Lecture | Paris Spies-Gans on Imprints and Erasure
Image for the talk taken from Marie-Françoise Constance Mayer La Martinière (possibly with Pierre-Paul Prud’hon), Innocence Prefers Love to Wealth (L’Innocence préfère l’Amour à la Richesse), 1804, oil on canvas, 243 × 194 cm (St. Petersburg: Hermitage Museum).
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Next month at Harvard:
Paris Spies-Gans | Zerner Lecture — Imprints and Erasures: A New Story of Art
Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 23 April 2024, 6.00pm
In countless ways, women have been erased from the history of art. Their exhibited works have been reattributed to their male peers; their once-collected paintings have been left to deteriorate in museum storerooms; and many art historical accounts have questioned their very ability to create “great” art. We can even track the gradual removal of women’s names from the historical record in moments of deliberate, posthumous eradication. However, a growing mountain of evidence demands we recognize that women artists may have always existed—and were often quite prominent in their own places and times. In her lecture, Paris Spies-Gans will share this troubling history and present a series of recent discoveries to challenge the powerful, gendered assumptions that continue to inflect our views of the past. By recovering the traces of women artists—the imprints they left behind—we can update essential parts of art history’s most enduring narratives.
Paris A. Spies-Gans is a historian of art with a focus on women and the politics of artistic expression. She holds a PhD in History from Princeton University, an MA in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art, and an AB in History and Literature from Harvard University. Her research has been supported by fellowships from the Harvard Society of Fellows, the J. Paul Getty Trust, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, and the Yale Center for British Art, among other institutions. Her first book, A Revolution on Canvas: The Rise of Women Artists in Britain and France, 1760–1830, was published by Yale University Press in 2022. It has won several prizes in the fields of British art history and eighteenth-century studies, and was named one of the top art books of 2022 by The Art Newspaper and The Conversation. She is currently working on her second book, A New Story of Art (Doubleday/Penguin Random House).
Call for Papers | The Face in 18th- and 19th-C Public Sculpture
Excerpted from the Call for Papers at ArtHist.net, which includes the French:
The Intimate and the Public: The Face in 18th- and 19th-Century Public Sculpture in France and the German Sphere
L’intime face au public : le visage dans la sculpture publique des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles en France et dans la sphère germanique
Institut National d’histoire de l’Art, Paris, 25–26 November 2024
Proposal due by 15 May 2024
This study day devoted to sculpture will focus on one element in particular: the face. As an essential part of the sculpted figure, the face has the dual role of enabling identification and expression. This dual role became more apparent in the 18th and 19th centuries, with the rise of portraiture, as well as the interest in the inner self and more broadly, the intimate. The aim of this exhibition is to draw a parallel between two contradictory concepts: the intimate and the public. As sculpture is the art par excellence of the public space, the aim is to confront the face, which is intimate, with the imperatives of public sculpture. The subject is all the more relevant given that statues in public spaces were subject to constantly changing decorum throughout the 19th century. The portrait was and remains the preferred type of statuary, whether full-length or in bust form. As a means of honouring a person, a propaganda tool, and an official image, the sculptural face had many functions, which began to take shape in the 18th century and became clearer in the 19th, as sculpture shifted from a religious and royal function to a civic one. Oscillating between idealisation and resemblance, the figuration of the face in the sculptural medium is a questionable concept in the Franco-German 18th and 19th centuries. In addition to the similarities in their artistic and textual origins, these two geographical areas will enable us to examine the artistic circulations that took place, and above all to analyse how political developments, which affected both France and the Germanic sphere, led to a national affirmation that was embodied in public sculpture. The aim of this study day is to examine the representation of the face in Franco-German public sculpture in the 18th and 19th centuries, analysing its theories, practices, techniques, possible typologies and the way it is perceived by the viewer. . . .
The aim of this study day is to return to a motif that is already well known and studied, the face, but this time by analysing it as an element at the junction of two spheres—the intimate and the public—through a body of sculpture. In addition to the obvious lack of studies devoted to this art form, the choice of focusing on sculpture is justified above all by its coherence with the areas of research: sculpture is mainly used to represent figures, and therefore faces, and it is the art form par excellence used in the public space.
Written submission must address one of these 8 major themes:
• The role of the face in the sculpture of public spaces
• Theories and practices of facial representation
• The relationship between the intimate and the public
• Individualisation and typology of faces
• The relationship between the face of a sculpture and the urban space
• Technique and materiality of sculpture
• Destruction or alteration of the face of a contested statue
• The gaze of the sculpture and/or the viewer / the sculpted figures in relation to each other
This call is open to all researchers, whatever their discipline or status, and we particularly encourage young researchers. Proposals for papers in English or French (maximum 300 words, accompanied by a brief bio-bibliographical presentation) should be sent before 15 May 2024 to the following address: sculptureparis24@gmail.com. The selection committee will respond to proposals by 20 June 2024.
Organizers
• Justine Cardoletti, doctoral student in art history at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, justine.cardoletti@gmail.com
• Emilie Ginestet, doctoral student in art history at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès, emilie.ginestet8@gmail.com
• Sarah Touboul-Oppenheimer, doctoral student in art history at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, sarahtoub.st@gmail.com
Call for Papers | Human and Nature Interactions
From the Call for Papers:
Human and Nature Interactions in History: The Impact of Climate, Environment, and Natural Phenomena on Human Life
Istanbul University, Faculty of Letters, Kurul Odası, 28–29 May 2024 (with opportunities for virtual presentations)
Proposals due by 26 March 2024
Over the course of history, the fact that humans have been faced with the impact of the environment in which they live and that the relationship between humans and nature directly or indirectly has governed cultural, economic, and social structures and artistic currents has been a common problematic that concerns various disciplines. The fact that humans were subjected to compulsory guidance by nature, of which they were inclined to take control in the making of civilizations and cities, has been one of the main issues determining the historical and current agendas in varying degrees and forms.
This symposium will discuss the ways in which the natural environment shapes new habitations, the impact of the natural structure on the essential elements of the city such as architecture and settlement patterns, and how the diversity of fauna and flora affects social, cultural, emotional, and economic development or deprivation. In addition, it aims to examine the drawbacks such as water shortages, droughts, floods, fires, earthquakes, epidemics, storms, and forced migrations. In this context, it is expected to receive papers that can evaluate the manifold reflections of these phenomena that might positively or negatively affect, change, or give direction to the historical course.
Organized by the History Research Center, this free symposium aims to bring together experts from diverse fields, including environmental science, geography, historical geography, literature, economics, cultural heritage, history, and art history. If you would like to participate in the meeting with a paper, please send a short CV and an abstract of 200–300 words to tam@istanbul.edu.tr. The event will be held in a hybrid format, with both physical and online opportunities to present.
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