Conference | HECAA at 25
Francisca Efigenia Meléndez y Durazzo, Portrait of a Girl, ca. 1795, tempera on ivory, 5 × 5 cm (Dallas: Meadows Museum, SMU, Museum Purchase with funds from The Meadows Foundation, MM.08.01.20)
Happening now at SMU!
Art and Architecture in the Long Eighteenth Century: HECAA at 25
Southern Methodist University, Dallas, 1–4 November 201
Organized by Amy Freund
The Art History Department, its graduate program in the Rhetorics of Art, Space, and Culture (RASC/a), and the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University are proud to announce the program for Art and Architecture in the Long Eighteenth Century: HECAA at 25, a conference to be held 1–4 November 2018 in celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture.
T H U R S D A Y , 1 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 8
9:00 Welcome and HECAA Business Meeting
10:15 Roundtable: The History of Studying Eighteenth-Century Art, the Belgium of Art History
Chair: Michael Yonan, (University of Missouri)
• Wendy Wassyng Roworth (University of Rhode Island)
• Malcolm Baker (University of California, Riverside)
• Heather McPherson (University of Alabama at Birmingham)
• Meredith Gamer (Columbia University)
• Kevin Chua (Texas Tech University)
• Sarah Betzer (University of Virginia)
1:15 Research Session: Apprehending the Spatial: Methods and Approaches
Chair: Christopher Drew Armstrong (University of Pittsburgh)
• Lauren Cannady (Clark Art Institute), The Garden in a Curiosity Cabinet
• Laurel O. Peterson (The Morgan Library & Museum), Making Spaces: Immersive Politics and the Murals at Chatsworth
• Stacey Sloboda (University of Massachusetts, Boston), St. Martin’s Lane: Neighborhood as Art World in Eighteenth-Century London
2:45 Coffee Break
3:00 Research Session: Carte Blanche
Chair: Denise Baxter (University of North Texas)
• Nina Dubin (University of Illinois at Chicago), Master of the World: Love and Other Inconstancies in Eighteenth-Century French Art
• Jessica Priebe (University of Sydney), Assembling Ambition: Leroy de Barde and the Reimagining of the Artist’s Museum in the Long Eighteenth Century
• Andrew Graciano (University of South Carolina), An Eighteenth-Century Electrical Machine and the Re-Identification of a Portrait Subject in the National Portrait Gallery, London
4:45 Buses Depart to Dallas Museum of Art
5:30 Cocktail Reception
Hosted by the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History, University of Texas at Dallas
7:00 Keynote Address / Michael L. Rosenberg Lecture
Horchow Auditorium, DMA
• Melissa Hyde (University of Florida), Knowing Their Place? Women Artists in Eighteenth-Century France
F R I D A Y , 2 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 8
9:00 Research Session: People, Places, and Things in the Global Eighteenth Century
Chair: Nancy Um (Binghamton University)
• Elisabeth Fraser (University of South Florida), The Ottoman Costume Album as Agent of Contact in the Global Eighteenth Century
• Irene Choi (University of British Columbia), ‘The Principle of Things’: Materiality and Morality from Dutch Still Life to Korean Chaekgeori
• Dipti Khera (New York University), Connected, Yet Dispersed: Pictures, Places and Histories of Art, ca. 1700
• Dawn Odell (Lewis and Clark College), Chinese Art and a South Carolina Rice Plantation
10:45 Coffee Break
11:00 Roundtable: Innovation in Teaching, Advising, Exhibiting, and Curating
Chair: Amelia Rauser (Franklin & Marshall College)
• Lilit Sadoyan (J. Paul Getty Museum)
• Kelsey Brosnan (New Orleans Museum of Art)
• Wendy Bellion (University of Delaware)
• David Pullins (Frick Collection) )
• Amelia Rauser (Franklin & Marshall College)
12:30 Lunch
2:00 Research Session: Emerging Scholars 1
Chair: Christopher Johns (Vanderbilt University)
• Danielle Ezor (Southern Methodist University), A Restaurant at the Salon: Consuming Chardin’s Still Lifes
• Ashley Bruckbauer (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), Dangerous Liaisons: Ambassadors and Embassies in Eighteenth-Century French Art
• Delanie Linden (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Silver, Flesh, and Holy Water: Colonial Conversions in the French Enlightenment
• Thea Goldring (Harvard University), The Imagined Machine of the Encyclopédie Planches
3:15 Coffee Break
3:30 Research Session: Emerging Scholars 2
Chair: Christopher Johns (Vanderbilt University)
• Katherine Calvin (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), Merchants, Markets, and Cultural Contact in Early Modern Aleppo
• Vincent Pham (University of California, San Diego), Self-Made Men: Lord Chesterfield and His Library Portraits
• Ji Eun You (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), Interpretation of Neoclassical Designs in Decorative Art through Winckelmann
• Hyejin Lee (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), Perfumed Flights of Imagination: Reverie, Ornaments, and Elite Female Identity in Late Eighteenth-Century Boudoirs
4:45 Meadows Gallery Visit
5:15 Research Session: Things Change
Chairs: Wendy Bellion (University of Delaware) and Kristel Smentek (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
• Jeffrey Collins (Bard Graduate Center), Repair or Reinvention? Recreating the Red Faun
• Tara Zanardi (Hunter College), Artful Nature and Material Splendor: The Dauphin’s Collection at the Royal Cabinet of Natural History
• Susan Wager (University of New Hampshire, Durham), The Sweet Hereafter: The Multiple Lives of Boucher’s Biscuit Porcelain Figures
• Jennifer Chuong (Harvard University), Wood in Transition: Veneer Furniture in the Early American Republic
7:15 Buses depart Meadows Museum for Bolsa
7:30 Dinner at Bolsa, 614 West Davis Street, 75208
S A T U R D A Y , 3 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 8
9:00 Keynote Address
• Daniela Bleichmar (University of Southern California), Painting and the Time and Place of History
10:30 Recent Acquisitions in Eighteenth-Century Menswear from the Texas Fashion Collection
• Annette Becker (Director, Texas Fashion Collection at University of North Texas)
11:00 Breakout Sessions
Participants will convene in small pre-assigned groups for discussion.
12:30 Roundtable: How to Art History: A Workshop for Emerging Scholars
Chair: Elizabeth Bacon Eager (Southern Methodist University)
• Michael Yonan (University of Missouri)
• Nicole Myers (Dallas Museum of Art)
• Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell (Independent Scholar)
Come with questions about job hunting, professional networking, publishing, and balancing life and work. Boxed lunches provided for preregistered guests.
2:00 Research Session: Art and Political Authority in the Long Eighteenth Century
• Meredith Martin (New York University) and Aaron Wile (University of Southern California)
• Sarah Grandin (Harvard University), Font Fit for a King: The Romain du Roi, Print, and the Mechanical Arts under Louis XIV
• Douglas Fordham (University of Virginia), Free Market Patriotism
• Ünver Rüstem (Johns Hopkins University), Ottoman Baroque Architecture and the Aesthetics of Power
• Jennifer Van Horn (University of Delaware), Slavery and Portraiture in a New Nation
3:45 Coffee Break
4:00 Roundtable: The Future of Studying Eighteenth-Century Art: HECAA at 50
Chair: Amy Freund (Southern Methodist University)
• Ewa Lajer-Burcharth (Harvard University)
• Cassie Mansfield (Penn State University)
• Catherine Girard (Eastern Washington University)
• Paris Spies-Gans (Harvard Society of Fellows)
• Andrei Pop (University of Chicago)
5:45 Closing Cocktail Reception
S U N D A Y , 4 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 8
Afternoon at the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth.
Organizing Committee
Denise Baxter (University of North Texas)
Kelly Donahue-Wallace (University of North Texas)
Lindsay Dunn (Texas Christian University)
Elizabeth Bacon Eager (Southern Methodist University)
Daniella Ezor (Southern Methodist University)
Amy Freund (Southern Methodist University)
Jessica Fripp (Texas Christian University)
Nicole Myers (Dallas Museum of Art)
Alexandra Perez (Southern Methodist University)
Beth S. Wright (University of Texas at Arlington)
Exhibition | Piqué at the Court of Naples
Giuseppe Sarao, Piqué Table, ca. 1730s
(Saint Petersburg: The Hermitage)
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From Galerie Kugel:
Piqué: Gold, Tortoiseshell, and Mother-of-Pearl at the Court of Naples
Complètement Piqué! Le fol art de l’écaille à la Cour de Naples
Galerie Kugel, Paris, 12 September — 8 December 2018
Galerie J. Kugel presents the first exhibition devoted to the art of piqué, which flourished in Naples during the first half of the 18th century. The technique combines lavish inventiveness, virtuoso skill, and astonishing opulence. These extraordinary objects bring together three precious materials: tortoiseshell, gold, and mother-of-pearl. According to Nicolas Kugel: “This fascinating combination is sublimated by light, which makes the gold shimmer, reveals the iridescence of the mother-of-pearl, and penetrates even the diaphanous darkness of the tortoiseshell.”
Piqué chest with chinoiserie details and four turtle-shaped feet, eighteenth century.
The exhibition includes over 50 objects created between 1720 and 1760 for connoisseurs and the court, particularly for Charles of Bourbon, who became king of Naples in 1734 and made his court one of the most splendid and cosmopolitan in all Europe. The artisans who created these masterpieces were known as Tartarugari. Giuseppe Sarao, the most famous among them, had a workshop adjoining the walls of the royal palace. Several of the pieces in the exhibition were made by Sarao, including a table—the ultimate piqué masterpiece—here lent, for the first time, by the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.
These talented artists were able not only to join and mold the tortoiseshell using boiling water and olive oil, but also inlaid gold and mother-of-pearl into the still-soft tortoiseshell. They created the most extravagant shapes, which they adorned with fashionable piqué decors such as singeries (scenes where monkeys engage in human activities), chinoiseries, and grotesques.
Alexis Kugel explains: “The exhibition will allow visitors to discover both the incredible inventiveness of the artists and the extraordinarily keen interest this art sparked among 19th-century collectors, including several members of the Rothschild family. Many pieces boasting that prestigious provenance will be presented.”
The extraordinary table from the Hermitage Museum is the greatest masterpiece to have been created using the pique technique. It is also the only table to have retained its original legs. The triangular shape of the legs is also present in the cabinet from the Royal British Collections. The extraordinarily inventive and elaborate tabletop is adorned with over a hundred chinoiserie figures, while countless animals, monkeys, insects, birds, and dragons also inhabit the space. The six main medallions depict Chinese couples in gold and mother-of-pearl, two of which are also found on the turtle casket. The compartments are decorated with small Chinese figures made of cut out and engraved gold. In the centre, four gold vases symbolise the seasons; the figures between refer to the same theme. The centre is adorned with a small cartouche in which two figures rock back and forth on a seesaw. The Chinese theme continues on the legs and stretcher. Underneath the medallion with the Chinese couple there is the monogram SfN (Sarao fecit Napoli). In 1886 Baron Stieglitz purchased the table from the Frankfort antique dealer Goldschmidt, one of the main suppliers to Mayer Carl de Rothschild, also a great connoisseur of tortoiseshell piqué. It was no doubt the death of Mayer Carl that same year (1886) that allowed Stieglitz to acquire the table. It stood in the Stieglitz Museum of Applied Arts and was transferred to the Hermitage after 1924.
The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue, offering the first complete study of the subject. The French version will be published by Monelle Hayot and the English version by Rizzoli.
Nazanin Lankarani wrote about the exhibition for The New York Times (7 September 2018).
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From Rizzoli:
Alexis Kugel, Piqué: Gold, Tortoiseshell, and Mother-of-Pearl at the Court of Naples (New York: Rizzoli, 2018), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-8891820617, $60.
The first volume dedicated to the most complete and outstanding collection of piqué objects ever assembled, a number of which have never been published before. The volume is dedicated to the art of piqué, created in Naples during the first half of the eighteenth century, a technique that combines remarkable inventiveness, virtuoso skill, and astonishing opulence. These extraordinary objects are made of three precious materials: tortoiseshell, gold, and mother-of-pearl. These pieces were made between 1720 and 1760 for the public and the court, especially for Charles de Bourbon, King of Naples. The authors of these creations were known as tartarugari. Among the most famous tartarugari was Giuseppe Sarao, whose studio was next to the walls of the Royal Palace and who created some of the pieces presented in this book. Also included is an extraordinary table from the Hermitage Museum, considered to be the greatest masterpiece created using the piqué technique, and still retaining its original legs. The catalogue will allow readers to discover both the incredible inventiveness of the artists and the extraordinarily keen interest this art sparked among nineteenth-century collectors, including several members of the Rothschild family. The volume presents more than fifty objects, representing the masterpieces of this technique. The objects are introduced by a study of the subject and a text explaining the historical context.
Alexis Kugel is a member of the fifth generation of a family of antiques dealers whose company was founded in Russia at the end of the eighteenth century. Based in Paris since 1924, they expanded the business of silver and jewelry to deal in fine furniture, works of art and sculpture, Kunstkammer objects, ivories, Renaissance jewelry, and scientific instruments.
Symposium | Art, History, and Sinology
From the University of Michigan:
Art, History, and Sinology
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 9–10 October 2018
Martin J. Powers, Sally Michelson Davidson Professor of Chinese Arts and Cultures at the University of Michigan, has been a towering beacon in the field, trailblazing fresh methodologies and breaking down academic stereotypes on Chinese culture. In celebration of his well-deserved retirement from teaching, Professor Powers’s graduate advisees and colleagues from around the world will convene an international conference on Chinese art and history on November 9 and 10, 2018 at the University of Michigan. This academic gathering will reflect upon ways the field of sinology has changed over the course of Powers’s long academic career and the new directions it is developing, or should develop, in the future. Tenth Floor at Weiser Hall, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
This event is sponsored by Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Additional support is provided by the Department of the History Art, University of Michigan and the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) as well as by Liu Jiuzhou and Qian Ying.
F R I D A Y , 9 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 8
10:30 Painting Viewing Session
With Natsu Oyobe (Curator of Asian Art, UMMA) in the Ernestine and Herbert Ruben Study Center for Works on Paper and the Object Study Room, University of Michigan Museum of Art
1:00 Welcome and Opening Remarks
J.P. Park (University of California, Riverside) and Mary Gallagher (Director, LRCCS)
1:15 Panel 1 | Art, Trade, and Early Modern Cultural Contact
Moderator: David Porter (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
• Tamara Bentley (Colorado College), Tribute and Tropes of Foreignness in Some Chinese Qing-Dynasty Lacquer Screens Picturing Europeans
• Richard Vinograd (Stanford University), Global Gardens: Descriptions, Views, Collections
• Katharine Burnett (University of California, Davis), Art History without the Art: The Curious Case of Sino-Vietnamese Teapots before 1700
3:00 Coffee Break
3:15 Panel 2 | Of and By the Women
Moderator: Wang Zheng (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
• Wen-Chien Cheng (Royal Ontario Museum), Boundary Crossing: Portraiture or Paintings of Beautiful Women?
• Liu Bo (John Carroll University), Images of Women in Northern Song Tomb Murals
• Lara C. W. Blanchard (Hobart and William Smith Colleges), Women as Collators in Chinese Art History: Some Notes on Reading Tang Shuyu’s Jade Terrace History of Painting
5:15 Public Reception
S A T U R D A Y , 1 0 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 8
9:00 Panel 3 | Painting as Political Maneuvering
Moderator: Li Min (UCLA)
• Roslyn Hammers (University of Hong Kong), Multiple Personalities at Work: Wang Meng’s Spring Tilling at the Mouth of a Valley
• Gerui Wang (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor), Round Fans in Markets: From Personal Item to Public Expression
• Olivia Mendelson (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor), A Pictorial Commentary on Rural Conditions in Imperial China
10:45 Coffee Break
11:00 Panel 4 | Fakery, Fiction, and History
Moderator: Christian de Pee (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
• J. P. Park (University of California, Riverside), Re-inventing Art History: Forgeries and Counter-Forgeries in Early Modern Chinese Art
• Timothy Brook (University of British Columbia), State Power as Consensual Hallucination: Emperor Yongle’s Tooth Relic
12:15 Lunch Break
1:30 Panel 5 | State of the Field
Moderator: Alex Potts (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
• Lothar von Falkenhausen (University of California, Los Angeles), How East Asian Art History Grew into an Academic Discipline
• John Onians (University of East Anglia), Towards a Neuroarthistory of Chinese Art
• Wu Hung (University of Chicago), A Short History of ‘Black Painting’ (hei hua), A Counter Tradition in Chinese Art
3:30 Coffee Break
3:45 Panel 6 | China Studies beyond Borders: Connective and Comparative Histories
Moderator: Tamara Bentley (Colorado College)
Participants: Martin Powers, Lydia H. Liu (Columbia University), David Porter, Katharine Burnett, Richard Vinograd, and Timothy Brook
5:00 Keynote Speech
• Martin Powers, Privacy in Song China and Georgian England
Enfilade 
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