Exhibition | Un brin de panache, éventails de Chine
Opening this week at the Museum of the French East India Company:
Un brin de panache, éventails de Chine
Musée de la Compagnie des Indes, Port-Louis (Brittany), 15 June — 25 November 2019
Les aristocrates européens se piquent d’exotisme extrême-oriental au 17e siècle. Cette passion entraîne l’apparition, en Asie, d’une production d’objets à destination de l’exportation européenne. L’éventail devient l’objet indispensable des cours royales européennes dès le début du 17e siècle.
Les premiers éventails chinois destinés au marché occidental sont faits de brins d’ivoire repercés dont les motifs évoquent la finesse de la production de la porcelaine. Les scènes représentent des figures animales et de riches décors floraux. L’usage de l’éventail se démocratise au 18e siècle et ce sont plus de 45,000 éventails qui sont importés par la Compagnie française de 1722 à 1741. Ils sont majoritairement en bambou mais les plus beaux sont en ivoire, en écailles de torture ou en laque. L’iconographie des feuilles évolue et la variété des scènes représentées se multiplie. L’engouement pour les éventails chinois perdure au 19e siècle. Ainsi, le navire Le Fils de France, armé par l’armateur nantais Thomas Dobrée, rapporte dans ses cales 2,200 éventails qui sont vendus à Nantes en 1819.
Bien que le thé, les porcelaines et la soie soient les marchandises principales importées de Chine par les compagnies des Indes, cette exposition présente une sélection d’éventails, ces objets d’art qui ont participé au goût particulier de certains amateurs de l’exotisme asiatique.
About the Museum
Since 1984, the musée de la Compagnie des Indes de Lorient (the Museum of the French East India Company) has been housed in one of the buildings of the Port-Louis Citadel, a marvel of seventeenth-century military architecture initiated by the Spanish and completed by the architect Jacques Corbineau. The musée de la Compagnie des Indes is the only museum in France dedicated to the story of the great trading companies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Ship models, engravings, maps, Indo-European furniture, China porcelains, and Indian cottons shed light on this maritime epic.
Lecture | Susan Sloman, Mapping Gainsborough in Bath and London
From the Society of Antiquaries:
Susan Sloman, Mapping Thomas Gainsborough’s Career in Bath and London
Society of Antiquaries of London, 9 July 2019
Much of Susan Sloman’s research into the Thomas Gainsborough’s life and career has involved mapping and architecture. She is primarily interested in how the streets and buildings in which he lived affected his practice.
In Bath, Gainsborough shared a large central town house built for the Duke of Kingston with his sister (a milliner). This was destroyed at the time of the excavation of the Roman Baths in the last decade of the nineteenth century, and photographs of the excavation show Gainsborough’s house teetering at the edge of the Great Bath held up by wooden props. For the exhibition catalogue accompanying Gainsborough’s Family Album (National Portrait Gallery, November 2018 – February 2019), Sloman has written about the roles the artist’s wife and sister played within his professional life, and how his and his sister’s use of property created wealth for the family as a whole and supported his portrait-painting practice.
In the course of research for another exhibition (Gainsborough and the Theatre, Holburne Museum, Bath, October 2018 – January 2019), the changes in London’s streetscape south of Piccadilly that took place at the time of the construction of Regent Street were discovered to be particularly striking. The area Gainsborough frequented in the vicinity of Pall Mall looked very unlike the place we know now. He was only a short walk from the ‘Little’ Theatre (the site of the later Haymarket Theatre) and the King’s Theatre or Italian Opera House, also in Haymarket. Across Pall Mall from these theatres was Dalton’s Warehouse, home to the Royal Academy for the first ten years of its existence, between 1769 and 1779. It is hoped that these elements of geography and archaeology will be of wider interest beyond the confines of art history—and will form a key focus of this talk on Gainsborough’s career.
This public lecture will begin at 13.00; doors open at 12.30. It is free and open to the public, but space is limited and reservations are strongly recommended to avoid disappointment. To book online, simply click the ‘Reserve Your Seat’ button, available here.
Call for Papers | Visualizing Sound and Silence
From Case Western:
Visualizing Sound and Silence in Art and Architecture
45th Annual Cleveland Symposium for Current and Recent Graduate Students
Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Museum of Art, 25 October 2019
Proposals due by 28 June 2019
When we examine visual images, we often concentrate solely on the sense of sight. In contrast, art and architecture, whether employing musical, ritual, or acoustic components, have a long history of incorporating aural elements that engage with the sense of hearing. Whether audible or silent, art, in any form, is not a ‘mute’ medium. The question of who speaks, who is silent, and who is listening echoes within the chambers of power in any society.
How do artists throughout history visualize sound and silence? How does performance alter the experience of an object or space? How does the ephemeral nature of a melody or of a cacophony change our experiences of art and architecture over time? How does conversation or contemplation reshape our understanding of an image?
The Art History Department at Case Western Reserve University invites graduate students to submit abstracts for its 2019 Annual Symposium: Visualizing Sound & Silence in Art & Architecture. We welcome innovative research papers that engage with acoustics, music, sounds, and silence in and around art.
With keynote speaker: Vincent Debiais, L’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
Presentations may explore aspects of this theme as it applies in any medium and from any historical period, geographical location, or methodological perspective. Papers that engage with the art or architecture of the Cleveland Museum of Art are encouraged, but are not required.
Leaf from a Gradual, circle of Girolamo dai Libri (Italian, 1474–1555), Verona (?), ink, tempera, and gold on parchment (The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1921.140.1.a).
Potential topics may include, but are not limited to:
• Depictions of sound
• Discussion of who is given a voice
• Music in art
• Liturgy and recitation
• Conversation pieces
• Internalization of drama
• Acoustics in architecture
• Silent films
• Performance art
• Sound installations
• The augmentation of other senses
• The role of labels and audio guides in museums
• Resonance with political environment
For consideration, current and recent graduate students in art history, musicology, and related disciplines are invited to submit a 350-word abstract, alongside a CV to clevelandsymposium@gmail.com by June 28, 2019. Selected participants will be notified by the end of July. Paper presentations will be 20 minutes in length. Please direct all questions to Reed O’Mara and Rebecca Woodruff at clevelandsymposium@gmail.com. Three papers will be awarded prizes.
Call for Papers | Work on Furniture and Interiors from Emerging Scholars
From ArtHist.net:
British, Continental, and American Furniture and Interiors
The Wallace Collection, London, 22 November 2019
Proposals due by 1 July 2019
Call for papers from PhD/Post-Doc students, junior museum/heritage curators and professionals
As part of the Furniture History Society’s programme of supporting researchers at an early stage in their careers, the Society organises a dedicated study day for emerging scholars to present on a variety of topics connected to the history, construction, design, conservation of furniture, and historical interiors. For our fifth of these conferences we particularly welcome papers on the transmission of design and manufacture as a result of immigration and emigration to and from, or within different countries. We thus invite investigation into the connections made between craftsmen, patrons and clients as well as networks of manufacture and retailing at any period. We hope to explore the rich and varied history of furniture that emerges from such an approach and develop a better understanding of how design, taste and fashion were created in the evolving modern world.
Interested speakers are requested to send an abstract of about 300 words outlining their proposed topic, research methodologies, and sources. They should also send a current Curriculum Vitae and arrange for one reference to be sent to the Jill Bace, FHS Grants Secretary, grants@furniturehistorysociety.org by 1 July 2019.
Some limited assistance with travel expenses may be available, and any requests should be included, with justification, with the applicant’s abstract. The Society is also happy to provide further details, outlining the aims and objectives of the seminar, to enable participants to apply to their own institution for funding.
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