New Book | A Cultural History of the Senses in the Age of Enlightenment
One of a series of seven volumes on the ‘Cultural History of the Senses’, the volume addressing the Enlightenment, edited by Anne Vila, first appeared in 2014. It, along with the entire series, is now available in paperback from Bloomsbury Academic. More information (including a discounted offer) is available on the flyer for the series:
Anne Vila, ed., A Cultural History of the Senses in the Age of Enlightenment (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), 288 pages, ISBN: 978-1350077911, £25 / $35.
This volume examines the varied ways in which the senses were perceived afresh during the Enlightenment. In addition to introducing new philosophical and scientific models which sometimes upended the classic hierarchy of the senses, this period witnessed major changes in living and working habits, including urbanization, travel and exploration, the invention of new sonic and visual media, and the rise of comfort and pleasure as values that cut across a range of social classes. As this volume shows, those developments inspired a wealth of sensorially stimulating styles of design, art, music, poetry, foodstuffs, material goods and modes of worship and entertainment.
The volume also demonstrates the period’s countervailing concern with managing the senses, evident in fields like natural philosophy, medicine, education, religion, and public hygiene. Finally, it explores some of the Enlightenment’s desensualizing tendencies, like the separation of sensuous body from discerning mind in certain arenas of science and manufacturing, and the late 18th-century shift away from a politics of publicity, or intense visual and aural scrutiny, toward the secret ballot. A Cultural History of the Senses in the Age of Enlightenment presents essays on the following topics: the social life of the senses; urban sensations; the senses in the marketplace; the senses in religion; the senses in philosophy and science; medicine and the senses; the senses in literature; art and the senses; and sensory media.
Anne C. Vila is Professor of French in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author of Enlightenment and Pathology: Sensibility in the Literature and Medicine of Eighteenth-century France (1998), as well as many articles on the body in the culture of the Enlightenment. She is currently completing a book entitled Singular Beings: Passions and Pathologies of the Scholar in France, 1720–1840.
Call for Articles | The Indigenous Eighteenth Century
The Indigenous Eighteenth Century
Special Issue of Eighteenth-Century Fiction, edited by Robbie Richardson
Manuscripts due 15 July 2019
The editor of this special issue of ECF, Robbie Richardson (University of Kent), invites manuscripts that consider the roles and representations of Indigenous peoples from the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand during the long eighteenth century. In what ways did In peoples shape European literature and knowledge? How can we recover sites of agency and response, and how do we read alternative strategies of representation outside of the written word? How were European writers who encountered ‘Indians’ and ‘savages’ influenced by these exchanges? How was Indigenous material culture collected and understood by Europeans? This special issue seeks to bring the interdisciplinary approaches of Indigenous Studies to bear on the eighteenth century, and to continue the work of decolonizing the period as we know it. Publication is scheduled for Autumn 2020. Submissions should be 6000–8000 words. For more information, please write to ecf@mcmaster.ca.
New Book | Natter’s Museum Britannicum
From Archaeopress Archaeology:
John Boardman, Julia Kagan, and Claudia Wagner, with contributions by Catherine Phillips, Natter’s Museum Britannicum: British Gem Collections and Collectors of the Mid-Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Archaeopress Archaeology, 2018), 316 pages, ISBN: 978-1784917272, £55 / $110.
The German gem-engraver, medallist, and amateur scholar Lorenz Natter (1705–1763), was so impressed by the size and quality of the collections of ancient and later engraved gems which he found in Britain that he proposed the publication of an extraordinarily ambitious catalogue—Museum Britannicum—which would present engravings and descriptions of the most important pieces. He made considerable progress to this end, producing several hundred drawings, but in time he decided to abandon the near completed project in the light of the apparent lack of interest shown in Britain. Only one of the intended plates in its final form ever appeared, in a catalogue which he published separately for Lord Bessborough’s collection.
On Natter’s death the single copy of his magnum opus vanished mysteriously, presumed lost forever. All hope of recovering Natter’s unpublished papers seemed vain, and their very existence had come to be doubted. Yet they were to be found more than two hundred years after his death, in spring 1975, when the classical scholar and renowned expert in gems, Oleg Neverov, chanced upon them at the bottom of a pile of papers in the archives of the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. Neverov and his colleague Julia Kagan carried out the initial research on the Hermitage manuscripts and produced the first published account of this archival treasure.
The present volume builds upon their earlier work to produce the first comprehensive publication of Museum Britannicum, offering full discussion in English and presenting Natter’s drawings and comments alongside modern information on the gems that can be identified and located through fresh research. This book is the result of a ten-year collaboration between scholars on the Beazley Archive gems research programme at Oxford’s Classical Art Research Centre and the State Hermitage Museum. It fulfills Natter’s vision for the Museum Britannicum—albeit two and a half centuries late—to the benefit of art historians, cultural historians, curators, and gem-lovers of today.
Sir John Boardman, FBA, is Emeritus Lincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art in the University of Oxford. His many books include Greek Gems and Finger Rings (2001), The Greeks Overseas (1999), Greek Art (2016), The History of Greek Vases (2006), and The World of Ancient Art (2006).
Julia Kagan is the Curator of post-Classical engraved gems in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. She has contributed to the history of glyptics in Great Britain with major publications, such as Gem Engraving in Britain from Antiquity to the Present (2010) and curated important exhibitions, such as the gem collection of the Duc D’Orleans in Paris (2001).
Claudia Wagner is Director of the gems databases at the Beazley Archive in the University of Oxford and Senior Research Lecturer at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She is joint author, with John Boardman, of seven books devoted to the study and publication of ancient gems, including The Guy Ladrière Collection of Gems and Rings (2015) and The Beverley Collection of Gems at Alnwick Castle (2016), both written with Diana Scarisbrick.
C O N T E N T S
Preface
Part One
1 An Anglo-Russian Project
2 Lorenz Natter: Early Career
3 Natter in Britain
4 Natter in Russia
5 The Museum Britannicum Rediscovered
6 Afterword
Part Two
7 The Museum Britannicum: The Catalogue and Drawings
8 The Collectors and Their Gems
9 Lorenz Natter’s Own Collection
10 Natter’s Index of the Museum Britannicum
11 Natter’s Treatise and Miscellaneous Drawings
Index of Gem Subjects
Index of Inscriptions
General Index
New Book | The Server: A Media History
The original German edition Der Diener: Mediengeschichte einer Figur zwischen König und Klient appeared in 2011; the English translation was published in June by Yale UP:
Markus Krajewski, The Server: A Media History from the Present to the Baroque, translated by Ilinca Iurascu (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 456 pages, ISBN: 978-0300180817, $50.
Though classic servants like the butler or the governess have largely vanished, the Internet is filled with servers: web, ftp, mail, and others perform their daily drudgery, going about their business noiselessly and unnoticed. Why then are current-day digital drudges called servers? Markus Krajewski explores this question by going from the present back to the Baroque to study historical aspects of service through various perspectives, be it the servants’ relationship to architecture or their function in literary or scientific contexts. At the intersection of media studies, cultural history, and literature, this work recounts the gradual transition of agency from human to nonhuman actors to show how the concept of the digital server stems from the classic role of the servant.
Markus Krajewski is professor of media history at the University of Basel, Switzerland. He is the author of numerous articles and several books, including Paper Machines: About Cards and Catalogs, 1548–1929 and World Projects: Global Information Before World War I, which was awarded the 2007 Prize of the German Society for the History of Medicine, Science and Technology. He also works as a software developer and maintainer of his bibliography software Synapsen: A Hypertextual Card Index (www.synapsen.ch). Ilinca Iurascu is assistant professor of German at the University of British Columbia, specializing in nineteenth-century cultural studies and media theory.
C O N T E N T S
Ilinca Iurascu, Introduction to the English Edition: Jeeves Transatlantic
Introduction: Listen, James
Part One: Objects Assistants, Analog
1 Masters / Servants: Everyone is a Subaltern
2 The Servant as Information Center
3 In Waiting
Part Two: The Interregnum of the Subject
4 Holding the Reins: On Demons and Other Ministering Spirits of Science
5 Channel Service
6 At the Stove
Part Three: Diener, Digital
7 Agents: The Lord of (the) Things
Epilogue: Idle Time
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Exhibition | The Furniture of Isaac Vose
Now on view at the Massachusetts Historical Society:
Entrepreneurship and Classical Design in Boston’s South End: The Furniture of Isaac Vose and Thomas Seymour, 1815–1825
Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, 11 May — 14 September 2018
Virtually forgotten for 200 years, Isaac Vose and his brilliant furniture are revealed in a new exhibition and accompanying volume. Beginning with a modest pair of collection boxes he made for his local Boston church in 1788, Vose went on to build a substantial business empire and to make furniture for the most prominent Boston families. The exhibition and catalog restore Vose from relative obscurity to his rightful position as one of Boston’s most important craftsmen.
Robert Mussey and Clark Pearce, Rather Elegant Than Showy: The Classical Furniture of Isaac Vose (Boston: David R Godine, 2018), 312 pages, ISBN: 978-1567926194, $50.
C O N T E N T S
Dennis M. Fiori
Foreword
Robert D. Mussey, Jr.
• Introduction: Isaac Vose Forgotten, Rediscovered
• Early Career and Partnerships, 1788–1819
• Boston’s Classical Style Matures: The Salisbury Group
• The Global Elite: Vose & Son and the World of Imports
• Demanding the Finest
• A Hero Returns, an Era Ends
Clark Pearce
• By These Signs You Will Know Them: Connoisseurship and Construction of Vose Furniture
Appendix 1: Labeled, Signed, and Documented Furniture by Isaac Vose
Appendix 2: Vose’s Partners, Journeymen, Subcontractors, and Apprentices
Index
Colophon
New Book | The Minard System
From Princeton Architectural Press:
Sandra Rendgen, The Minard System: The Graphical Works of Charles-Joseph Minard (Princeton Architectural Press, 2018), 176 pages, ISBN: 978-1616896331, $60.
If you have any interest in information graphics, maps, or history, you know of the seminal flow map of Napoleon’s 1812 march into Russia by Charles-Joseph Minard (1781–1870), made famous by Edward Tufte, and considered to be one of the most magnificent data graphics ever produced. The Minard System explores the nineteenth-century civil engineer’s career and the story behind this masterpiece of multivariate data, as well as sixty of Minard’s other statistical graphics reflecting social and economic changes of the Industrial Revolution in Europe and around the world. These stunning drawings are from the collection of the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris and have never before been published in their entirety.
Exhibition | Laurent Amiot: Canadian Master Silversmith
Now on view at the National Gallery of Canada:
Laurent Amiot: Canadian Master Silversmith
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 11 May — 23 September 2018
Curated by René Villeneuve
Laurent Amiot: Canadian Master Silversmith brings together an exceptional selection of silver pieces from the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, as well as from various public and private collections around the world. Considered one of the most influential Canadian silversmiths of the 18th and 19th centuries, Laurent Amiot (1764–1839) completely redefined his craft, turning it into an art form. Visitors to the National Gallery of Canada can explore the brilliance and delicacy of his work through the presentation of nearly a hundred key works, most exhibited for the first time. In addition to religious vessels, accessories, and commemorative and domestic objects, the exhibition features a unique set of preparatory drawings by the artist, as well as several portraits of patrons and paintings providing further context for Amiot’s life and work.
More information is available here»
René Villeneuve, Laurent Amiot: Canadian Master Silversmith (Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, In partnership with the National Gallery of Canada, 2018), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-1773270418, $50. Also available in French.
Laurent Amiot was born in Quebec City in 1764, and after a first apprenticeship stayed in Paris for five years, just before the French Revolution, to perfect his artistic training. He returned to his hometown in the spring of 1787, acquainted with the latest European stylistic trends, mastering the art of composition and possessing a solid technique. He opened a workshop in the Old City the following year, inaugurating a fruitful practice that spans five decades. This illustrated catalog, containing some 80 works on display, is published on the occasion of the presentation of the first retrospective devoted to the artist. Three chapters highlight the fundamental role of Amiot’s contribution to the development of art in Canada. The first two scrutinize his training, his practice, the operation of the workshop, the role of the collaborators and relationships with patrons. The third analyzes the work, trying to advance knowledge of the society in which it blossomed.
New Gravestone for William Blake
As reported by AFP (via Art Daily, 13 August 2018). . .
Lida Cardozo Kindersley, Gravestone of William Blake, Bunhill Fields, London, unveiled on 12 August 2018 (Photograph by Lida Cardozo Kindersley).
The lost resting place of British poet and artist William Blake was finally marked Sunday [12 August 2018] with a gravestone, almost 200 years after he died.
Despite his influence today, Blake died in obscurity in 1827 and was buried in an unmarked common grave in Bunhill Fields, a London cemetery. Only a plain memorial stone recorded that he was buried nearby, much to the dismay of two devotees who visited, and who decided to find his exact resting place. Luis and Carol Garrido had as their guide the original coordinates of his burial, which were based on a grid of graves but became confused when parts of the cemetery were converted into gardens. After two years of research and some painstaking work with a tape measure, they found it, and the Blake Society—of which they were members—began fundraising for a new memorial to mark the spot. . .
The full article is available here»
Postdoctoral Position: Shakespeare in the Royal Collections
Postdoctoral Research Associate: ‘Shakespeare in the Royal Collections’
Applications are due by 14 September 2018
Applications are invited for a three year, full-time Postdoctoral Research Associate to work on the AHRC funded project, ‘Shakespeare in the Royal Collections’. This is led by Principal Investigator Professor Gordon McMullan (Department of English, King’s College London) and Co-Investigator Dr. Kate Retford (Department of History of Art, Birkbeck College, University of London).
‘Shakespeare in the Royal Collections’ seeks to establish a new understanding of the relationship of Shakespeare and the royal family 1700–1900 by way of the first thorough investigation of the Shakespeare-related holdings in the Royal Collections, from manuscripts through paintings and prints to performance records. It explores the mutually sustaining and legitimating nature of the development of both Shakespeare and the royal family as hegemonic cultural phenomena, asking the twin questions: what has Shakespeare done for the royals, and what have the royals done for Shakespeare?
The PDRA (one of two, with the other working on literary/performance matters) will work on visual culture, with a focus on eighteenth-century material. He/she will assist the PI and CI in delivering the research outputs of the project and contribute to those outputs: the creation of a website containing digital images of all the Shakespeare-related holdings, a set of annotations and contextual data; an innovative set of 3D visualisations; two symposia and a conference; a TV documentary; and an exhibition at Shakespeare’s Globe (2021). He/she will write a monograph based on Shakespeare-related art and material culture objects in the holdings. These range from paintings, sculptures and prints through to a doll of Portia and boxes made from the ‘Mulberry Tree planted by Shakespeare’. Two likely themes for the monograph are: an exploration of the fashioning of royal identities through visual and material identification with key characters and events from Shakespeare; the significance of the Shakespeare holdings for an understanding of the Royal Collections as a whole by providing a key opportunity to juxtapose items inherited, gifted, purchased and commissioned. The PDRA will be fully engaged in developing and shaping the book project according to his/her interests and findings.
Candidates should have a PhD in History of Art or cognate field, which will have been completed before the start of the role. If their PhD is not in History of Art, they should be able to show particular evidence of full awareness of the methodologies and theories of the discipline. The PDRA will have expertise in eighteenth-century material to complement the specialism of the other PDRA (already appointed) in Victorian and early-twentieth-century performance. Engagement with interdisciplinary approaches and a willingness to work across visual and literary culture are vital. Collections-based experience, such as cataloguing or provenance work, whether professional or gained through academic research, is highly desirable. Applicants should also be able to demonstrate ability to work well in a team, to manage their time and research efficiently and either have or be willing to acquire the appropriate digital competence.
Additional information is available here»
New Book | Francesco Solimena (1657–1747)
From ArtBooks.com:
Nicola Spinosa, Francesco Solimena (1657–1747) e le Arti a Napoli (Rome: Ugo Bozzi, 2018), 2 volumes, 1100 pages, ISBN: 978-8870030600, 320€ / $425.
Vol. 1 – dedicato al catalogo ragionato dei dipinti di Solimena (Nicola Spinosa); indici dei nomi e dei luoghi realtivi al volume I. Vol. 2 – dedicato al catalogo ragionato dei disegni di Solimena (Cristiana Romalli); con saggi sull’architettura (Leonardo Di Mauro), sulla scultura e le arti decorative (Gian Giotto Borrelli), su Solimena illustratore (Lorella Starita) e sulla musica al tempo di Solimena (Dinko Farbis); regesto su Solimena pittore a cura di Tiziana La Marca; Bibliografia generale (volumi I e II; indici dei nomi e dei luoghi relativi al volume II).
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