Enfilade

Online Lecture | Amelia Rauser, Black Bodies and Neoclassical Whiteness

Posted in lectures (to attend) by Editor on June 17, 2020

Agostino Brunias, ‘A Negroes Dance in the Island of Dominica’, 1779, engraving on laid paper
(Lewis Walpole Library, 779.02.15.01)

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From the Lewis Walpole Library:

Amelia Rauser, Black Bodies and Neoclassical Whiteness in the Age of Undress
Online lecture organized by the Lewis Walpole Library, 24 June 2020

Registration due by 22 June 2020

Women who wore the high-waisted, white muslin dress fashionable in the 1790s strove to participate in the elevated aesthetics of neoclassicism and to construe themselves as living statues, Pygmalions to their own Galatea. The dress articulated an anti-fashion stance that created space for women’s artistic expression. But neoclassical dress was also enmeshed with emergent concepts of race in the 1790s—not via a simple mapping of whiteness onto classicism, but rather, and perhaps unexpectedly, by invoking the plantation culture of the West Indies. In this talk, Dr. Amelia Rauser, Professor of Art History at Franklin & Marshall College, will argue that several elements of the neoclassical ensemble, including gold earrings, madras-cloth accessories, headwraps, and especially the materiality of muslin itself, specifically articulated the wearer’s racialized whiteness. Yet at the same time, the idea of metamorphosis inherent in the living statue undermined racial binaries and provided space to explore a spectrum of embodiment.

Dr. Rauser will be introduced by Joseph Roach, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Theater, Professor Emeritus of English, Yale University. Panel discussants Dr. Carolyn Day, Associate Professor of History, Furman University, and Dr. Jennifer Germann, Associate Professor and Department Chair, Art History, Ithaca College, will lead a Q&A. Registered attendees will be invited to submit questions and comments through chat.

The lecture is scheduled for Wednesday, 24 June 2020, at 1.00pm EDT; registration is required by Monday, 22 June 2020.

The talk presented in connection with the exhibition Artful Nature: Fashion and Theatricality, 1770–1830, which was co-curated by Laura Engel, Professor of English, Duquesne University, and Amelia Rauser. Other related online content includes:
Artful Nature exhibition
• Keynote Lecture “Fashionable Friends: Glamour as Argument, 1770–1830,” delivered by Joseph Roach on 6 February 2020
• Exhibition video tour with the curators

Dr. Rauser’s new book, The Age of Undress: Art, Fashion, and the Classical Ideal in the 1790s, is now available from Yale University Press.

 

 

Call for Papers | Watteau and His Universe: Networks and Influences

Posted in Calls for Papers by Editor on June 17, 2020

From the Call for Papers (with the French version here) . . .

L’univers de Watteau: Réseaux et influences autour d’Antoine Watteau (1684–1721)
Musée de l’Armée – Hôtel National des Invalides, Paris, 17–18 November 2021

Proposals due by 15 October 2020

Pierre Antoine Quillard, The Four Seasons: Spring, ca. 1725–29, oil on canvas, 42.5 × 33.5 cm (Madrid: Colección Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza en depósito en el Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, inv. CTB.1930.90).

To commemorate the tricentenary of the death of Antoine Watteau (Valenciennes, 1684–1721, Nogent-sur-Marne), a two-day symposium will be held in Paris, at the Musée de l’Armée – Hôtel National des Invalides, in partnership with the Fine Arts Paris fair, 17–18 November 2021.

Since the major retrospective of 1984, several important publications have been produced. In 1996, Pierre Rosenberg and Louis-Antoine Prat co-signed the catalogue raisonné of Watteau’s drawings.1 In 2010, Christoph Martin Vogtherr conducted an extensive survey (historical and material) of French paintings by Watteau and his entourage in the collections of Prussian palaces,2 continued by an exhibition in the musée Jacquemart-André.3 Since 2014, Martin Eidelberg has been developing the Watteau and His Circle project, alongside the catalogue raisonné of his paintings: A Watteau Abecedario.

Eidelberg’s Watteau and His Circle project is the inspiration for this symposium. His research on artists who gravitated around Watteau, such as Pierre Antoine Quillard4 or Nicolas Lancret,5 together with the work of other scholars on those and other artists in the orbit of Watteau, have called into question the tradition of the solitary work of the artist. In 1932, Robert Rey was the first to consider Watteau’s followers as satellites, situating the artist as a central figure who set in motion an entire system around him.6 This term of satellites implies a notion of attraction and of concentric circles revolving around a central figure and occasionally crossing each other. However, within the framework of this symposium, this conception does not necessarily imply a hierarchy among the elements, but sees them interacting independently of their perceived importance. Masters, contemporaries, followers, friends, merchants, and collectors all took part in Watteau’s universe.

This symposium, Watteau and His Universe: Networks and Influences of Antoine Watteau (1684–1721), aims to study the figures gravitating around the painter who made him a central figure in eighteenth-century century French art.7 Close investigation of fellow painters, printmakers, merchants, collectors, amateurs, and friends is necessary in order to further our knowledge of Watteau. Communications will be expected to draw upon the works of art (drawings, paintings, etchings), so that they are exploited for their intrinsic value; the same goes for archival elements offering direct insight into the careers and interactions between Watteau and his universe.

The symposium will be divided into three parts:
1. Artists around Watteau
2. Watteau’s Social Milieu
3. Watteau on the Art Market: Collectors, Amateurs, Merchants

The symposium is organized in partnership with the international Fine Arts Paris fair (16–23 November 2021) and will be held in the auditorium of the Musée de l’Armée – Hôtel National des Invalides. Twenty-minute papers will be given in French and English (without translation). Since the organization of this symposium is a private initiative without public funding, please include at the end of your proposal your partner institution(s), your city of residence (in November 2021) and your ability or not to finance your trip. Requests for travel subventions will be studied on a case by case basis in order not to disadvantage students and independent researchers.

Publication of the symposium proceedings is planned within 12 months of the event. In order to speed up the publication process of the proceedings, upon notification of their acceptance, symposium participants will be asked to write their papers according to the established editorial standards. These will be forwarded with the approval notices.

Formatting
• Last name, first name, home institution
• Proposed title of the communication
• Summary of the proposal in 500 words (±10%, the count must appear at the end of the document)
• Illustrations (5 maximum, optional) – .word or .pdf document
• Proposals must be sent to watteau2021@gmail.com with the subject ‘NAME + Watteau 2021 Symposium’

For any questions, contact: Axel Moulinier (Doctoral student in History of Art, École du Louvre, University of Burgundy) via watteau2021@gmail.com.

Steering Committee
• Martin Eidelberg (Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University, New Jersey)
• Guillaume Faroult (Curator of 18th-century French paintings and British and American paintings, Paris, Louvre Museum)
• Margaret Morgan Grasselli (Visiting Lecturer, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University, and Visiting Senior Scholar for Drawings, Harvard Art Museums)
• Axel Moulinier (Doctoral student in History of Art, École du Louvre, Paris; University of Burgundy, Dijon)
• Louis-Antoine Prat (Art historian)
• Pierre Rosenberg, president (Member of the French Academy)
• Christoph Martin Vogtherr (Director General of the Foundation for Prussian Castles and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg)

Notes

1  Rosenberg P. et L.-A. Prat, Antoine Watteau, 1684–1721: Catalogue raisonné des dessins (Paris and Milan: Gallimard-Electa, Leonardo Arte, 1996), 3 volumes.
2  Vogtherr C.M., Französische Gemälde, I: Watteau, Pater, Lancret, Lajoüe (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, coll.« Bestandskataloge der Kunstsammlungen », 2011).
3  Vogtherr C.M. and M. Tavener Holmes, De Watteau à Fragonard: Les fêtes galantes, exhibition catalogue, Paris, musée Jacquemart-André, 2014 (Paris, Culture Espaces, Fonds Mercator, 2014).
4  Eidelberg M., “P. A. Quillard, An Assistant to Watteau,” The Art Quarterly (1970): 39–70.
5  Eidelberg M., “The Young Lancret and Watteau,” in Watteau and His Circle, http://208.106.158.90/younglancret.htm.
6  Rey R., Quelques Satellites de Watteau: Antoine Pesne et Philippe Mercier, François Octavien, Bonaventure de Bar, François-Jérôme Chantereau, thèse complémentaire pour le doctorat ès lettres (Paris: Librairie de France, 1932).
7  Huyghe R., “L’Univers de Watteau,” (préface) in Adhémar H., Watteau sa vie, son oeuvre (Paris: P. Tisné, 1950).

Selective Bibliography

• Dacier É., A. Vuaflart, and J. Hérold, Jean de Jullienne et les graveurs de Watteau au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Rousseau, 1922).

• Eidelberg M., “P. A. Quillard, An Assistant to Watteau,” The Art Quarterly (1970): 39–70.

• Eidelberg M., “Autour du nom de Quillard,” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de l’Art Français (1979): 129–140.

• Eidelberg M., “Jean-Jacques Spoëde: Watteau’s ‘Special Friend’,” Gazette des beaux-arts (2000): 179–196.

• Eidelberg M., Watteau et la fête galante, exhibition catalogue, Musée des Beaux Arts de Valenciennes, 2004 (Paris and Valenciennes: Réunion des musées nationaux, Musée des beaux-arts de Valenciennes, 2004).

• Eidelberg M., Rêveries italiennes: Watteau et les paysagistes français au XVIIIe siècle, exhibition catalogue, Musée des Beaux Arts de Valenciennes, 2015-2016 (Gand: Snoeck, 2015).

• Glorieux G., A l’enseigne de Gersaint: Edme-François Gersaint, marchand d’art sur le pont Notre-Dame (1694–1750) (Paris: Champ Vallon, 2002).

• Glorieux G., “Michel-Joseph Ducreux (vers 1665–1715), marchand de masques de théâtre et d’habits de carnaval au temps de Watteau,” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de l’Art Français de l’année (2007): 119–129.

• Moulinier A., “Les Satellites de Watteau,” Cahiers du dessin français (Paris: Galerie de Bayser, 2020).

• Moureau F. and M.M. Grasselli (dir.), Antoine Watteau (1684–1721): Le peintre, son temps et sa légende [colloque international, Paris, October 1984] (Paris and Genève: Champion, Slatkine, 1987).

• Rosenberg P., Watteau et son cercle dans les collections de l’Institut de France, exhibition catalogue, Chantilly, Musée Condé, 1996–1997 (Chantilly, Musée Condé, 1996).

• Sheriff M.D., ed., Antoine Watteau: Perspectives on the Artist and the Culture of His Time (Newark: University of Delaware, 2006).

• Vogtherr C.M., Französische Gemälde, I: Watteau, Pater, Lancret, Lajoüe (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, coll.« Bestandskataloge der Kunstsammlungen », 2011).

• Vogtherr C.M. and M. Tavener Holmes, De Watteau à Fragonard: Les fêtes galantes, exhibition catalogue, Paris, musée Jacquemart-André, 2014 (Paris, Culture Espaces, Fonds Mercator, 2014).

• Vogtherr C.M. and J. Tonkovich, Jean de Jullienne: Collector and Connoisseur (London: Wallace Collection, 2011).

• Wintermute A., Watteau and His World: French Drawing from 1700 to 1750, exhibition catalogue New York, Frick Collection, 1999–2000; Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, 2000 (London and New York: Merrell Holberton Publishers, American Federation of Arts, 1999).

Call for Papers | Bodily Realities: Engaging the Discourse of Dis/Ability

Posted in Calls for Papers by Editor on June 17, 2020

From ArtHist.net:

Bodily Realities: Engaging the Discourse of Dis/Ability
46th Annual Cleveland Symposium for Graduate Students
Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Museum of Art, 30 October 2020

Proposals due by 17 July 2020 (extended from 26 June 2020)

The physical body is often a contested space for artists and art audiences, but one that offers abundant possibilities for exploring and expressing identity. Physical ability or disability is a key component of identity and can have a profound impact on artistic production, subject matter, and reception. Art can play a significant role in shaping the often problematic discourse surrounding this topic. Bodily Realities: Engaging the Discourse of Dis/Ability seeks to generate a dialogue about the relationship between ability and disability in the visual arts and art museums in an effort to understand the role of bodily differences in artistic practice, representation, and viewership. This symposium will address the ways in which the visual arts and artists either confirm or challenge the perceived dichotomy of the normative and non-normative physical body.

The Department of Art History and Art at Case Western Reserve University invites graduate students to submit abstracts for its 2020 Annual Symposium Bodily Realities: Engaging the Discourse of Dis/Ability. The Cleveland Symposium is one of the longest-running annual art history graduate symposia in the United States, organized by students in the joint graduate program with the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Petra Kuppers will provide the keynote address. Dr. Kuppers is a disability culture activist, a community artist, and a Professor of English, Women’s Studies, Theatre and Dance, and Art and Design at the University of Michigan. She also teaches on the low-residency MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at Goddard College and leads The Olimpias, a performance research collective (www.olimpias.org). Thematically, her work encompasses disability studies, performance studies, critical theory and poetics, medical humanities, and the general fields of arts and expression, arts and health, and arts and community building. Her Disability Culture and Community Performance: Find a Strange and Twisted Shape (2011) explores arts-based research methods, and her most recent academic monograph is Theatre & Disability (2017). Her Studying Disability Arts and Culture: An Introduction (2014) is full of practical exercises for classrooms and studios. Her other academic books include Disability and Contemporary Performance: Bodies on Edge (2003), The Scar of Visibility: Medical Performance and Contemporary Art (2007), Community Performance: An Introduction (2007, second edition 2019), Somatic Engagement (2011), and Disability Arts and Culture: Methods and Approaches (2019).

This year’s symposium welcomes innovative research papers that explore the issues of ability and disability in and around the creation, reception, and circulation of the visual arts. Submissions may explore aspects of this theme as manifested in any medium as well as in any historical period and geographical location. Different methodological perspectives are welcomed.

Potential topics may include, but are not limited to:
• The role of physical disability in the construction of identities
• How the body relates to notions of normativity, abnormality, and hybridity
• Disability as a physical reality, but a social construct
• Stigmatization and stereotypes of the disabled body
• The fragmented, altered, disfigured, or modified body
• The body as a site of trauma, violence, pain, and/or effort
• The body’s relationship to health, illness, and recovery
• Clinical uses of art and artistic practice for disabled and non-disabled bodies
• The intersections of body and mind in the discourse of disability
• The power dynamics of ability and disability
• Accessibility in the art museum and cultural sites
• Interactions with disabled bodies through performance
• The body as subject and/or medium in performance art and body art
• The bias of ableism in art historical discourse
• The in/visibility of disability
• The Disability Arts and Culture Movement

Current and recent graduate students in art history and related disciplines are invited to submit a 350-word abstract and a CV to clevelandsymposium@gmail.com by Friday, 26 June 2020. Selected participants will be notified by the end of July. Paper presentations will be 20 minutes in length and should be accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation. Three papers will be awarded prizes.

Please note: Planning for this year’s symposium is already underway, but given the current situation with the COVID-19 pandemic, we understand that plans may need to be amended. Alternative arrangements are being made to transition to an online platform should an in-person symposium be infeasible.

Please direct all questions to Katie DiDomenico and Mackenzie Clark at clevelandsymposium@gmail.com.

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