New Book | François Boucher: Sociability, Mondanité, and the Academy
From Artbooks.com:
Christoph Vogtherr and Leda Cosentino, eds., François Boucher: Sociability, Mondanité, and the Academy in the Age of Louis XV (Oakville: Mosaic Press, 2017) 360 pages, ISBN: 9780993658839, $50.
This volume assembles a group of interrelated thought-provoking essays from leading international scholars originally presented at the conference Boucher and the Enlightenment, held at the Wallace Collection in London in 2005. The conference was one of a series of extraordinary events celebrating the tercentenary of the artist’s birth: exhibitions were held in Paris, Dijon, London, and New York, a conference was dedicated to the artist’s work at The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, and a number of associated ground-breaking publications were published. All were agreed on the significance of Boucher’s achievement, his contemporary success, and the startlingly rapid critical decline. Yet, although much valuable new research was presented elsewhere regarding the connoisseurship, interpretation, and critical reception of Boucher’s work, the Wallace Collection conference was outstanding in its emphasis on the essentially social nature of Boucher’s artistic enterprise, the seriousness of his artistic ambition, and how the artistic relationships he forged both influenced his artistic practice and affected his critical reputation for both good and bad.
Subsequent research in eighteenth-century studies has confirmed many of the ideas first posited at the conference, but no other major publication on the artist has appeared in the intervening ten-year period that has been able to present or benefit from the advances made at the Wallace Collection. It has thus become increasingly obvious that the original conference papers, unpublished at the time, should be issued. The papers have been revised and enriched with further original research, incorporating important recent discoveries and trends in Boucher scholarship. Taken as a whole, the essays present a wealth of new material concerning Boucher’s social and professional relationships to his patrons, dealers, and fellow artists, which in turn illuminate, as no subsequent publication has done, his extraordinary position at the crossroads of the fine, decorative, literary and musical arts of his time. The book includes a variety of inter-disciplinary topics including new biographical information regarding Boucher’s life, artistic practices, and relationships, while new research is also published regarding the detailed connoisseurship and dating of his work alongside new interpretations of its iconography and critical and commercial reception. The diverse subject matter and variety of art-historical approach of the essays open up new perspectives in our understanding not only of François Boucher but also of the wider cultural and social context of his time. Together they shed new light on Boucher’s significance as one of the most original and controversial artists of the eighteenth century.
Call for Papers | MAHS 2018, Indianapolis
From the MAHS Fall 2017 Newsletter:
45th Annual Conference of the Midwest Art History Society
Indianapolis, 5–7 April 2018
Proposals due by 15 December 2017
Indianapolis Museum of Art (Wikimedia Commons, 15 January 2012).
The Midwest Art History Society (MAHS) will hold its 45th Annual Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana, 5–7 April 2018. Sessions on Thursday, April 5th and Friday, April 6th will be held at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. Friday’s program will conclude with a bus trip to the celebrated showcase of 20th–century architecture, Columbus, Indiana, with a tour of the Miller House and Garden, designed by Eero Saarinen. Sessions on Saturday, April 7th will be held at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art. This year’s keynote speaker will be Erika Doss, Professor of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Her talk will be related to her 2010 book Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America, a topic with particular relevance in light of the current re-evaluation of public monuments. We welcome your participation. In most cases, conference presentations are expected to be under twenty minutes long. Proposals of no more than 250 words and a two-page CV should be emailed (preferably as Word documents) to the chairs of individual sessions by Friday, 15 December 2017.
The following is a selection of sessions potentially relevant for eighteenth-century studies; please see the newsletter for the full listing.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Monumental Troubles: Rethinking What Monuments Mean Today
Chair: Erika Doss (University of Notre Dame), doss.2@nd.edu
Papers are sought that contribute to contemporary conversations about monuments, broadly defined as commemorative objects, images, and spaces. The recent removal, and call for removal, of monuments and memorials throughout the United States and around the globe—in South Africa, England, Taiwan, India, Hungary, and Canada, among other countries—suggests a generative rethinking about why they are made, how their meanings change over time, and issues regarding their removal, relocation, and destruction.
Textiles and Intimacy
Chair: Erica Warren (Art Institute of Chicago), ewarren2@artic.edu
This panel invites papers that explore and examine the ways in which costume and/or textiles are involved in intimate aspects of human life. Papers might consider everyday, familiar objects, such as quilts, or less quotidian items, such as fetish couture, exploring the close relationship between textiles and/or costume and the body. Papers are welcome on any period and specialization.
Women in Art and Art History
Chair: Marilyn Dunn (Loyola University Chicago), mdunn@luc.edu
This session invites papers representing new research or approaches to the examination of women as artists, patrons, or subjects in art. Topics that consider how women’s agency is manifested in art within specific cultural or political contexts are especially encouraged. Papers focused in any chronological period or geographic area will be considered.
Undergraduate Research Session
Co-chairs: Paula Wisotzki (Loyola University Chicago), pwisots@luc.edu; and Mark Pohlad (DePaul University), mpohlad@depaul.edu
Faculty members who have received outstanding research papers from undergraduate students within the past two academic years are invited to submit them for inclusion in our sixth annual Undergraduate Research Session. These papers should explore specific art historical research questions. In all cases, a faculty member (usually the submitter) must serve as a mentor and accompany the undergraduate student to the annual conference. Submissions should include the complete paper—no more than 2500 words—a 250-word abstract, and the student’s resume (as Word documents). In the event that the paper is accepted, undergraduate student presenters and faculty mentors are expected to pay membership and conference fees.
Past and Present in Latin American Art
Chair: Jorge Rivas (Denver Art Museum), jrivas@denverartmuseum.org
In today’s polarized political and social climate where the future for Latino and Latin American artists in the U.S. is becoming more uncertain and daunting, the art from the past is ever present. From Aztec archaisms to present- day references to mid-century avant-garde movements among contemporary artists, revivalism has become central to Latino/ Latin American artistic practices during periods of change and doubt. This session seeks papers that explore how such ideas of the past inform and shape the present.
Art History and Civic Engagement
Chair: Laura Holzman (Indiana University–Purdue University, Indianapolis), holzmanl@iupui.edu
At a time when museums and universities are emphasizing their public responsibility through activities described as audience engagement, service learning, and community partnerships, this session will examine how art historians approach their work as a public practice. Of particular interest are submissions from those who share scholarship and research methods in informal learning contexts such as exhibits, public programs, or op-eds; create scholarship in collaboration with partners from outside of the university or the museum; or use their art historical practice to strengthen communities in other ways. Presentations may discuss practical, ethical, or theoretical matters related to connecting art history with current events, social responsibility, or civic engagement.
Writing Indigenous Art Histories
Chair: Polly Nordstrand (Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Colorado College), pnordstrand@coloradocollege.edu
This session welcomes papers that address methods in shaping the future of Indigenous art history. Topics may include, but are not limited to: Indigenous art history as American art history, museum collection scholarship, academic journals, critical historiography, and collaborative and interdisciplinary research, as well as current research that aims to form art histories. While the field has long recognized the difficulty of critical and scholarly writing around Indigenous art as blocked from canonized art history, this session seeks to also address successful avenues so that a meaningful discussion beyond the obstacles may lead participants to strategies in producing art histories.
Rethinking Museum Collections of African Art and Art of the African Diaspora
Chair: Elizabeth Morton (Wabash College), mortone@wabash.edu
This session invites papers on current trends of all aspects of exhibitions and reinstallations of the arts of Africa and the Atlantic world.
Asian Art
Chair: Miki Hirayama (University of Cincinnati), hirayam@ucmail.uc.edu
This session invites papers on all aspects of East and South Asian art.
British Art
Chair: Catherine Goebel (Augustana College), catherinegoebel@augustana.edu
This session invites papers on any aspect of British art. All periods and media are welcome. Eminent architectural historian, Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, questioned whether one could discern national character via the geography of art (The Englishness of English Art, 1955). Might we effectively examine this question today if extended to the Britishness of British art? Creative approaches are encouraged.
Art of the Baroque/Europe in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Chair: Rebecca Brienen (Oklahoma State University), rebecca.brienen@okstate.edu
This session invites papers that investigate the art, architecture, and general visual culture in Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Prints and Drawings in the West
Co-Chairs: Robert Randolf Coleman (University of Notre Dame, Emeritus) rcoleman@nd.edu; and Cheryl Snay (Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame), csnay@nd.edu
This session is open to topics concerning any aspect—technical, iconographical, functional, historical, social, political, scientific, etc.—of American or European prints and drawings from any time period, medieval through contemporary.
Islamic Art
Chair: Margaret Graves (Indiana University, Bloomington), marggrav@indiana.edu
This session invites historically specific papers within any area of the broad field of Islamic art.
Technical Art History
Chair: Greg D. Smith (Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields), gdsmith@imamuseum.org
This session invites submissions dealing with the technical or scientific investigation of artworks, authenticity studies rooted in materials analysis, or the development of new approaches to the physical examination of artworks.
American Art
Chair: Nicole Woods (University of Notre Dame), nwoods@nd.edu
This session invites papers on all aspects of American art and visual culture from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries.
Enfilade 
leave a comment