Call for Papers | The Salon and the Senses
From the Call for Papers, for this conference aimed at graduate students and early-career scholars:
The Salon and the Senses in the Long Eighteenth Century: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 2–3 April 2020
Proposals due by 15 September 2019
The conference The Salon and the Senses in the Long Eighteenth Century: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, seeks to join the intellectual heritage of the salons with their multidisciplinary, multisensory natures. We will explore the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile aspects of the salon, considering the arts and sensory pleasures of the salon alongside the verbal arts—the poetry, literature, theater, and conversation—that were cultivated there.
Salons of the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries knew no disciplinary boundaries. More than other institutions of the age, salons offered their habitués opportunities to engage with a wide range of social, cultural, artistic, literary, and verbal practices. A multidisciplinary approach requires that we—like salon hostesses and guests before us—open our minds across modern intellectual boundaries and reanimate the embodied practices of the institution. By bringing together scholars from numerous fields, we hope to shed new light on salons in all of their complexity. Above all, we seek to understand the multi-sensory nature of the salon: its sights, sounds, tastes, and smells; its conversations, texts, and subtexts.
We welcome proposals for conference presentations, performances, or interactive sessions.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
• Senses and sensory experience
• Material culture, furniture, and fashion
• Emotions and expressive culture
• Gender, sexuality, and the body
• Salons as sites of global or local cultural exchange
• Aesthetics and philosophy
• Natural philosophy, collecting, and experimentation
• Letters and other texts
• Music and visual art
• Poetry, theater, and the novel
• Games, food, and sociability
Abstracts of up to 350 words, as well as a one-page curriculum vitae, should be sent by September 15, 2019 to jemjones@sas.rutgers.edu. Graduate students and early-career scholars are encouraged to apply. Selected participants will be notified by the end of October. The conference will be hosted by the Center for Cultural Analysis (CCA) at Rutgers University and is convened by the CCA’s “Experiencing the Salon” working group, led by Jennifer Jones (Department of History, jemjones@sas.rutgers.edu) and Rebecca Cypess (Department of Music, rebecca.cypess@rutgers.edu). For more information, contact Jennifer or Rebecca.
Exhibition | Goya: Visions and Inventions
Now on view at The Dalí Museum in Florida:
Before Dali — Goya: Visions and Inventions
The Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, 15 June — 1 December 2019
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, Portrait of Francisco Sabatini, ca. 1775–79, oil on canvas, 33 × 25 inches (Dallas: Meadows Museum at SMU, MM.67.03).
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828) is one of the most important Spanish artists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, celebrated for his revolutionary paintings, drawings, and engravings. Goya’s life and works deeply influenced Salvador Dali in his early years and are considered by many scholars to be the basis for ‘modern’ art, bridging classicism and romanticism. Before Dali: Goya: Visions & Inventions, sponsored by Tampa International Airport, features two alternating suites of first-edition prints, published in Goya’s lifetime, alongside three significant paintings representing unique themes of Goya’s works. The works are on loan from the Meadows Museum in Dallas, home of one of the most substantial collections of Goya.
Los Caprichos
The Dalí Museum, 15 June — 15 September 2019
One of Goya’s most famous works, Los Caprichos (1799) is a series of 80 satirical prints exploring his visions of the superstitions and societal ills of his time. Goya sought to illustrate “the innumerable foibles and follies to be found in any civilized society, and from the common prejudices and deceitful practices which custom, ignorance, or self-interest have made usual.” Witchcraft and other superstitious beliefs were a prevalent subject matter in this series that meant to ridicule and critique the arrogance of the noble class and the corruption of human virtue. Because of their sensitive subjects—including anticlerical scenes—few people saw these works during Goya’s lifetime.
La Tauromaquia
The Dali Museum, 21 September — 1 December 2019
La Tauromaquia (1816) is a suite of prints depicting the evolution and history of bullfighting on the Iberian Peninsula. Goya created La Tauromaquia between 1815 and 1816, at the age of 69. Unlike the targets of Goya’s previous satirical series Los Caprichos, bullfighting was not politically sensitive, and La Tauromaquia was published in an edition of 320—for sale individually or in sets—without incident. The latter series, however, did not meet with critical or commercial success. The artist focuses on the violent scenes that take place in the bullring and the daring movements of the bullfighters. The events are not presented as they are viewed by a viewer in the stands, but in a more direct way.
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