an effort to proclaim oneself a superpower, the circulation of goods increased exponentially, making products of all kinds available to a wider audience. While Portugal and Spain had dominated world trade and exploration beginning in the sixteenth century, the Dutch and English soon followed on their heels. Not all competition for global domination happened abroad or at sea: Debates about luxury, the preference for foreign over locally-manufactured goods, women’s role as active consumers and tastemakers, slavery, colonialism, and enlightenment ideas about race emerged on European soil, often pitting one country against another. Outside of Europe, colonists experienced greater independence, which fueled the desire to break from European control.
Within this geopolitical context, this panel seeks papers that address artistic engagement with the broad concept of the European superpower in the long eighteenth century. How did artists both respond to and generate interest in the global and imperial rule? While many artists accompanied expeditions abroad, others could only imagine the world beyond—how were such experiences of contact (real or imagined) expressed in visual terms? How did expanding international networks and political desire for global authority inform artists’ understanding and perspective of empire? How did artists actively support or challenge imperial narratives? This panel particularly welcomes papers that explore the intersection of art and empire by utilizing new methodological approaches to the study of empire, that investigate understudied sites of imperial and colonial history, and that showcase novel forms of artistic expression that employ, directly or subtly, imperial themes.
If you would be interested in participating in this panel, please contact the chair at tarazanardi@yahoo.com, attaching your proposal (limited to 400 words) and a brief CV by April 5, 2016.
Call for Papers | HBA Sessions at CAA, 2017
Conflict as Cultural Catalyst in Britain
HBA Session at the Annual Meeting of the College Art Association, New York, 15–18 February 2017
Chair: Michael J K Walsh (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)
Proposals due by 7 April 2016
Let me have war, say I; it exceeds peace as far as day does night: it’s spritely waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mull’d, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war’s a destroyer of men.
–William Shakespeare, 1607, Coriolanus, Act IV Sc. V
This panel investigates the relationship between struggle and conflict (be it social, political, territorial, ideological etc) and artistic production in Britain and its empire. More specifically, ‘Conflict as Cultural Catalyst in Britain’ interrogates the contentious philosophical notion that art thrives in times of war, and expires in peace, and then asks whether art, as a form of social barometer, can anticipate / foreshadow conflict, or merely respond to it. How has cultural production derived from conflict been used to create specific social identities, national histories and contemporary concepts of memory in Britain and beyond? A range of historically and geographically diverse case studies is encouraged, spanning both the globe and the centuries.
If you would be interested in participating in this panel, please contact the chair at mwalsh@ntu.edu.sg, attaching your proposal, limited to 400 words, together with a brief c.v., by April 7th, 2016.
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Transglobal Collecting: Co-Producing and Re-visioning British Art Abroad
HBA Session at the Annual Meeting of the College Art Association, New York, 15–18 February 2017
Chair: Julie Codell (Arizona State University)
Proposals due by 7 April 2016
This session will focus on art collecting of British outside Britain. The study of art collecting has blossomed; studies of agents, dealers, collectors and auctions are subjects of recent conferences (three in London in 2016 alone) and publications. Art collecting, both as a form of reception and as a form of art production (e.g., theories of Walter Benjamin, Pierre Bourdieu, museology studies), created new contexts, meanings, audiences and interpretations for art. Collecting intervened into aesthetic, national, economic, hermeneutic and social valuations of art. This was even more dramatic and transformative when collectors of British art lived outside Britain. Panelists may consider questions such as (but not limited to): How was an artwork’s social and cultural functions re-defined/re-purposed by distant geographies? How did distant collecting blend local, national and global ideas and interests? Did transatlantic or colonial collecting have distinct cultural features, purposes and identities? Did collected British art affect production of local/indigenous art outside Britain and vice versa? How did collecting British art abroad shape museums and cultural exchanges abroad? How was art positioned to affect distant spectators culturally and nationally, and who constituted that public?
If you would be interested in participating in this panel, please contact the chair at julie.codell@asu.edu, attaching your proposal, limited to 400 words, together with a brief c.v., by April 7th, 2016.
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