Amidst Pandemic
Note from the Editor
I’ve always wanted Enfilade to be an informative site for people who want to better understand the eighteenth century. Even more than that, I’ve hoped that it would also be a space that would cultivate intellectual pleasure. Amid the many pressures we all face—as academics, museum professionals, gallerists, dealers, independent scholars, writers, &c., &c.—news of exhibitions and new books, calls for papers and other opportunities were, I trusted, a welcome antidote to an inbox overflowing with countless, mind-numbing chores. With its very predictable, entirely out-dated format (it is still very much the web as things looked in 2009), the site has aimed to provide a small, incremental conception of where the field now finds itself—where you all have, as a community of scholars, taken it.
And now, of course, with the global spread of the Coronavirus, we all find ourselves displaced from our regular ways of working, living, and being. Upcoming events listed here weeks ago will not happen (I’m still stunned to have missed out on what promised to be a brilliant ASECS in St. Louis), it’s hard to know quite what to make of calls for papers (at least in the short-term), and all of those current exhibitions so carefully installed sit entirely quiet, waiting for when museums will again open their doors. I realize, in other words, that much of the regular content of Enfilade now takes on a strange hue.
With advanced apologies for anything that sounds tone-deaf or insensitive in the midst of a pandemic, I plan to keep at it, largely in hopes that the site might continue to offer useful information, as well as providing something that feels familiar when so much doesn’t. And I suspect news of forthcoming books will be more welcome than ever (please don’t be bashful in sending in news items). If you’ve not yet started following HECAA’s Instagram account, have a look: Katherine Iselin—who just recently defended her dissertation at Missouri under the direction of Michael Yonan—does a brilliant job with it. And in the coming weeks, HECAA will launch a new website exclusively for members. There is, then, a thriving community of dixhuitièmistes, even in these days of isolation.
Particularly in the weeks and months ahead, take care of yourselves and be well.
–Craig Hanson
ASECS 2020, St. Louis
Although this year’s ASECS conference was cancelled, I want to acknowledge the many interesting panels and talks that were planned for this past weekend. I was looking forward to it. And what a stunning cover for the program! –CH
2020 American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference
Hyatt Regency at the Arch, St. Louis, 19–21 March 2020
The 51st annual meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies was scheduled to take place at the Hyatt Regency at the Arch in St. Louis, before it was cancelled in response to the Coronavirus pandemic. HECAA was to be represented by the Anne Schroder New Scholars’ Session, chaired by Susanna Caviglia and scheduled for Friday morning. The annual business meeting was to take place Friday evening at 5:00. A selection of 29 additional panels is included here (of the 188 sessions scheduled, many others would, of course, have interested HECAA members). For the full slate of offerings, see the program.
W E D N E S D A Y , 1 8 M A R C H 2 0 2 0
Introduction to the St. Louis Art Museum Eighteenth-Century Collections
Wednesday, 1:00–5:00
Organizers: Amy TORBERT, Saint Louis Art Museum and Brittany LUBERDA, Baltimore Museum of Art
The pre-conference workshop will consist of dialogues among curators, field experts, and attendees on topics including global encounter, intermateriality, politics of empire, social histories, production processes, and curating the eighteenth century. These conversations will be held in the galleries in front of highlights such as colonial silver, European porcelain, Chinese bronzes and exportware, Peruvian textiles, and paintings including John Greenwood’s Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam (c.1752–58) and François-André Vincent’s Arria and Paetus (1784). The event will include the opportunity to study works from storage rarely on view and to visit the Print Study Room.
Participants must have pre-registered and must arrange their own transportation. The Museum is a 30-minute drive from the airport and a 20-minute drive from the hotel.
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Burneys and Stuff: Material Culture and the Visual Arts (The Burney Society)
Thursday, 8:00–9:30am
Chair: Alicia KERFOOT, SUNY Brockport
1. Teri DOERKSEN, Mansfield University of Pennsylvania, ‘Soles to be saved; Soles not to be saved’: Humanizing the Material and Objectifying the Human in Edward Francis Burney’s Satirical Regency Watercolors
2. Cynthia KLEKAR-CUNNINGHAM, Western Michigan University, Objects and Absence: The Immaterial in Burney’s Fiction
3. Kristin M. DISTEL, Ohio University, ‘Tis some exquisite performer’: Juliet’s Harp and the Shame of Visibility in Burney’s The Wanderer
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The Particularity of Experience and the Art of Judgment
Thursday, 8:00–9:30am
Chair: Neil SACCAMANO, Cornell University
1. Vivasvan SONI, Northwestern University, Experience with(out) Judgment: Senses of Experience in Locke’s Essay, Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and Blake’s Songs
2. Johannes WANKHAMMER, Princeton University, The Senses Do Judge: A. G. Baumgarten’s Theory of Judgment and the Claims of Aesthetics
3. Karen VALIHORA, York University, Adam Smith’s Sublime and Beautiful
4. Patrick COLEMAN, UCLA, ‘Est-il bon, est-il méchant?’: Judgment, Action, and Aesthetics in Diderot
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Amateur or Professional? Reconsidering the Language of Artistic Status
Thursday, 8:00–9:30am
Chairs: Paris SPIES-GANS, Harvard Society of Fellows and Laurel PETERSON, The Morgan Library & Museum
1. Laura ENGEL, Duquesne University, Fashioning Fairies: Lady Diana Beauclerk’s Watercolors
2. Luke FREEMAN, University of Minnesota, Engraving Authority: Bernard Picart’s Status and the ‘Leading Hands of Europe’
3. Maura GLEESON, University of Florida, Picturing La Créatrice: Image, Imagination, and Artistic Practice in Napoleonic France
4. Cynthia ROMAN, The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, ‘Not Artists’: Horace Walpole’s Hyperbolic Praise of Prints by Persons of Rank and Quality
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Roundtable: How to Publish in an Eighteenth-Century Studies Journal
Thursday, 9:45–11:15am
Chair: Adam SCHOENE, Eighteenth-Century Studies
1. J. T. SCANLAN, The Age of Johnson
2. Eugenia ZUROSKI, Eighteenth-Century Fiction
3. Cedric D. REVERAND, Eighteenth-Century Life
4. Sean MOORE, Eighteenth-Century Studies
5. Jennifer THORN, Eighteenth-Century Studies
6. David A. BREWER, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture
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Mineralogy and Artful Metamorphosis
Thursday, 11:30–1:00
Chairs: Tara ZANARDI, Hunter College, CUNY and Christina LINDEMAN, University of South Alabama
1. Elisabeth C. RIVARD, Independent Scholar, The Handheld ‘Wunderkammer’: Mineralogical Snuffboxes in the Enlightenment
2. Jennifer GERMANN, Ithaca College, Peaches and Pearls: Materializing Metaphors of Race in Eighteenth-Century British Art
3. Eleanore NEUMANN, University of Virginia, Drifted Rocks: Gender and Geologic Time in the Early-Nineteenth-Century Landscapes of John Linnell, J.M.W. Turner, and Maria Graham
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Rethinking Turquerie: New Definitions and Approaches
Thursday, 11:30–1:00
Chair: Ashley BRUCKBAUER, Independent Scholar
1. Jonathan HADDAD, University of Georgia, Cooking the Books: The Marquis de Caumont’s Turkish Cauldrons and the Ottoman Incunabula
2. Katherine ARPEN, Auburn University, The ‘Hammam’ as a Model for Public Bathing in Late Eighteenth-Century France
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From ‘Tabula Rasa’ to ‘Terra Incognita’: Landscape and Identity in the Enlightenment
Thursday, 11:30–1:00
Chair: Shirley TUNG, Kansas State University
1. Michael BROWN, University of Aberdeen, Locating Britain: The English Geographies of Daniel Defoe
2. John DAVENPORT, Missouri Southern State University, Topographical Dialogues and Competing Claims to Selfhood in Eighteenth-Century Travel Writing
3. Kasie ALT, Georgia Southern University, Negotiating the Self through Landscape Design and Representation: Thomas Anson’s Estate at Shugborough
4. Julia SIENKEWICZ, Roanoke College, Landscape and Alterity: Encounters with Virginia and South Africa
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Roundtable: Surveying Social Media and Eighteenth-Century Studies
Thursday, 11:30–1:00
Chair: Crystal LAKE, Wright State University
1. Jenny DAVIDSON, Columbia University
2. Aaron HANLON, Colby College
3. Marguerite HAPPE, UCLA
4. Sarah Tindal KAREEM, UCLA and The Rambling
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‘Too political, too big, no good’: Picturing Politics
Thursday, 2:30–4:00
Chair: Jessica L. FRIPP, Texas Christian University
1. Alexandra CARDON, The Graduate Center, CUNY, Engaging the Public: The Rejection of Mythology in Royal Almanac Prints 1695–1715
2. J. Patrick MULLINS, Marquette University, Thomas Hollis’s ‘Liberty Prints’ and the Transatlantic Cult of Tyrannicide
3. Thomas BUSCIGLIO-RITTER, University of Delaware, Denis Volozan’s Portrait of George Washington in an Atlantic Context
4. Marina KLIGER, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, From ‘Great Men’ to ‘Women’s Influence’: Retelling the Story of Louis Ducis’s Tasso and Eleonora d’Este from the Empire to the Restoration
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Roundtable: Engaging the Ottoman Empire
Chair: Ashley COHEN, University of South California
Thursday, Thursday, 4:15–5:45
1. Douglas FORDHAM, University of Virginia
2. Lynn FESTA, Rutgers University
3. Katherine CALVIN, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
4. Angelina DEL BALZO, Bilkent University
5. Humberto GARCIA, University of California, Merced
6. Charlotte SUSSMAN, Duke University
7. Gerald MACLEAN, University of Exeter
Respondent: Daniel O’QUINN, University of Guelph
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Colonial Matter in the Eighteenth-Century World
Thursday, Thursday, 4:15–5:45
Chairs: Danielle EZOR, Southern Methodist University and Kaitlin GRIMES, University of Missouri-Columbia
1. Amelia RAUSER, Franklin & Marshall College, Madras Cloth: Currency, Costume, and Enslavement
2. Kelly FLEMING, University of Virginia, Empire, Satire, and the Regency Cap in The Adventures of an Ostrich Feather of Quality (1812)
3. Yiyun HUANG, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, ‘Nothing but large potions of tea could extinguish it’: Chinese Knowledge and Discourse of Tea in Colonial America
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The Enlightened Mind: Education in the Long Eighteenth Century
Thursday, Thursday, 4:15–5:45
Chairs: Karissa BUSHMAN, Quinnipiac University and Amanda STRASIK, Eastern Kentucky University
1. Franny BROCK, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Madame de Genlis’ ‘New Method’ and Teaching Drawing to Children in Eighteenth-Century France
2. Dorothy JOHNSON, University of Iowa, Bodies of Knowledge? Teaching Anatomy to Artists in Enlightenment France
3. Madeline SUTHERLAND-MEIER, University of Texas, Austin, Raising and Educating Children in Eighteenth-Century Spain: Padre Sarmiento’s Discurso sobre el método que debia guardarse en la primera educación de la juventud
4. Brigitte WELTMAN-ARON, University of Florida, The Pitfalls of Education: Madame de Genlis on Spoiled Children
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The Visual Gothic in the Long Eighteenth Century
Thursday, Thursday, 4:15–5:45
Chair: Kristin O’ROURKE, Dartmouth College
1. Aurélien DAVRIUS, Paris-Malaquais ENSA, Jacques-François Blondel, an Admirer of French Religious Architecture
2. Katherine HILLIARD, Princeton University, Behind the Veil: Gothic Secrecy and Epistemology in The Mysteries of Udolpho
3. Elizabeth HORNBECK, University of Missouri, Vetusta Monumenta and the Eighteenth-Century Remediation of Gothic Architecture
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F R I D A Y , 2 0 M A R C H 2 0 2 0
Anne Schroder New Scholars Session (HECAA)
Friday, 8:00–9:30am
Chair: Susanna CAVIGLIA, Duke University
1. Isabel BALDRICH, School of Art and Art History, University of Iowa, Black Skin, White Hands: Ambivalence in Girodet’s Portrait of Belley
2. Alicia CATICHA, University of Virginia, Sculpting Whiteness: Marble, Porcelain, and Sugar in Eighteenth-Century Paris
3. Philippe HALBERT, Yale University, Surface Encounters, Mirror Images, and Creole Body Politics in French Louisiana
4. Xena FITZGERALD, Southern Methodist University, Between Frame and Stage: Viewing a Historical Marriage in Eighteenth-Century Peru
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The Rise of the House Museum: Domestic Curatorial Practices
Friday, 9:45–11:15am
Chair: Teri FICKLING, University of Texas, Austin
1. Jane CELESTE, Rice University, Farnley Hall and Fairfaxiana: Collecting History, Displaying Politics
2. Kirsten HALL, University of Texas, Austin, Specters and Spectators: Charlotte Addison and the Making of an Archive at Bilton Hall
3. Fiona BRIDEOAKE, American University, Curation and Creation at A la Ronde
4. Lisa BRUNE, Washington University in St. Louis, ‘So artfully planted’: Women’s Utopian Curation in Sarah Scott’s Millenium Hall
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Visualizing Empire in the French Eighteenth Century
Friday, 9:45–11:15am
Chair: Philippe HALBERT, Yale University
1. Izabel GASS, Yale University, The Classical Body as ‘Dispositif’ in the French New World
2. Harry ADAMS, Tsinghua University, Kader Attia’s Cosmopolitan Enlightenment
3. Thomas BEACHDEL, Hostos Community College, The Sublime Future in Ruins
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Roundtable: The Global Eighteenth Century (Western Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies)
Friday, 9:45–11:15am
Chair: Sören HAMMERSCHMIDT, GateWay Community College
1. Samara CAHILL, Blinn College, The Propagation of Infidels
2. Norbert SCHÜRER, California State University, Long Beach, Found in Translation
3. James MULHOLLAND, North Carolina State University, Middle Reading
4. David MAZELLA, University of Houston, Wilkes, Whitefield, Woolman: The Global Attention Economy of the Eighteenth Century
5. Emily CASEY, Saint Mary’s College of Maryland, Decolonizing Colonial American Art Histories
6. Rebekah MITSEIN, Boston College, The Matter of Akan Metaphysics in Eighteenth-Century Thought
Respondent: Stephanie DEGOOYER, Willamette University
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Do-Overs: Repetition and Revision in the Long Eighteenth Century
Friday, 11:30–12:45
Chair: Elizabeth MANSFIELD, Pennsylvania State University
1. Servanne WOODWARD, University of Western Ontario, Transitions from Rococo to Neo-Classical Illustration with Moreau le jeune
2. Amy FREUND, Southern Methodist University, Jean-Baptiste Oudry and Canine Repetition
3. Daniella BERMAN, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, ‘d’après David’: Variations on Portraiture
4. Wendy BELLION, University of Delaware, The Eighteenth Brumaire of King George III
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Presidential Session: Innovating the Next Fifty Years of ASECS
Friday, 4:30–6:00
Chair: Jeffrey RAVEL, MIT
1. Lisa FREEMAN, University of Illinois at Chicago, Trends in the Academic Job Market: What Can ASECS Do?
2. Emily FRIEDMAN, Auburn University, Digital Humanities and the Future of ASECS
3. Melissa J. GANZ, Marquette University and Peter ERICKSON, Colorado State University, Innovating ASECS: New Conference Formats
4. April FULLER, University of Maryland and Dylan LEWIS, University of Maryland, Humanities Beyond the Academy
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Workshop: Bringing Historical Maps into GIS
Friday, 4:30–6:00
Chairs: Erica HAYES, Villanova University and Kacie WILLS, Illinois College
This workshop will provide participants with the technical skills to align geographic coordinates to a digitized historical map in the eighteenth-century in order to create a georeferenced historical map. Participants will learn how to use simple tools like Map Warper, an open source image georeferencer tool, in order to overlay the digitized historical map on top of a GIS modern basemap for compar- ison and use in an interactive web mapping application. This workshop is ideal for scholars working with historical maps or interested in learning digital humanities GIS skills. Workshop participants need to bring their own laptops. No prior GIS or mapping experience is required. Contact the ASECS Business Office if you are interested in signing up for this workshop. Walk-ins are welcome if space permits but are encouraged to arrive early if they wish to participate in the hands-on activities of the workshop. Interested observers are also welcome if space permits.
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Roundtable: Scholarly Tourism: Traveling to Research the Eighteenth Century
Friday, 4:30–6:00
Chair: Ula Lukszo KLEIN, Kennesaw State University
1. Claudia SCHUMANN, Texas Tech University, In the Shadows — Researching Underrepresented Women Writers
2. Meg KOBZA, Newcastle University, Places of Privilege: Price and Practice in Private Archives
3. Caroline GONDA, University of Cambridge, Strawberry Hill and Shibden Hall: Anne Damer and Anne Lister
4. Fiona RITCHIE, McGill University, Mentoring Student Researchers in the Archives
5. Laura ENGEL, Duquesne University, The Archival Tourist
6. Leigh-Michil GEORGE, UCLA, ‘The Corruption of Mrs. Woodward’: A Story of Love and Betrayal, Lost and Found in the Kent Archives
7. Yvonne FUENTES, University of West Georgia, Eighteenth-Century Gossip and News: The Archives of Spanish Parish Churches, Cathedrals, and Basilicas
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Roundtable: Teaching Eighteenth-Century Health Humanities
Friday, 4:30–6:00
Chair: Rebecca MESSBARGER, University of Washington in St. Louis
1. Kate GUSTAFSON, Indiana University Northwest, Teaching Empathy Practices through Eighteenth-Century Text
2. Brittany PLADEK, Marquette University, Teaching Eighteenth-Century Medical Ethics in the Literature Classroom
3. Abigail ZITIN, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, Topics in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture: Fiction/Addiction
4. Andrew GRACIANO, University of South Carolina, Art, Anatomy, and Medicine, 1700–Present
5. C. C. WHARRAM, Eastern Illinois University, Introduction to the Health & Medical Humanities: Contagion
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Built Form
Friday, 4:30–6:00
Chair: Janet R. WHITE, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
1. Luis J. GORDO PELAEZ, California State University, Grain Architecture in Bourbon New Spain
2. Paul HOLMQUIST, Louisiana State University, Une autre nature: Aristotelian Strains in Ledoux’s Theory of Architecture as Legislation
3. Dylan Wayne SPIVEY, University of Virginia, Building from a Book: James Gibb’s Book of Architecture and the Commodification of Architectural Style
4. Miguel VALERIO, Washington University, Architecture of Devotions: The Churches Afro-Brazilian Religious Brotherhoods Built in the Eighteenth Century
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Experiencing the Past: Bringing Collections to Life through Experiment and Reconstruction
Friday, 4:30–6:00
Chair: Al COPPOLA, John Jay College, CUNY
1. Emily BECK, Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine, Bentley GILLMAN and Jon KRIEDLER, Tattersall Distilling, Nicole LABOUFF, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Alcohol’s Empire: Distilled Spirits in the 1700s Atlantic World
2. Christine GRIFFITHS, Bard Graduate Center, Distilling Gardens and (Re)Materializing Eighteenth-Century Perfumes
3. Anna CHEN and Marguerite HAPPE, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA, ‘Bad Taste’: A Pedagogy of Public-Facing Recipe Revival
Note: Room capacity is limited, so interested attendees may wish to arrive early. Attendees will be invited to sample scents and beverages but will not be involuntarily exposed to potential irritants/allergens.
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S A T U R D A Y , 2 1 M A R C H 2 0 2 0
Art Professions
Saturday, 8:00–9:30am
Chair: Carole PAUL, University of California, Santa Barbara
1. Heidi A. STROBEL, University of Evansville, Terminology and its Limitations
2. Anne NELLIS RICHTER, Independent Scholar, ‘Yr Obedient, Grateful, and Dutiful Servant’: Hierarchies of Work in a Private Art Gallery
3. Rachel HARMEYER, Rice University, Emulating Angelica: Decorative and Amateur Art after Kauffman
4. Kristin O’ROURKE, Dartmouth College, From Connoisseur to Professional: The Metamorphosis of Art Criticism
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Collecting, Antiquities, and Eighteenth-Century Art
Saturday, 9:45–11:15am
Chairs: Katherine A. P. ISELIN, University of Missouri-Columbia and Lauren DISALVO, Dixie State University
1. Nick STAGLIANO, Cooper Hewitt/Parsons School of Design, The New School, Expressions of Antiquity in Eighteenth-Century European Porcelain
2. Freya GOWRLEY, University of Derby, Classical Specimens and Fragmentary Histories: The Specimen Table as Part and Whole
3. Callum REID, University of Melbourne, Antiquities in Peter Leopold’s Uffizi Gallery
4. Josh HAINY, Truman State University, For Their Mutual Benefit: John Flaxman’s Recreation of the Belvedere Torso for Thomas Hope
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Herbarium: Illustration, Classification, Exchange
Saturday, 9:45–11:15am
Chair: Sarah BENHARRECH, University of Maryland
1. Maura FLANNERY, St. John’s University, New York, Erasures and Additions: The Herbarium as a Changing Document
2. J. Cabelle AHN, Harvard University, ‘Le cadavre desséché de plantes’: Herbaria and the Formation of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris
3. Nicole LABOUFF, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Fair-Sexing the Herbarium: Making Women Horticulturalists Visible in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain
4. Katie SAGAL, Cornell College, Naming is Not Knowing: Charlotte Smith’s ‘Flora’ and Vegetal Proliferation
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The 37th James L. Clifford Memorial Lecture
Saturday, 11:30–12:30
Anne LAFONT, École des hautes études en sciences sociales de Paris (EHESS), Winckelmann Congo: Blackness in the Age of White Marble
Presiding: Melissa HYDE, University of Florida
This lecture will address the rise of African Art History— in the broadest sense— during the long eighteenth-century. During this period, notions of African art and its history were entangled with the idea of diasporic Africa or Blackness, as conceptualized by a diverse ensemble of European textual sources, most of them not concerned with art. The line of argument to be pursued here is that many of these early modern texts, ought, nonetheless, to be understood as a historical discourse on art— whether they describe African geography, natural history or commerce; narrate African history or catalogue its objects in Cabinets de Curiosités. Of course, these narratives, which are more or less connected with African material culture and ritual performances, eventually would be articulated in art theoretical publications properly speaking, as eighteenth-century authors such as abbé du Bos or Winckelmann began to include Africa in their ambition to write a comprehensive, comparative art history grounded on a climatic explanation of style. This approach to art history understood artistic style, form and content as products of the natural climate and atmosphere in which art was created. Recent scholarship has demonstrated the centrality of Whiteness to archeology’s emergence in the mid-eighteenth century. Adding to our understanding of the racial implications of whiteness and color in art history, this lecture will show, how, at the very same historical moment, Blackness was being constructed, both as a counterpart to Whiteness but also, more generally as a means of inscribing African rites and objects into the domain of European Fine Arts.
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Roundtable: Global Enlightenment, Digital Humanities, and Collaborative Scholarship: Reflections on The Eighteenth Centuries: Global Networks of Enlightenment (2018), Edited by David Gies and Cynthia Wall
Saturday, 2:00–3:30
Chair: Elizabeth Franklin LEWIS, University of Mary Washington
1. Jeanne BRITTON, University of South Carolina, Using Global Networks of Enlightenment: Giovanni Piranesi and the Digital Eighteenth Centuries
2. Valentina TIKOFF, DePaul University, Using Global Networks of Enlightenment: How Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Multiple Geographies, and Linguistic Perspectives Help Us Navigate and Teach the Age of Enlightenment
3. Carol GUARNIERI, University of Virginia, Creating a Digital Companion to Global Networks of Enlightenment: The Digital Eighteenth Centuries on mapscholar.org
4. Cynthia WALL, University of Virginia, Editing Global Networks of Enlightenment
5. David GIES, University of Virginia, Editing Global Networks of Enlightenment
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Bio-Ethics
Saturday, 3:45–5:15
Chair: Rachel CARNELL, Cleveland State University
1. Alex SOLOMON, Ashoka University, Springs, Effluvia, and Action at a Distance
2. Andrew GRACIANO, University of South Carolina, Bioethics (and the Lack Thereof) in Art and Anatomy
3. Erin DREW, University of Mississippi, Usufruct: Towards an Eighteenth-Century Bio-Ethic
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The Triumph of Love
A comedy of intrigue, gender confusion, and love by Pierre Marivaux, translated by James Magruder
Friday and Saturday, 20 and 21 March at 8pm; Sunday, 22 March at 2pm.
.Zack Theatre, 3224 Locust Street, St. Louis
Tickets available at the door; $20
A co-production of Washington University in St. Louis and ASECS
Exhibition | Power Mode: The Force of Fashion
Now installed at the Fashion Institute of Technology:
Power Mode: The Force of Fashion
The Museum at FIT, New York, 10 December 2019 — 9 May 2020
Curated by Emma McClendon
Today, we see a multitude of sartorial power symbols, from ‘power suits’ to ‘power heels’. But what makes a garment ‘powerful’? According to sociologist and political theorist Steven Lukes: “We speak and write about power, in innumerable situations, and we usually know, or think we know, perfectly well what we mean … And yet, among those who have reflected on the matter, there is no agreement about how to define it, how to conceive it, how to study it, and, if it can be measured, how to measure it.”
If we think of power in terms of kinetic force (for example, electrical power or a person’s physical power over another), clearly an inanimate item of clothing does not have actual power. The force of fashion is symbolic. It is social. It lies in the sphere of interpersonal relations and cultural dynamics. There is no single, universally accepted definition of power. Power means different things to different people at different times. As such, its connection to fashion is multifaceted, and a multifaceted approach is necessary for considering the role fashion plays in power dynamics both historically and today.
The exhibition is organized into five thematic sections, each devoted to a particular type of sartorial ‘power’. In each section, men’s and women’s clothing are considered side by side, and pieces from as early as the eighteenth century are juxtaposed with looks from contemporary collections.
The exhibition opens with a display of military and military-inspired ensembles, including a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel’s ‘dress blue’ uniform, a World War II–era ‘Ike’ jacket, and looks from Yves Saint Laurent, Burberry, and Ralph Lauren. Modern military uniforms combine tailoring with an elaborate code of patches, braiding, stripes, colors, and metalwork that makes the soldier a walking extension of the state’s power. In fashion, a company logo replaces the state’s seal, but uniform-inspired silhouettes, colors, textiles, and buttons become visual shorthand for the power, strength, and authority of the military. It is the power of association.
The next section focuses on different modes of status dressing that have emerged over the last 250 years, from ermine capes and luxurious brocade fabrics to contemporary “It” bags and logo-covered products. Aspiration, wealth, and Thorstein Veblen’s theory of “conspicuous consumption” are key to understanding the role status dressing plays in modern society. An 18th-century robe à la française demonstrates the importance of ornate, expensive textiles to courtly dress, while a Balenciaga puffer coat shows the way brand names have become crucial decorative elements in luxury fashion today.
From status dressing, the exhibition moves to consider the history of the suit. The sharply tailored suit is perhaps the most conventional example of ‘power dressing’. Indeed, the term power dressing was often used to describe the big-shouldered suits worn by upwardly mobile business men and women during the 1980s. However, the history of the suit is more nuanced. Anne Hollander points out, “Heads of state wear suits … and men accused of rape and murder wear them in court to help their chances of acquittal.” In court rooms and office spaces, the suit isn’t just a symbol of authority. It is also a sign of blending in—submitting to established norms and dress codes.
The fourth section considers the role of resistance dressing. Blue jeans, printed T-shirts, and black leather jackets have become some of the most common symbols of resistance in clothing. They signal a certain type of power that is subversive of established authority. It is the power of protest and rebellion. There is a tension between resistance clothing and ‘fashion’, with the later often being dismissed as surface-level commodification. But the relationship is not so simple—fashion can also be a vehicle for protest as seen in the recent work of Kerby Jean-Raymond for his label Pyer Moss.
Finally, the fifth section analyzes objects that are culturally coded as ‘sexy’. Corsets, leather, lingerie, and high-heeled boots are but a few examples. The power dynamics of these garments are inherently complex. How a garment is interpreted can fluctuate between dominance and subjugation. As fashion critic Holly Brubach once said of Versace’s famous 1992 bondage collection, it “riles women who think this is exploitative and appeals to women who think of his dominatrix look as a great Amazonian statement. It could go either way.”
Power Mode is a curatorial experiment. It aims to combine theory with history and object analysis in order to better understand the complex nature of power in fashion as well as the ways fashion can be key to a broader understanding of power dynamics in culture. The exhibition is organized by Emma McClendon, associate curator of costume.
Emma McClendon, ed., Power Mode: The Force of Fashion (Milan: Skira, 2019), 128 pages, ISBN: 978-8857239873, $45 / €39.
A more in-depth discussion of the themes represented in the exhibition is articulated in the lavishly illustrated accompanying book, also titled Power Mode: The Force of Fashion, edited by exhibition curator Emma McClendon and published by Skira. The book delves deeper into theory and history to investigate how certain garments have come to be culturally associated with power, as well as how their meanings have evolved over time. It also examines how fashion designers have interpreted these stylistic archetypes—both to convey and to subvert power. Chapter texts by McClendon are joined by object-based essays from renowned fashion scholars Valerie Steele, Christopher Breward, Jennifer Craik, and Peter McNeil, as well as Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Robin Givhan. The book also includes an essay by Kimberly M. Jenkins on the intersection of race, fashion, and power. This collection of texts will offer readers a variety of perspectives to help form a theoretical framework for considering the power dynamics inherent in fashion objects.
New Book | Artistische Wanderer
From Deutscher Kunstverlag (with thanks to the author for the English translations). . .
Gerrit Walczak, Artistische Wanderer: Die Künstler(e)migranten der Französischen Revolution (Berlin/Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2019), 448 pages, ISBN: 978-3422981201, €48.
Dozens of painters were part of the emigration occasioned by the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. Whether French or foreigners established in France, these artists were driven out of the country by the rapid demise of the art market in the wake of political instability. Yet the dynamics of radicalization and war soon eroded distinction between economic migration and political exile.
Whether officially designated as émigrés or not, painters such as Élisabeth Vigée-Le Brun, Jean-Laurent Mosnier, Henri-Pierre Danloux, François-Xavier Fabre, and Louis Gauffier practiced their profession in Rome and Florence, London, Hamburg and Saint Petersburg. Whilst some of them established themselves in their host countries until the end of the Revolution, others successively transferred between the European metropoles. This first comprehensive study of the Revolution’s “artistic wanderers”—a term coined in Hamburg in 1799—traces their transnational itineraries and investigates productions shaped by transfer, acculturation, and innovation.
Gerrit Walczak is habilitated adjunct professor (Privatdozent) of art history at the Technical University Berlin, and has previously taught at the universities of Bochum, Köln, and Greifswald. He presently serves as interim editor of the Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte. His research focuses on the transnational migration of artists, on 18th-century art, its academies, and the art market. He is the author of Bürgerkünstler: Künstler, Staat und Öffentlichkeit im Paris der Aufklärung und Revolution (Deutscher Kunstverlag 2015).
C O N T E N T S
Here translated from the German
1 Introduction: Revolution and Mobility
Migration, Emigration, and Exile
Itinerant Artists and their Trajectories
Art Markets and Exile Art
2 Paris: The Initial Conditions of Artistic Emigration
The Fiction of Escape
Economy and Violence
Anti-Emigration Laws and Repression
3 Rome: The French Academy and the Revolution
Rome and Paris until the Fall of the Monarchy
Commissions and Appropriations
The End of the French Academy and its Fallout
4 Florence: Exiles, Tourists, and Occupiers
History Paintings for Foreigners
Tuscan Landscapes
French Grand Tour-Portraiture
5 London: Rivalries and Confrontations
Genius loci
Acculturation and its Limits
Political Stances
6 Hamburg: A Place of Passage
The Lure of Boom Economy
Tradesmen and other Clients
Reception and Receptivity
7 Saint Petersburg: Integration / Extraction
Providers to the Imperial Court
Modes of Transfer
Flux and Reflux
8 Coda: Re-migrations
The Salon of 1802
Humiliations
Souvenirs
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Index
New Book | Luxe intime
From CTHS, with additional information available here:
Anne Perrin Khelissa, Luxe intime: Essai sur notre lien aux objets précieux (Aubervilliers: Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 2020), 125 pages, ISBN: 978-2735509126, 14€.
Notre rapport aux objets intimes (meubles, boîtes, tableaux, luminaires, services de table, vêtements, bijoux…) est historiquement daté. Sans une certaine conscience de soi, nous n’aurions pu leur accorder autant de sens : leur demander de satisfaire des besoins et des désirs, tout en les inscrivant dans des chaînes relationnelles et symboliques multiples. Ce changement advient au XVIIIe siècle et se perçoit actuellement encore dans nos sociétés de consommation. À l’heure où la planète croule sous les déchets et où l’objet du quotidien par excellence devient le téléphone portable, il semble important de s’interroger sur les fondements de notre être aux choses. Comment parler des objets intimes et du lien empathique que l’on tisse avec eux ? Quel langage et quelle sensibilité sont-ils les plus à même d’exprimer leur part technique et poétique, leur empreinte historique et leur aura transgénérationnelle ? Comment penser la culture matérielle occidentale au regard des contacts qu’elle a entretenu avec les autres cultures étrangères ? En puisant dans l’historiographie féconde de ce domaine, profondément renouvelée ces dix dernières années avec les apports des Cultural Studies et de la Global History, l’auteur esquisse une voie de rencontre où s’associent les discours, entre approche historique, sociale, littéraire, anthropologique et muséale.
Anne Perrin Khelissa est historienne de l’art, maître de conférences à l’université Toulouse – Jean-Jaurès et membre du Laboratoire de recherche FRAMESPA (UMR 5136 CNRS). Spécialiste du xviiie siècle, elle est l’auteur d’un ouvrage sur l’habitat aristocratique génois, Gênes au xviiie siècle : le décor d’un palais (CTHS-INHA, 2013), ainsi que de plusieurs publications sur les arts au Siècle des lumières.
T A B L E D E S M A T I È R E S
Introduction
L’objet domestique
• Culture matérielle
• Une approche par les sens
• Espace privé, espace public
• Agencer les intérieurs
• Circulations des objets
L’objet en société
• Du signe au sens
• Objets de distinction sociale
• Le luxe au service du politique
• Le présent diplomatique
• Appropriation et butin
Fabriquer l’objet
• Produire
• Savoir et savoir-faire
• Les arts et métiers
• Réminiscences
L’objet de notre imaginaire
• Utilité et fantaisie
• Histoire de l’art
• Prêter une âme aux objets
• Langage
Conclusion
Remerciements
Bibliographie sélective
New Book | History, Painting, and the Seriousness of Pleasure
From the Oxford University Studies in The Enlightenment series:
Susanna Caviglia, History, Painting, and the Seriousness of Pleasure in the Age of Louis XV (Liverpool: Voltaire Foundation in association with Liverpool University Press, 2020), 330 pages, ISBN: 978-1789620399, $99.
French painting of Louis XV’s reign (1715–74), generally categorized by the term rococo, has typically been understood as an artistic style aimed at furnishing courtly society with delightful images of its own frivolous pursuits. Instead, this book shows the significance and seriousness underpinning the notion of pleasure embedded in eighteenth-century history painting. During this time, pleasure became a moral ideal grounded not only in domestic life but also defining a range of social, political, and cultural transactions oriented toward transforming and improving society at large. History, Painting, and the Seriousness of Pleasure in the Age of Louis XV reconsiders the role of history painting in creating a new visual language that presented peace and happiness as an individual’s natural rights in the aftermath of Louis XIV’s bellicose reign (1643–1715). In this new study, Susanna Caviglia reinvestigates the artistic practices of an entire generation of painters born around 1700 (e.g. Francois Boucher, Charles-Joseph Natoire, and Carle Vanloo) in order to highlight the cultural forces at work within their now iconic images.
Susanna Caviglia is the Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Art, Art History & Visual Studies at Duke University. Her work focuses on early modern European art and culture with an emphasis on France and Italy. Her interests include the body in art, theory and practice of drawing, and cross-cultural relationships within the Mediterranean world. She is the author of Charles-Joseph Natoire (1700–1777) (Arthena, 2012).
C O N T E N T S
List of illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
• Historical perspective: The peaceable kingdom of Louis XV
• The painters
• Toward a new artistic idiom
I. Historia in stasis
Chapter 1: The action de repos
• Prolegomena to the theory and practice
• Meditation, contemplation
• The dynamic body suspended
• Narrative disrupted
• Moments in the present and the future
Chapter 2: Corporeality and repose
• Fontenelle’s ideal
• Corporeal conversations
• Figures of seduction
• The expression of repose
• From narrative representation to figural presentation
II. The figure in artistic practice
Chapter 3: Figure/study/artwork
• Copying the figure
• The whole and the part
• The emergence of corporeal repose
• The new body language
Chapter 4: The story beyond the figure
• From study to subject
• Autonomous figures in painting
• Repertoires of models
• Life study and historical subject
III. The fabrication of a new grand genre
5: Before the painting
• The figure: From the idea to the painting
• The emergence of new creative practices
• The single body and the multiplication of bodies
• The figure: From reuse to quotation
Epilogue: On novelty in painting
• Brand new beauties
• The painting of the present
Bibliography
Index
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Note (added 19 March 2020) — The original posting included only an abbreviated table of contents.
Call for Essays | Funerary Inscriptions
From ArtHist.net:
Funerary Inscriptions in Early Modern Europe
Intersections, Yearbook for Early Modern Studies
Abstracts due by 15 May 2020
In this volume of Intersections, we want to bring together studies that consider funerary inscriptions in early modern Europe within the context of a culture of commemoration and remembrance. Depending on funding, a two-day conference to prepare the volume is planned to take place in Frankfurt am Main in late August or early September 2021. Applicants will be notified before June 30, 2020.
Although funerary inscriptions from the period 1400–1800 have been collected and studied widely, they have usually been considered with a focus on their axiomatic character or the person they commemorate, or in relation to inscriptions from the same area or time period they were made in. Studies of a more analytical and comparative nature are limited, just as studies that consider funerary inscriptions for their literary components, or analyze them in a wider cultural context, questioning for instance what they reveal about belief in an afterlife and how this relates to contemporary theological notions about life after death and/or a resurrection of the dead. Also open to study are questions how funerary inscriptions for people from similar social classes or professional groups relate to each other, and how the qualities the deceased are praised for correspond to contemporary social values.
The central issue in this volume of Intersections will be the question of how funerary inscriptions were used to shape the memory of a deceased person in a specific way. How were they used to create a specific image that would determine how a deceased person would be remembered and what (s)he would be commemorated for? How would this image fit in the contemporary collective culture of remembrance or in narrower spheres, as for instance specific religious groups or denominations? Or was this image meant to function within a sphere of private commemoration? With these questions as the central issue, funerary inscriptions in Europe from the period between ca. 1400 and 1800 may be approached from various angles: their material dimension, their literary character, the content of what they are stating, their relation to portraits and (sculpted and other) decorations, and the wider cultural context in which they were created and functioned. Topics to be addressed may include:
Material aspects
• How did the persons cutting the text into the stone work together with the writers of the inscriptions, in determining such things as the length of the texts and the individual sentences, dividing lines and breaking off words, using abbreviations etc?
• How do incised funerary inscriptions relate to versions printed in (more or less) contemporary books (differences, mistakes, reductions, etc.)?
• Is there a common pattern of the arrangement of inscriptions on a monument/sarcophagus or does the arrangement of inscriptions have a symbolic character?
Literary aspects
• Epitaphs that were actually carved in the tomb stone vs. epitaphs that were written as literary exercises, never meant to be put on a grave
• Collecting, exchanging and publishing (collections of) funerary inscriptions from Antiquity and/or Christian times
• Funerary inscriptions written by the future deceased themselves as a way to secure their memory
• Funerary inscriptions written in the first person singular (‘the deceased speaking from the grave’ or the tombstone addressing the passer-by): by whom were they written, how common were they on actual tombs or were they mainly created as literary exercises?
• Mock epitaphs and funerary inscriptions for animals
• Style and language: the impact of antique formulations and traditions
• The repetition of axiomatic sayings, motto’s, texts from the Bible
• The use of example books (Ars moriendi) and/or contemporary anthologies of rhetoric and poetry
• The use of Latin, Greek or Hebrew vs. vernacular language.
Content
• What are the qualities and characteristics for which the deceased were praised and deserved to be remembered? How do they correspond to contemporary social values?
• ‘Naming and faming’: which names of well-known people or places are included in funerary inscriptions so as to make the deceased seem (more) important?
• Pride and (false?) humility
• Self-presentation of the dedicators
• Notions about an afterlife and resurrection of the dead; predictions of (the moment or way of) having died come true (vaticinium ex eventu)
• Use of symbols or allegorical structures in the textual parts of the epitaph.
Context
• In what respects are funerary inscriptions for women different from those for men?
• Do funerary inscriptions for specific social classes or professional groups have common characteristics?
• How do funerary inscriptions relate to portraits and to (sculpted and other) decorations of a tomb?
• Symbolism, pictorial program, emblematic structures.
Please submit a one-page abstract (ca. 300 words) and a short curriculum vitae (max. two pages) to one of the editors, before May 15, 2020.
Dr. Veronika Brandis
Goethe-Universität
Institut für Klassische Philologie
Norbert-Wollheim-Platz 1
D – 60629 Frankfurt am Main
brandis@em.uni-frankfurt.de
Dr. Jan L. de Jong
University of Groningen
Dept. of History of Art, Architecture and Landscape
PO Box 716
9700 AS Groningen
j.l.de.jong@rug.nl
Prof. Dr. Robert Seidel
Goethe-Universität
Institut für deutsche Literatur
Norbert-Wollheim-Platz 1
D – 60629 Frankfurt am Main
robertcseidel@lingua.uni-frankfurt.de
Art Market | The Bachofen von Echt Ukiyo-e Collection
Scheduled to correspond with New York Asia Week, exhibitions like this one at Scholten Japanese Art may still be on view this week, though the auctions have been postponed until June, as noted by The Art Newspaper (also see this press release, published at Art Daily on 17 March). . .
The Baron J. Bachofen von Echt Collection of Golden Age Ukiyo-e
Scholten Japanese Art, New York, 12–21 March 2020
Scholten Japanese Art is pleased to participate in Asia Week 2020 with an extraordinary offering of Japanese woodblock prints: The Baron J. Bachofen von Echt Collection of Golden Age Ukiyo-e. The collection is comprised of a highly selective group of twenty-two figural woodblock prints produced during a period considered the highpoint of the genre, known as the ‘golden age’ of ukiyo-e, reaching its peak in the last decade of the 18th century. The prints depict bijin-ga (literally ‘beautiful person’), the influencers of their time—famous courtesans, waitresses, and beloved actors—with works by the most acclaimed ukiyo-e artists of the late 18th and early 19th century. There are works in this collection that are possibly unique, or one of only a handful of recorded examples, with connections to some of the most prominent early collectors and dealers of ukiyo-e. In many cases, these are the only examples still remaining outside of museum collections.
Kitao Shigemasa, Geisha and Maid Carrying a Shamisen Box, unsigned, with seal Hayashi Tadamasa, ca. 1777.
The term ukiyo (literally ‘floating world’) references an older Buddhist concept regarding the impermanence of life, but during the prosperity of the Edo Period in Japan the term began to be used to encompass and embolden everyday indulgences because of that impermanence. One of the tangible records of those indulgences was the production of nishiki-e (literally ‘brocade pictures’), the full-color prints that we recognize today as ukiyo-e—images of the floating world celebrating youth and beauty, which began in ca. 1765. After the advent of full-color woodblock printing, the market for nishiki-e, accessible to everyday people, steadily grew, and the materials and methods used to create this art rapidly evolved. A significant change that came about in the 1770s was that the craftsmen involved with production developed techniques for full-color printing on larger sheets of paper, and, as a result, this led to the general adoption of the standard ‘oban’ (approximately 15 by 10 inches) size by publishers. Larger paper was followed by an increase of the scale of the figures within compositions. An excellent example of this is the earliest print in the group, a ca. 1777 design by Kitao Shigemasa (ca. 1739–1820), Geisha and Maid Carrying a Shamisen Box (15 by 10 1/8 inches). Shigemasa was primarily a designer of illustrated books, producing over 250 in his lifetime, many of which were erotic in nature. With a comparatively small output of single sheet designs, the scarcity of extant Shigemasa prints belies his talent and influence on the genre. He worked with over twenty publishers, often with the innovative Tsutaya Juzaburo (1750–1797), whose impact looms large in the ‘golden age’ and likewise, in the Bachofen Collection. In 1774, the first book published by Tsutaya, Thousands at a Glance (Hitome senbon), featured illustrations by Shigemasa. Approximately three years later Tsutaya published an untitled series depicting full-length images of geisha of which this is a part.
Eishosai Choki, Woman and Servant in Snow (Sechu sho shiki jo), this impression unsigned and without censor or publisher seals, published by Tsutaya Juzaburo, ca. 1790.
One of the finest prints included in this show, Woman and Servant in Snow, ca. 1790 (14 1/2 by 10 inches), is by an artist whose work is particularly rare to the market: Eishosai Choki (fl. ca. 1780–1809). Also published by Tsutaya Juzaburo, the print demonstrates one of the hallmarks of golden age prints—the introduction of lavish printing techniques such as mica ground printing. The print is from an untitled group of four portraits of beauties presented in a dramatic outdoor setting that are among the most reproduced and coveted works in all of the ukiyo-e genre. The designs are distinctive in the way that Choki positions the figure off to the side, roughly occupying only two-thirds of the composition. In this print we see a beauty pausing beneath an open umbrella which shields her from the fat flakes of falling snow, shimmering (or shivering) against a cold mica background. She leans on the back of her burly servant who is bending over, reaching beyond the frame of the composition to clean the clumps of heavy wet snow off of her geta. Although they are a study in contrasts, she is lovely and delicate, he is solid with rough whiskers on his face, Choki conveys a sense of quiet intimacy shared between the two.
An example of a lavish printing is by Hosoda Eishi (1756–1829), Selection of Beauties from the Pleasure Quarters: Hanamurasaki of the Tamaya in Procession (15 by 10 inches), which utilizes both an incredibly dramatic dark mica background as well as metallic printing on the hem of the sauntering courtesan, Hanamurasaki. This design was formerly in the esteemed collection of the French connoisseur Henri Vever (1854–1942) and was the subject of extensive research by the American collector Louis V. Ledoux (1880–1948), who had a variant impression which he identified as a later state of the print. His research led him to conclude that there may have been four states of this scarce print, of which this (the Vever impression) is the earliest and (he thought) one of only three extant examples. Current research clarifies that this one is one of only two recorded impressions of the earliest version of the print.
Another development in print production was the issuance of multi-panel prints- most typically in the format of triptychs. One of the most stunning works in the show which shares the Vever Collection provenance is a triptych by a student of Eishi, Chokosai Eisho (fl. ca. 1795–1801) titled A Glimpse of the Ogiya: Hashidate, Nanakoshi and Hanabito (triptych 15 by 28 inches). This breath-taking composition presents three beautiful women who are seated in a brothel reception room decorated with an elaborate painting of a peacock covering the background wall. The three women are identified from right to left as the well-known and high-ranking courtesans: Hashidate, Nanakoshi, and Hanabito. The title places them at the Ogiya brothel located in the Yoshiwara. All three courtesans worked at the Ogiya and seem to be engrossed in a private conversation away from their customers. Perhaps they are sharing an amusing story related to the folded love letter which Hashidate is handing to Nanakoshi. There are few copies of this triptych extant and almost all are now in museum collections.
The bijin-ga of ukiyo-e were represented by beautiful women and beautiful men, and kabuki actors enjoyed celebrity-worship that would surely resonate with that of today. The Bachofen Collection includes three prints depicting kabuki actors, including a powerful bust-portrait by Utagawa Kunimasa (1773–1810), Actor Ichikawa Yaozo III as a Bandit (15 by 10 inches). This intense okubi-e portrait of Ichikawa Yaozo III (Suketakaya Takasuke II, 1747–1818) shows the actor in the role of a yamagatsu (lumberjack), who is actually a legendary warrior in disguise. The print was made at the time of Yaozo’s performance in a play that was staged at the Miyako-za theater in the 11th lunar month of 1796. The artist Kunimasa died at the young age of only 37 with approximately 125 recorded designs with few impressions extant. Of the four known examples of this print, this is the only one currently in private hands.
The Bachofen Collection has several highly important works by Kitagawa Utamaro (1753–1806), arguably the leading painting and print artist of his time who practically owned the market for images of beauties in the 1790s and early 1800s, until his untimely death in 1806 which marks the close of the ‘golden age’ period. In most ukiyo-e collections just one of these works would be the treasured highlight, in this collection there are nine Utamaro prints, including three okubi-e (‘big head’ or bust portraits) and one half-length portrait, each one a masterpiece in and of itself.
Kitagawa Utamaro, Seven Women Applying Make-up before a Full-length Mirror (Sugatami shichinin kesho), signed Utamaro ga with censor’s seal kiwame (approved) publisher’s mark of Tsutaya Juzaburo (Koshodo), sealed Wakai Hayashi, and oval WS (Schindler) collector’s seal on verso, ca. 1792–93. The title indicates this print is one from an intended series of seven, although only this one design is recorded.
The earliest Utamaro print in the exhibition is a compositional tour-de-force. Dated to around 1792–93, the print, Seven Women Applying Make-up Before a Full-length Mirror (14 1/4 by 9 1/2 inches), was issued at the beginning of a productive period for Utamaro during which he designed a number of ambitious half-length and bust portrait images of beauties primarily in collaboration with the publisher Tsutaya. The title in the bookmark-shaped cartouche indicates this print is one from an intended series of seven, although only this one design is recorded. While the term ‘sugatami’ in the title refers to a full-length mirror, the composition is that of a reflection of a bust portrait of a beauty as seen from over her shoulder. The effect is to both share her gaze into the mirror, while simultaneously appreciating her coiffure from behind as well as a titillating view of her erikubi (the nape of her neck). Her facial features and the crest on her kimono suggest that this is a portrait of one of Utamaro’s favorite subjects, the teahouse waitress Naniwa Okita. Tsutaya spared no expense with this production, generously embellishing the print with mica both on the background and on the mirror. The red seal to the left of the signature sheds light on the print’s provenance of having been in the hands of Wakai Kenzaburo (1834–1908), a highly influential Japanese art dealer and collector who was vital to the formation of ukiyo-e collections in Paris in the 1870s and 1880s. Wakai’s seal confirms that this exact impression was illustrated in Dr. Julius Kurth’s 1907 monograph on Utamaro (the first in a European language) when it was in the hands of Rex & Co in Berlin, an early importer of Asian art; it then passed into the hands of Werner Schindler (1905–1986) of Bienne, Switzerland. Highlights from the Schindler Collection were exhibited in several cities in Japan in 1985, and this print was illustrated on the cover of the exhibition catalogue.
In about 1792–93, the publisher Tsutaya began producing print series by Utamaro depicting half-length portraits of beauties with glittering full-mica backgrounds. These lavish images elevated print production to new aesthetic heights, establishing both Utamaro and Tsutaya as pre-eminent ukiyo-e artist and publisher, respectively. The portrait of Wakaume of the Tamaya in Edo-machi itchome, kamuro Mumeno and Iroka (14 1/2 by 9 5/8 inches) is dated to around 1793–94 and is associated with a group of three portraits that were likely intended as an informal triptych, each featuring a courtesan identified in the title cartouche with her house and naming her two kamuro (child attendants) with an accompanying kyoka poem. Of the three designs, this composition functions best at the central panel because the figure’s body faces one way while she turns to look in the opposite direction, and one of her kamuro peeks out from behind in a rare instance of frontal portraiture. The courtesan is Wakaume of the zashiki-mochi (‘having her own suite’) rank of the Tamaya house, and two kamuro, Mumeno and Iroka, are mentioned in the cartouche along with a poem playing on the literal meaning of her name, Wakaume, or White Plum.
The ca. 1795–96 bust portrait, Painting the Eyebrows (15 by 10 inches), is another masterpiece by Utamaro included in this group. It depicts a beauty leaning forward in concentration while applying make-up to her eyebrows. We catch a glimpse of her reflection from another angle in her hand-mirror, which is highlighted with mica to suggest the polished surface. This print was produced by a rather small publishing house, Isemago, about whom very little is known, which may explain why this design is extremely scarce. Of the three recorded impressions of this design, this is the only one currently in private hands.
The final Utamaro okubi-e in the exhibition is a delightful portrait of the famous courtesan Komurasaki of the Tamaya House after a Bath (15 by 10 inches) from around 1797–99. The portrait is of the famous courtesan Komurasaki, who held the highest rank of yobidashi (‘on call’), which meant she only could be seen by making an appointment through a teahouse, the same rank as her ‘house sister’ Hanamurasaki featured in the full-length mica-ground print by Eishi. This print bears the collector’s seal of the artist Paul Blondeau (ca. 1860–1920) and was later in the collection of Charles Haviland (1839–1921), which was sold in Paris in 1922. This print is one of only two recorded impressions of this design.
The exhibition will feature twenty-two woodblock prints including works by major ukiyo-e artists such as: Kitao Shigemasa (1739–1820), Torii Kiyonaga (1752–1815), Katsukawa Shuncho (fl. ca. 1780–1795), Eishosai Choki (fl. ca. 1780–1809), Hosoda Eishi (1756–1829), Chokosai Eisho (fl. ca. 1795–1801), Chokyosai Eiri (fl. ca. 1795–1800), Ichirakutei Eisui (fl. ca. 1795–1803), Utagawa Toyokuni I (1769–1825), Katsukawa Shunei (1762–1819), and Kitagawa Utamaro (1753–1806).
Katherine Martin, Highlights of Japanese Printmaking: Part Six, The Baron J. Bachofen von Echt Collection of Golden Age Ukiyo-e (2020), $40.
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Note (added 17 March 2020)— The original posting did not include the link to the press release posted at Art Daily.
Exhibition | Turner: Paintings and Watercolours from Tate
From the Jacquemart-André, which is—like most other public museums—currently closed until further notice in response to the Coronavirus pandemic:
Turner: Paintings and Watercolours from Tate
Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris, 13 March — 20 July 2020
In 2020 the Musée Jacquemart-André will present Turner, peintures et aquarelles, a major retrospective of the oeuvre of Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851). Undoubtedly the greatest representative of the golden age of English watercolours, he experimented with the effects of light and transparency on English landscapes and Venetian lagoons. Celebrated by his contemporaries, Turner still has many admirers. Thanks to exceptional loans from Tate Britain in London, which houses the largest collection of Turner’s works in the world, the Musée Jacquemart-André will hold an exhibition of sixty watercolours and ten oil paintings, some of which have never been exhibited in France.
Apart from his finished works intended for sale, Turner kept a considerable collection of works for himself, which were kept in his house and studio. With their unique qualities, these sketches, which were more expressive and experimental, were certainly closer to nature than those he painted for the public. In 1856, after the artist’s death, an enormous collection of works was bequeathed to the British nation, comprising many oil paintings, unfinished studies, and sketches, as well as thousands of works executed on paper: watercolours, drawings, and sketchbooks.
John Ruskin, who was one of the first to study the entire bequest, observed that Turner had executed most of these works for his “own pleasure and delight.” Now held at Tate Britain, the collection highlights the incredible modernity of the great Romantic painter. The exhibition will display part of this private collection, which provides illuminating perspectives about Turner’s mindset, imagination, and private works. The young Turner, who came from relatively humble beginnings, taught himself to draw; an insatiable traveller, he gradually freed himself from the conventions of the pictorial genre and developed his own technique. A chronological itinerary enables visitors to discover every phase of his artistic development: from his youthful works—which attest to a certain topographical realism and which he sent to the Royal Academy—to his mature works, which were more radical and accomplished, as fascinating experiments with light and colour. Displayed in this exhibition alongside various finished watercolours and oil paintings to illustrate their influence on Turner’s public pictures, these highly personal works are as fresh and spontaneous as they were when first set them down on paper.
David Blayney Brown, Jobert Barthelemy, Pierre Curie, Turner: Peintures et aquarelles de la Tate (Brussels: Mercatorfonds, 2020), 192 pages, ISBN: 978-9462302204, 40€.
Exhibition | Turner and the Thames: Five Paintings
I noted here at Enfilade back in 2014 that plans were established to preserve Turner’s house, but I realize that I never followed up. Turner’s House opened to the public in 2017 after a £2.4 million restoration, and it’s now hosting its first exhibition of original oil paintings by the artist. –CH
Turner and the Thames: Five Paintings
Sandycombe Lodge, Twickenham, 10 January — 30 April 2020 (extended from the original March closing date)
Turner’s House Trust are thrilled to announce their first exhibition of J.M.W. Turner’s original oil paintings in the house he designed for himself. Thanks to a generous loan from Tate, the exhibition opened on January 10th and will run until 30th April 2020. Turner and the Thames: Five Paintings features rare oil sketches, seldom seen by the public. The works have been chosen for their depictions of scenes close to his house near the river and feature riparian landscapes from Isleworth to Windsor. The Thames enticed Turner to buy a plot of land in Twickenham on which to build a retreat for him and his father in the 1800s, and he designed the villa so that he could glimpse the river from his bedroom window. Turner spent a lot of time on the Thames both working and fishing, keeping his catch in two ponds in what was then a large, country garden.
The exhibition is included in the price of general admission to the house. Special tours may also be purchased for up to ten people for £120 and the group will have the house to themselves. These tours would make excellent presents for special occasions for friends and family. If you are interested in booking on of these tours please contact Ricky Pound at housedirector@turnershouse.org.
Enfilade 
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