Call for Articles | Picturing Sensory Experiences
Giuseppe Maria Mitelli after Augostino Mitelli, Vedere (Sight), ca. 1700, etching, 21 × 29 cm
(Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, RP-P-2013-27-1)
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From the Call for Articles:
Picturing Sensory Experiences / Figurations du sentir / Figurazioni del sentire
Special Issue of Images Re-vues, edited by Marta Battisti, Viktoria von Hoffmann, and Érika Wicky
Proposals due by 30 June 2021, with finished articles due by 1 February 2022
This special issue of the journal Images Re-vues explores various approaches to picturing sensory experiences. The aim is to interrogate both the visual representations of sensory perceptions and the sensory experiences shaped by the creation and reception of such images. The proposed contributions will build on the vibrant interdisciplinary research carried out in sensory studies in recent decades.
The history of the senses and the history of visual cultures both emerged in the 1980s, with the latter examining both the history of sight and works meant to be apprehended visually. Crossing these approaches, several works—building on the seminal research from the medievalist Carl Nordenfalk (1976)—have been devoted to the iconography of the five senses, thus including images among the materials of histories of sensory cultures. These pioneering studies, which include the catalogue of the exhibition Immagini del sentire: i cinque sensi nell’arte (Ferino-Pagden, 1996), have identified the allegories and symbols associated with the senses in visual cultures. For example, representations of the—most often Aristotelian—sensorium can be seen in Floris and Cort (The Five Senses, 1561), Brueghel the Elder and Rubens (Allegories of the Five Senses, 1617), and vast Renaissance collections of emblems. In these and other images, it is frequent to find sight pictured by a mirror, hearing represented in the form of a deer or a musical instrument, whereas flowers were a known symbol of smell, in the same way that monkeys and food symbolised taste. Touch could be alluded to by the depiction of contact with fabric, for example, and its finesse was characteristically suggested by the figure of the spider. Previous studies that have explored these issues have also highlighted the functions attributed to each sense and provided descriptions relating to the functioning of sensory organs.
Drawing on these works as well as more recent developments in the field inspired by the fruitful dialogue between sensory history and the history of emotions (Bodicce and Smith, 2020), this special issue proposes to study practices of picturing the senses as a window into the sensory experiences of the past. Rather than exploring the symbols representing the senses, we wish to consider how visual depictions of sensory perception intersect with the sensory experiences that come into play during the creation and reception of artistic and scientific imagery. Analysing how sensory perception, an invisible practice experienced in the present, could manifest in visual depictions will lead us to pay attention to bodily gestures and technological devices (such as the acoustic horn or the eyeglass) connected with sensory experience and its depiction. This perspective could also be enriched by considerations of sensory deprivation stemming from disability studies.
We will also consider the interplay between practices of creation—the senses of the maker—and the sensory experience depicted in the image, attempting to capture the resonances from one to the other. Likewise, the reception (and reactions of disgust, laughter, pleasure) by the viewer of the image will also be examined to evaluate the mobilisation, at the imaginative level, of the viewer’s senses. Considering the visual representations of the senses as sensory experiences of the world will lead us to discuss the implicit intersensory nature of visual representations of the senses, as we will consider both the production and consumption of images. In a word: our collective inquiry will question the esthesic dimension (< aesthesis, sensation) of picturing sensory experiences (Boutaud, 2012).
A global approach to the visual depictions of sensory perception will provide a fresh understanding of practices and knowledge related to sensory experience and the sensory models that have governed human relationships with the surrounding world. The consideration of different visual artistic media (e.g., paintings, engravings, drawings, sculptures) and of a wide variety of cultural fields (e.g., arts, natural sciences, medicine, gastronomy, music, religion) will help us interrogate the functions of these representations and their contribution to an aestheticisation, objectivation, or reflection about the nature of sensory experience. The absence of chronological and geographical boundaries will allow us to explore the diversity of answers to these questions and perhaps to develop a comparative approach interrogating multiple ways of picturing the senses.
Avenues of research that can be explored include but are not limited to:
• The artistic, religious, economic, philosophical, and political contexts informing the representations of sensory perceptions, as well as issues connected with the social, gendered, and racialised characterisation of the subjects of these representations.
• The intersection between hierarchies of the senses and the arts. Sample questions include whether the lower senses were natural subjects for artistic genres considered inferior, such as caricature? Alternately, did such representations require an allegorical detour?
• Which visual strategies could be employed to depict the intensity or deprivation of sensory perceptions?
• The visual representations of sensory imaginaries beyond the five senses of the sensorium defined by Aristotle. Pre-Hispanic (Cruz Riviera, 2019) and medieval Islamic art (Le Maguer, 2013) invite other examples and analyses of sensory experiences.
• The commonplace sensory imagination in a given culture and period, such as, for example, representations of anatomical dissections and banquets in the Renaissance, or the end-of-century representations of young girls dreamily smelling a flower.
• Visual depictions of sensory experiences offered by different conventional systems escaping the usual representational codes shaping the visual arts, like sensory maps and visualisations of brain activity.
Proposals for articles (750 words maximum) in French, English, or Italian describing the research questions and the corpus of sources should be sent to Marta Battisti, Viktoria von Hoffmann and Érika Wicky by June 30th, 2021. Articles (30,000–60,000 characters) will be expected by February 1st, 2022. Per journal policies, each article will be subject to a double-blind peer review by the editorial committee and the scientific committee of Images Re-vues.
Bibliography
• P. Beusen, S. Ebert-Schifferer, and E. Mai, eds., L’Art Gourmand (Brussels: Crédit Communal, 1996).
• Rob Boddice and Mark Smith, Emotion, Sense, Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).
• R. Bösel, M. G. Di Monte, Michele Di Monte, S. Ebert-Schifferer, eds., L’arte e i linguaggi della percezione: L’eredità di Sir Ernst H. Gombrich (Milan: Electa, 2004).
• Jean-Jacques Boutaud, « L’esthésique et l’esthétique: La figuration de la saveur comme artification du culinaire », Sociétés & Représentations 34 (2012): 85–97.
• Mark Bradley, « The Artistry of Bodies, Stages, and Cities in the Greco-Roman World », A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity (London: Bloomsbury, 2018).
• Christina Bradstreet, Scented Visions: Smell in Nineteenth-Century Art (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2021).
• Constance Classen, The Color of Angels: Cosmology, Gender, and the Aesthetic Imagination (London: Routledge, 1998).
• Sarah Cohen, « Experiencing the Arts in the Age of Sensibility », A Cultural History of the Senses in the Age of Enlightenment (London: Bloomsbury, 2018).
• Riviera Cruz and Amelia Sandra, « La representación y función dinámica del sonido en los mitos mesoamericanos », La dimensión sensorial de la cultura: Diez contribuciones al estudio de los sentidos en México (Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, 2019), 145–72.
• Julia Csergo and Frédérique Desbuissons, eds., Le cuisinier et l’art: Art du cuisinier et cuisine d’artiste, XVIe–XXIe siècle (Paris: Les Éditions de l’institut national d’histoire de l’art / Menu Fretin, 2018).
• Henri De Riedmatten, Nicolas Galley, Jean-François Corpataux, and Valentin Nussbaum, eds., Senses of Sight: Towards a Multisensorial Approach of the Image: Essays in Honour of Victor Stoichita (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2015).
• Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, ed., Immagini del sentire: i cinque sensi nell’arte (Milan: Leonardo Arte, 1996)
• Caroline Fowler, Drawing and the Senses: An Early Modern History (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016).
• Florence Gétreau, Voir la musique (Paris: Citadelles & Mazenod, 2017).
• Adeline Grand-Clément, Anne-Caroline Rendu Loisel, and Fritz Blakolmer, eds., Les traces du sensible: pour une histoire des sens dans les sociétés anciennes, Trivium, 27 (2017).
• Martial Guédron, Temenuzhka Dimova, and Mylène Mistre-Schaal, eds., L’emprise des sens: de la fin du Moyen Âge à nos jours (Paris: Hazan, 2016).
• Sterenn Le Maguer, « De l’autel à encens au brûle-parfum: héritage des formes, évolution des usages », Archéo.doct 5 (2013): 183–200.
• Wolfgang Neiser, Audition in der Kunst der italienischen Renaissance (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2015).
• Mylène Mistre-Schaal, « Sniffing: The Figuration of Olfactory Attraction in Eighteenth-Century European Art», De Achttiende Eeuw 48 (2016): 127–43.
• Carl Nordenfalk, « Les cinq sens dans l’art du Moyen-Âge », Revue de l’art 34 (1976): 17–28.
• Eric Palazzo, L’invention chrétienne des cinq sens dans la liturgie et l’art au Moyen Âge (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2014).
• François Quiviger, The Sensory World of Italian Renaissance Art (London: Reaktion Books, 2010).
• Denys Riout, « Art et olfaction: des évocations visuelles à une présence réelle », Cahiers du MNAM 116 (été 2011): 84–109.
• Alice Sanger and Sive Tove Kulbrandstad Walker, eds., Sense and the Senses in Early Modern Art and Cultural Practice (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012).
• David Summers, The Judgement of Sense: Renaissance Naturalism and the Rise of Aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
New Book | The Ephemeral Eighteenth Century
From Cambridge UP:
Gillian Russell, The Ephemeral Eighteenth Century: Print, Sociability, and the Cultures of Collecting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020),
Often regarded as trivial and disposable, printed ephemera, such as tickets, playbills and handbills, was essential in the development of eighteenth-century culture. In this original study, richly illustrated with examples from across the period, Gillian Russell examines the emergence of the cultural category of printed ephemera, its relationship with forms of sociability, the history of the book, and ideas of what constituted the boundaries of literature and literary value. Russell explores the role of contemporary collectors such as Sarah Sophia Banks in preserving such material, arguing for ‘ephemerology’ as a distinctive strand of popular antiquarianism. Multi-disciplinary in scope, The Ephemeral Eighteenth Century reveals new perspectives on the history of theatre, the fiction of Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen, and on the history of bibliography, as well as highlighting the continuing relevance of the concept of ephemerality to how we connect through social media today.
Gillian Russell is Professor of English at the University of York. A Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, she is internationally renowned for her innovative interdisciplinary research that began with The Theatres of War: Performance, Culture, and Society, 1793–1815 (1995). She has pioneered field-changing new directions in scholarship—on war and theatre and on the study of sociability. Her books include Romantic Sociability: Social Networks and Literary Culture, 1770–1840 (Cambridge, 2002), co-edited with Clara Tuite; Women, Sociability, and Theatre in Georgian London (Cambridge, 2007); and Tracing War in British Enlightenment and Romantic Culture, co-edited with Neil Ramsey (2015).
C O N T E N T S
Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction: All the Ephemera of Our Lives
1 Accidental Readings and Diurnal Historiographies: The Invention of Ephemera
2 Making Collections: Enlightenment Ephemerology
3 The Natural History of Sociability: Sarah Sophia Banks and Her Ephemera Collections
4 Sarah Sophia Banks’s ‘Magic Encyclopedia’
5 ‘Announcing Each Day the Performance’: Playbills as Theatre/Media History
6 Transacting Hospitality: The Novel Networks of the Visiting Card
7 England in 1814: Frost Fairs, Peace, and Persuasion
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Call for Papers | Networks and Practices of Connoisseurship
From the Call for Papers:
Networks and Practices of Connoisseurship in the Global Eighteenth Century
Warburg-Haus, Hamburg, 2–4 June 2022
Organized by Valérie Kobi and Kristel Smentek
Proposals due by 30 June 2021
A collaboration between faculty from the Art History Department at Universität Hamburg and the History, Theory, and Criticism Program of the Department of Architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
The eighteenth century was the age of the connoisseur, the disciplined interpreter and assessor of artworks whose authority, like that of the natural philosopher, was founded on his (more rarely her) extensive and sustained visual analysis of physical things. An era of accelerating trade and imperial conquest, the eighteenth century was also a period of an expanding global consciousness. The concept that brings these two themes together—the emergence of the connoisseur and an increasing Enlightenment engagement with difference—is the network: the constellation of practices of communication and exchange that made knowledge possible. As the history of science has, for example, already articulated for the circulation of botanical knowledge, there was barely a discovery made in the eighteenth century that was not embedded in a network of international information and specimen exchange. Yet, little has been written on the connoisseurial networks of the Enlightenment period and a broader reflection on the encounter they allowed with artistic practices from different regions of the globe has still to appear. Studies of connoisseurship have—to date—tended to stay local, focusing, for instance, on an individual and his (or her) web of social ties or on Western European art to the exclusion of works from unfamiliar artistic traditions to which eighteenth-century art experts, collectors, and colonial administrators were increasingly exposed.
This international conference intends to foster a better understanding of the intricate transactions through which connoisseurial knowledge of art was generated during the long eighteenth century. Questions we are interested in pursuing include: how are social, institutional and commercial networks built and how do they evolve over time? What were the channels through which encounters with art from afar were made possible? Is there a difference of purpose between local, national, and international networks? Are some regions over- or underrepresented in these connoisseurial networks and what do these asymmetries reveal about the artistic geographies of the time? What methods were used to analyze and categorize art from other parts of the globe? And how might a recognition of the conventionality of artmaking have shaped local definitions of art and artistic quality in such regions as Asia, the colonial Americas, and Europe?
To move forward with our investigation, four axes of reflection will structure the conference:
1) Networks: This first panel will concentrate on the practical aspects of international networks and on the very structures that made the connoisseurial exchange within and between continents possible. It will address such questions as the construction and implementation of communication channels, the postal system that governed the pace of eighteenth-century correspondence, the gendering of connoisseurial networks, or the constellation of commercial and political institutions that facilitated their development.
2) Transmission: The second panel will focus on the practices that enabled communication and knowledge transfer between connoisseurs, across often considerable geographic distances and extended periods of time. The circulation of things and production of knowledge within connoisseurial networks occasioned a multifaceted apparatus of instruments and techniques, including the production of written texts, prints, copies, and, occasionally fakes, that were meant to facilitate scientific exchange, and test expert knowledge.
3) Practices: The third panel will analyze the concrete actions that shaped individual connoisseurial judgments. It will explore the private practice enabled by the network, once the connoisseur was in possession of information and the art objects that he (or more rarely she) needed. The observation and handling of artworks from various regions of the globe but also the circumstances in which they were examined and exhibited will here be at the core of this session’s concerns.
4) Appropriation: The final panel will exam the rhetoric used to formulate connoisseurial judgment on art from distant places and time periods. General questions of style and national traditions will be considered, but the intersection between art from diverse geographies will be a key point of interest.
Proposals that introduce new interdisciplinary and methodological approaches will especially be encouraged. Please send a 300-word proposal and a short (2-page) CV to Valérie Kobi (valerie.kobi@uni-hamburg.de) and Kristel Smentek (smentek@mit.edu) by 30 June 2021.
New Book | Planting the World
From Harper Collins:
Jordan Goodman, Planting the World, Joseph Banks and his Collectors: An Adventurous History of Botany (New York: William Collins, 2021), 560 pages, ISBN : 978-0007578832, $33.
A bold new history of how botany and global plant collecting—centred at Kew Gardens and driven by Joseph Banks—transformed the earth.
Botany was the darling and the powerhouse of the eighteenth century. As European ships ventured across the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans, discovery bloomed. Bounties of new plants were brought back, and their arrival meant much more than improved flowerbeds—it offered a new scientific frontier that would transform Europe’s industry, medicine, eating and drinking habits, and even fashion. Joseph Banks was the dynamo for this momentous change. As botanist for James Cook’s great voyage to the South Pacific on the Endeavour, Banks collected plants on a vast scale, armed with the vision—as a child of the Enlightenment—that to travel physically was to advance intellectually. His thinking was as intrepid as Cook’s seafaring: he commissioned radically influential and physically daring expeditions such as those of Francis Masson to the Cape Colony, George Staunton to China, George Caley to Australia, William Bligh to Tahiti and Jamaica, among many others.
Jordan Goodman’s epic history follows these high seas adventurers and their influence in Europe, as well as taking us back to the early years of Kew Gardens, which Banks developed devotedly across the course of his life, transforming it into one of the world’s largest and most diverse botanical gardens. In a rip-roaring global expedition, based on original sources in many languages, Goodman gives a momentous history of how the discoveries made by Banks and his collectors advanced scientific understanding around the world.
Jordan Goodman is Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at University College London. He is the author of The Rattlesnake: A Voyage of Discovery to the Coral Sea, The Devil and Mr Casement, and Paul Robeson: A Watched Man. He has published extensively on the history of medicine and science, and cultural and economic history.
Online Conference | Country House Gardens and Landscapes
From the conference flyer:
Razored Hedgerows, Planted Trees, and Natural Delights: Country House Gardens and Landscapes
Online, Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates, Maynooth University, 11 May 2021
After the disappointing cancellation of the annual conference in 2020, the Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates is pleased to announce the 19th annual Historic Houses Conference, which will be held online (via Zoom) at Maynooth University on 11 May 2021.
Country houses sit in the middle of designed landscapes. Their backdrop, large or small, might be a combination of parkland, pasture, woods, and waterways, as well as formal gardens blazoned with horticultural delights. These natural features complement the built heritage and often share similar stories about their creation, improvement, loss, or recovery. The acres surrounding a mansion house may have shrunk over the centuries, but the terrain itself remains even if in different ownership and used for other purposes today.
This one-day online conference will include papers on a number of houses and gardens, examining their history, survival, and changing fortunes, with papers on Emo Court, Annes Grove, Doneraile, Glin Castle, Brodsworth Hall, Vaux-le-Vicomte, Lambay Castle, Illnacullin, Johnstown Castle, Newbridge, and the Glebe Churchill; as well as presentations on glasshouses, plant collections, and the art of landscape design. The day will conclude with an online forum on the subject of gardens and well-being in the twenty-first century.
Speakers include Sarah Couch, Michael O’Sullivan, Catherine Fitzgerald, Neil Porteous, Hugh Carrigan, Anne O’Donoghue, Kim Wilkie, Alexandre de Vogue, Matthew Jebb, Chris O’Neill, Cathal Dowd Smith, Eleanor Matthews, and Adrian Kelly.
Attendance is free, but places are limited; for details on how to register please contact cshihe@mu.ie.
Doneraile Court (side of the house), near the town of Doneraile in County Cork, Ireland; most of the house dates to the early eighteenth century. After an extensive renovation by the Office of Public Works, the house opened to the public in 2019. The 400 acres of walled parkland are laid out in the style of Capability Brown (Office of Public Works).
Online Symposium | Speculative Minds in Georgian Ireland
From the conference programme:
Speculative Minds: Commerce, Experiment, Innovation, and the Arts in Georgian Ireland
Online, Thursday, 27 May 2021
Organized by Toby Barnard and Alison FitzGerald
Maynooth University and the Irish Georgian Society are partnering to deliver a live online symposium, Speculative Minds: Commerce, Experiment, Innovation & the Arts in Georgian Ireland on Thursday, 27th May 2021. The symposium has been convened by Dr Toby Barnard, Emeritus Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford University, and Dr Alison FitzGerald, Associate Professor, Maynooth University. The symposium will appeal to both a specialist audience of academics and the general public. Bookings can be made online through the Irish Georgian Society’s website. Price: €40; full-time students are free (to register for a student place please email emmeline.henderson@igs.ie with a photo of your student ID).
The period between 1750 and 1837 saw a striking increase in the introduction of new materials, new manufacturing processes, and new products. ‘Novelty’ was at a premium: touted in newspaper advertisements, puffed in trade catalogues and pattern books, and encouraged by energetic individuals and learned groups. These initiatives were driven by simple curiosity, focused experimentation, patriotic and humanitarian ideals, and the quest for profit. Homes, small workshops, and large manufactories all felt the impact of these ‘polite and commercial’ impulses and the resulting artefacts; they spread beyond the peerage and landed elite through the professional and middling sorts. Arguably it was the latter who spread these developments most widely, thereby drawing Ireland deeper into the ambit, attitudes and fashions of Britain, continental Europe and the North Atlantic world. British artists, artificers, and entrepreneurs were quick to exploit the Irish market, feeding the appetite for what was new; as the potter Josiah Wedgwood wrote to his business partner in 1773, “Will not the people of Ireland like these things better that come from London?” This symposium investigates the intellectual, cultural, and mercenary forces behind these phenomena, looking closely at specific cases. It aims to clarify the nexus between art, commerce, and science in Georgian Ireland, especially in towns, most notably in Dublin, Britain’s ‘second city’.
Speculative Minds has been made possible through sponsorship from Sara Moorhead and Ecclesiastical Insurance. The symposium forms an action of the Irish Georgian Society’s Conservation Education Programme, overseen by Emmeline Henderson, IGS Assistant Director and Conservation Manager. The IGS’s Conservation Education Programme is supported by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and The Heritage Council and Merrion Property Group.
P R O G R A M M E
9.45 Welcome by David Fleming (Senior Lecturer, University of Limerick)
10.00 Toby Barnard, MRIA (Hon.) (Emeritus Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford University), A Taste for Pastes: Dr Henry Quin, James Tassie, and the Empress of Russia
10.30 Alison, FitzGerald (Associate Professor, Department of History, Maynooth University), Classicism and Commerce: Josiah Wedgwood and His ‘Seed[s] of Consequence’
11.00 Coffee Break
11.30 James Kelly, MRIA (Professor of History, and Head of the School of History and Geography, Dublin City University), The Impact of the English Visual Caricature Tradition on the Product of Single-sheet Caricature in Ireland, 1780–1830
12.00 Questions & Answers
12.30 Lunch Break
1.30 Leonie Hannan (Senior Lecturer, Department of History, Queen’s University Belfast), A Culture of Curiosity: Scientific Enquiry in the Eighteenth-Century Home
2.00 Finola O’Kane, MRIA (Professor, School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy, University College Dublin), Dublin’s Sugar Landscapes in the Eighteenth Century
2.30 Jonathan Wright (Lecturer, Department of History, Maynooth University), The Merchant, the Quaker, and the Enslaved Boy: A Story of Slavery in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Ulster
3.00 Questions & Answers
Abstracts of papers and speakers’ biographies are available here»
Image: Detail from John Rocque’s Exact Survey of Dublin (1756).
PEM Names Lynda Roscoe Hartigan Executive Director and CEO
Press release (22 April 2021) from the museum:
The Peabody Essex Museum today announces that Lynda Roscoe Hartigan will become PEM’s next Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Executive Director and CEO. Hartigan will assume her role on August 23, 2021 and become the first woman director of the nation’s oldest continuously operating museum.
Currently the Deputy Director for Collections & Research and Chief Innovation Officer at Canada’s largest and most visited museum, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Hartigan brings unparalleled organizational experience, a track record of excellence, and a progressive vision to advance PEM as a vital and positive force in people’s lives.
“We are thrilled to have Lynda at the helm, leading PEM boldly into the future,” said Stuart W. Pratt, Chair of PEM’s Board of Trustees. “As the Museum emerges from the pandemic and what has been the most extraordinary chapter in its 221-year history, Lynda’s leadership will provide a collaborative, confident spirit and an expansive vision for our staff, supporters, and community at large.”
Appointed as PEM’s first Chief Curator in 2003 and rising to Deputy Director in 2016, Hartigan led an ambitious, award-winning curatorial and exhibition program and reimagined the museum’s exhibition, publishing, and collection strategies. She oversaw the interpretation and reinstallation of PEM’s 40,000-square-foot wing that opened in 2019 and was integral to developing and advancing the museum’s collection stewardship, fundraising, education, digital, and global leadership initiatives.
“It is a tremendous honor to lead PEM, an organization whose focus on the potential of creativity, cultural understanding, and innovation are more relevant and needed than ever,” says Hartigan. “This is a pivotal moment for museums to stimulate conversation and connection with empathy and courage. I am passionate about ensuring that PEM welcomes all people to explore our shared humanity through the power of the arts and cultural expression.”
The leading scholar on American artist Joseph Cornell, Hartigan specializes in American art, especially modern, folk, and Black artists, yielding numerous widely recognized exhibitions and publications. Prior to joining PEM, Hartigan was Chief Curator of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., where she built internationally recognized collections by American Black and folk artists and led a major acquisitions initiative for modern and contemporary art.
Hartigan holds a B.A. in art history from Bucknell University and an M.A. in art history from George Washington University; she also attended the Getty Leadership Institute. Currently, she is a board member of the Association of Art Museum Curators.
Photo of Hartigan by Alex Paul, courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum.
Call for Papers | UAAC/AAUC 2021, Online
From UAAC/AAUC:
Universities Art Association of Canada / l’association d’art des universités du Canada
Online, 20–23 October 2021
Proposals due by 16 May 2021
Every fall, UAAC-AAUC hosts Canada’s professional conference for visual arts-based research by art historians, professors, artists, curators, and cultural workers. The sessions and panels address issues and subjects in art history, theory, and practice from various methodological approaches.
We invite paper proposals for the UAAC-AAUC Conference 2021 Congrès. We offer a range of panels and roundtables that reflect the UAAC’s diverse constituents in terms of membership and scholarship. Submit proposals by using the Call for Papers Proposal Form PDF. Proposals are sent directly to the chair(s) of the session. The deadline for submission is 16 May 2021.
A selection of sessions potentially related to the eighteenth century, including the HECAA panel, is provided below. A full list of panels is available as a PDF file here.
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Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture (HECAA) Open Panel
Chair: Ersy Contogouris (Université de Montréal), ersy.contogouris@umontreal.ca
HECAA works to stimulate, foster, and disseminate knowledge of all aspects of visual culture in the long eighteenth century. This open session welcomes papers that examine any aspect of art and visual culture from the 1680s to the 1830s. Special consideration will be given to proposals that demonstrate innovation in theoretical and/or methodological approaches.
Le but de HECAA est de stimuler, favoriser et diffuser la connaissance de tous les aspects de la culture visuelle du long XVIIIe siècle. Cette séance ouverte accueille des présentations qui examinent tous les aspects de l’art et de la culture visuelle des années 1680 aux années 1830. Une attention particulière sera accordée aux propositions qui démontrent une innovation dans les approches théoriques et / ou méthodologiques.
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Ibero-American Art, Identity, and Resistance
Chairs: Tatiane de Oliveira Elias (UFSM, Brazil), tatianeeliasufsm@gmail.com; and Patricia Branco Cornish (Concordia University), patricia.cornish@mail.concordia.ca
This panel aims to examine works by Ibero-American artists from the colonial period to contemporary times that debate migration and people’s movements across geographies. We seek to debate how artists interpret a new reality with constrained people movement in a pandemic. We seek contributions from a wide range of disciplines that engage with artistic practices in an Ibero-American context, including painting, performance, multimedia, art installation, and virtual reality (VR). We encourage submissions that debate how Ibero-American artists portray in their work the political and social aspects of cultural transfers resulting from people’s migration. We seek to discuss issues affecting minority populations and cultural transfers discourses in the context of immigration. We seek to debate how these works by Ibero-American artists demand from their makers a reconfiguration of thought and practices in current realities. We explore the importance of maintaining the Latin American historical memory and raising questions about preserving Latinxs identity and diversity. How politics influenced the Latin America art scene? How does the cultural flow happen in a new geographical location? How can arts promote cultural identity? How do artists negotiate their migrant identity in new geographies? How can artistic practices be reimagined in a new context in which we have limited physical interactions with others?
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Latin American and Caribbean Art (s): From Where? From Whom?
Chairs: Analays Alvarez Hernandez (Université de Montréal), analays.alvarez@umontreal.ca; and Alena Robin (Western University), arobin82@uwo.ca
This open session invites scholars, curators, and artists to share their current research on Latin American and Caribbean art (s). The goal is to create dialogue and exchange on the state of those fields. We welcome both contemporary and historical perspectives (from the pre-Columbian period to the present day) and the exploration of a variety of media (painting, sculpture, installation, photography, performance, socially engaged practices, new media, architecture, etc.). We are interested in examining the historical and contemporary presence of Latin American and Caribbean art(s)/artists beyond their traditional geopolitical borders; the inherent intersectionality of those concepts, and also their transmutation in light of past and current migratory and activist movements, technological advances, and sanitary crises; any other topic on art and artists in Latin America and the Caribbean delving into, for instance, the Caribbean’s complex relationship to Latin American. We accept proposals in French and English | Nous acceptons les propositions en français et en anglais.
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Mining the Connection(s) between Industry and the Arts
Chair: Jessica Mace (University of Toronto), jessica.mace@utoronto.ca
While industry and the arts may initially seem poles apart, the two fields are in fact closely entwined. Over time, visual and material culture has served to drive industrial development, for example through survey photography or the construction of company towns), and has responded to industrial production in myriad ways, from documentation to artistic interpretation. In recent years, the arts have also dealt with the effects and material legacies of deindustrialization, for instance through heritage, urban exploration, and adaptive reuse. This session, then, seeks to explore these varied connections and to bring to light these often-overlooked topics. We invite scholars at all stages of their careers to discuss their work in any medium or period of time as it relates to industry and/or industrial production.
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Research-Creation Caucus: How to be Artist-Scholars In and Outside of the Academy [Roundtable]
Chair: Stéfy McKnight (Carleton University), stefy.mcknight@carleton.ca
Can research-creation happen outside of academic institutions? This year, the Research-Creation Caucus will address current questions related to the methodology of research-creation and its connection to academic institutions. More specifically, how these institutions define research- creationists, and who may practice research-creation. There are opposing positions from artists- scholars that see research-creation as primarily an academic and institutional practice, while others argue that creative knowledges can happen outside of academia, and perhaps have done this before the formalization of research-creation in Canada. We as a collective will speak to the following questions: can research-creation disrupt traditional academic knowledge mobilizations, if research- creation being produced and defined by academic institutions? What happens to artist-scholars who change their career trajectories to work outside of academia? How does research-creation in institutions uphold and participate in colonial structures of knowledge production and dissemination? This session invites artist-scholars, curators, independent artists and producers to share their work, and give perspective on these competing debates.
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Graduate Student Lightning Talks | Exposés éclairs des étudiants diplômés
For the first time UAAC/AAUC is proud to feature Graduate Student Lightning Talks. This full session is composed of 5-minute presentations that provide graduate students the opportunity to present their current research or other area of interest. Participants may choose to present their work in the form of a focused summation, a case study, or a methodological approach. This is a great opportunity for graduate students to talk about topics that they are studying, practice presenting these topics and to engage with the broader academic community.
Pour la première fois, l’UAAC/AAUC est fière de présenter des exposés éclair d’étudiants diplômés. Cette session est composée de présentations de 5 minutes et donne aux étudiants diplômés l’occasion de présenter leurs recherches actuelles ou autres domaines d’intérêt. Les participants peuvent choisir de présenter leurs travaux sous la forme d’un résumé focalisé, d’une étude de cas, ou d’une approche méthodologique. Il s’agit d’une excellente occasion pour les étudiants diplômés de parler des sujets qu’ils étudient, de s’entraîner à les présenter, et de s’engager auprès de la communauté universitaire au sens large.
Call for Articles | Féminismes en Europe, 1789–1820
From the Call for Papers:
Féminismes en Europe, 1789–1820
Speical Issue of Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 2023
Proposals due by 15 September 2021
Dans le cadre d’un numéro spécial des Annales historiques de la Révolution française, nous sollicitons des contributions sur le thème suivant: « Féminismes en Europe »
Si le terme « féminisme(s) » n’est pas encore en vigueur à l’époque, la période allant de 1789 aux années 1820 est témoin de nombreuses prises de position en faveur des droits des femmes, appelant notamment à leur émancipation et/ou à leur intégration dans les conceptions de la citoyenneté qui s’imposent alors. On peut y inclure les discours sur l’éducation, sur la domination des hommes, sur l’égalité des sexualités, sur les moyens de remédier à la dépendance économique des femmes, sur la critique du mariage, c’est-à-dire le militantisme sous ses différentes formes mais aussi les prises de position contre-révolutionnaires ou anti-modernes dès lors qu’elles sont reliées, par les auteurs et autrices, à la question de l’émancipation des femmes. Malgré une historiographie abondante et en constante évolution sur le sujet depuis les années 1990, nous pensons qu’il est nécessaire de dresser un nouvel état des lieux de la question, en décalant notre regard de la seule scène française afin d’inclure les échanges et influences étrangères au sein du monde transatlantique (incluant l’Europe, ses colonies et ex-colonies).
Le fait est que si l’on documente et identifie bien, désormais, les prises de position des grandes figures qui, en France, ont pris la défense des femmes pour réclamer l’égalité des droits civils ou politiques — telles que Condorcet, Olympe de Gouges, Romme ou Guyomar ; si l’on commence à s’intéresser à des voix égalitaristes plus mineures comme, toujours en France, celle de Pons de Verdun (Lumbroso, 2021) ; si l’on connaît grâce aux travaux de Dominique Godineau (1989), Suzanne Desan (2002), Martine Lapied (2006) ou encore Laura Talamante (2017), l’engagement politique des « citoyennes tricoteuses » et « Amazones » dans le processus de démocratisation populaire, que ce soit à Paris ou à Marseille ; si l’on sait le rôle joué par certaines figures féminines comme Théroigne de Méricourt (Desan, 2020) ou Mary Wollstonecraft dans la diffusion et la réception des idées favorables à l’émancipation des femmes (Bour, 2013 par exemple) ; si l’on a mesuré l’importance des pétitions de femmes dans le processus de démocratisation de la société française à l’époque de la Révolution (Fauré, 2006) ; si le débat fut vif autour des raisons qui ont exclu (ou pas inclus) les femmes du droit de vote (Verjus, 2014) ; si on a commencé à s’intéresser avec sérieux à l’action politique des femmes engagées dans la contre-révolution (Mabo, 2017) ; enfin, si l’on connaît le niveau d’éducation extrêmement sophistiqué, parfois directement inspiré des écrits de Wollstonecraft, que certains hommes politiques américains ont fait donner à leur fille (par exemple, Theodosia fille d’Aaron Burr) ; si l’on a, par conséquent, amplement répondu à la question que posait Perrot en 1984 : une histoire des femmes est-elle possible ?, en la prolongeant d’interrogations menées à partir du point de vue plus englobant et conceptuel qu’adoptent les études de genre, plus rares sont les tentatives de dégager des visions d’ensemble des réseaux et des circulations d’idées sur la situation et l’émancipation des femmes au niveau européen dans les années 1790–1820, de l’ordre de celle qu’avait esquissée Margaret McFadden (1999) pour tout le XIXe, ou de celle qu’ont plus récemment tentée les coordinatrices de Transatlantic Feminisms in the Age of Revolutions (2012). S’il convient donc d’interroger l’engagement « féministe » des auteurs et autrices européens, à la suite, par exemple, des travaux consacrés aux Allemand·es Hippel (Gray, 1990) ou Sophie von La Roche (Joeres, 1986), aux Anglais comme Lawrence (Verjus, 2019), Holcroft (Binhammer, 2011), ou Godwin (Philp, 2020), ou encore aux Polonaises engagées dans les débats de la « Grande Diète » (Wisniewska, 2021), nous retiendrons aussi les nouvelles perspectives historiographiques sur des figures, des échanges, ou des mouvements moins connus. Nous accueillerons aussi les propositions qui se concentrent sur les réseaux comme, par exemple, les travaux sur le rôle des cercles masculins dans la construction d’un féminisme anglais dans les années 1790, dans la lignée de ce qu’a fait Chernock (2009). L’effort remarquable engagé par l’EHNE en faveur d’une histoire européenne n’oublie jamais, lorsqu’il s’agit d’interroger la source des féminismes du XIXème siècle, de mentionner la Révolution française ou les quelques noms qui ont fait la pensée émancipatrice hors des frontières de la France. Nous voudrions, dans la lignée et suivant l’exemple de cette approche résolument européenne, nous pencher sur ce qui a constitué l’armature de la pensée en faveur d’une émancipation des femmes à l’aube du XIXème siècle.
Vos propositions d’articles, d’une longueur maximale de 50 000 signes en français et 40 000 en anglais devront nous être adressées avant le 15 septembre 2021 à heuer@history.umass.edu, francoise.orazi@univ-lyon2.fr et anne.verjus@ens-lyon.fr. Idéalement, nous souhaiterions organiser une rencontre entre les autrices et auteurs retenu.es, aux alentours du printemps 2022. En présentiel si possible, en distanciel s’il le faut (ou les deux si c’est préférable). Le numéro paraîtra dans le troisième numéro de l’année 2023. Il sera d’abord publié entièrement en français, mais nous nous réservons la possibilité d’en avoir une version entièrement en anglais en ligne. Vos propositions, acceptées en français et en anglais, seront traduites par nos soins, sous votre contrôle.
Références citées dans le texte
• Binhammer, Katherine. « The Political Novel and the Seduction Plot: Thomas Holcroft’s Anna St. Ives ». Eighteenth-Century Fiction 11.2 (1999): 205–22.
• Bour, Isabelle. « A New Wollstonecraft: The Reception of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman and of The Wrongs of Woman in Revolutionary France ». Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 36.4 (2013): 575–87.
• Chernock, Arianne. Men and the Making of Modern British Feminism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009.
• Desan, Suzanne. « Théroigne de Méricourt, Gender, and International Politics in Revolutionary Europe ». Journal of Modern History 92.2 (2020): 274–310.
• Desan, Suzanne. « Constitutional Amazons: Jacobin Women’s Clubs in the French Revolution » in B. T. Ragan Jr. and E. A. Williams (eds.), Re-Creating Authority in Revolutionary France (1992): 11–35.
• Fauré, Christine. « Doléances, déclarations et pétitions, trois formes de la parole publique des femmes sous la Révolution ». Annales historiques de la Révolution française 344 (1 juin 2006): 5–25.
• Godineau, Dominique. Citoyennes tricoteuses : les femmes du peuple à Paris pendant la Révolution française. Aix-en-Provence: Alinéa, 1988.
• Gray, Marion W. « Radical Feminism and a Changing Concept of Marriage : Prussia’s Theodor Gottlieb Von Hippel ». In Donald Horward and John Horgan (eds.), The Consortium on Revolutionary Europe, 1750–1850: Proceedings, 1989 to Commemorate the Bicentennial of the French Revolution, 807–14. Tallahassee: Institute on Napoleon and the French Revolution, Florida State University, 1990.
• Joeres, Ruth Ellen B. « “That girl is an entirely different character!” Yes, but is she a feminist? Observations on Sophia von La Roche’s Geschichte des Fräulein von Sternheim ». In German Women in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: A Social and Literary History, par Ruth-Ellen B. Joeres et Mary Jo Maynes, 137–56. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986.
• Lapied, Martine. « Parole publique des femmes et conflictualité pendant la Révolution, dans le Sud-Est de la France ». Annales historiques de la Révolution française 344 (1 juin 2006): 47–62.
• Lumbroso, Nicolas. « Pons de Verdun et l’égalité des droits en faveur des femmes. L’aspiration d’un Conventionnel à une plus grande égalité des sexes ». Annales historiques de la Révolution française, (2021, à paraître).
• Mabo, Solenn. « Femmes engagées dans la chouannerie : motivations, modalités d’actions et processus de reconnaissance (1794–1830) ». Genre & Histoire 19 (25 août 2017).
• McFadden, Margaret. Golden Cables of Sympathy: The Transatlantic Sources of Nineteenth-Century Feminism. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1999.
• Philp, Mark. Radical Conduct: History of Ideas and Intellectual History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
• Talamante, Laura. « Political Divisions, Gender, and Politics: The Case of Revolutionary Marseille ». French History 31.1 (2017): 63–84.
• Verjus, Anne. « La citoyenneté politique au prisme du genre. Droits et représentation des individus entre famille et classe de sexe (XVIIIème–XXIème siècles) ». HDR, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris – ENS Paris, 2014.
• Verjus, Anne. « Une Société sans Pères Peut-Elle Être Féministe ? L’empire Des Nairs de James H. Lawrence ». French Historical Studies 42.3 (2019): 359–89.
• Wiśniewska, Dorota. « In the Shadow of a Mild Revolution: Polish Women’s Political Attitudes during the Great Sejm (1788−1792) ». Gender & History 33.1 (2021): 75–93.
Cecilia Zhou, Nattier Makeup Tutorial
From the Instagram account of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s European Paintings Department:
Cecilia Zhou, Nattier Makeup Tutorial
21 April 2021
Get your powder and rouge ready—we’re thrilled to introduce Cecilia Zhou’s makeup tutorial for Jean Marc Nattier’s Portrait of a Woman! In this tutorial, Cecilia provides us with an opportunity for close looking through the application of makeup, as she calls it, ”a kind of painterly reverse engineering.”
Jean Marc Nattier had enormous success portraying French aristocratic women: his innumerable portraits represent contrasting powdered skin and bright blush set against warm landscapes. Follow along as Cecilia explores the relationship between makeup, identity, and beauty in 18th-century France.
Jean Marc Nattier, Portrait of a Woman, 1753, oil on canvas (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1982.60.42). More information on the painting is available here»
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