Enfilade

From ArtHist.net:

The Art of Mourning: Emotion and Restraint in the Visual Arts, 1750–1850
Die Kunst des Trauerns. Gezügelte Gefühle in den Bildkünsten, 1750–1850
Martin von Wagner Museum der Universität Würzburg, 5–6 December 2024

In a much-discussed essay of 1986, Yve-Alain Bois identified “The Task of Mourning” as a characteristic feature of painting in the advanced twentieth century. However, this emotionally charged purpose had already been ubiquitous in many forms of artistic expression in the decades around 1800, before being eclipsed by the more materialistic art movements from the middle of the nineteenth century. Prior to that, images of mourning occur with overriding frequency, to such an extent that they lend themselves for questioning the very polarity of neo-classicism and romanticism.

From ca. 1750, mournful motifs and sentiments are conspicuously present in virtually all genres within the visual arts. Art historical research has addressed this phenomenon mainly by asking for the impact of secularization and dissolving iconographic norms (e.g., Werner Busch, Das sentimentalische Bild, 1993). In fact, mourning as existential subject matter is isolated, sometimes devoid of moralistic or theological linkage, for the first time during the so-called ‘saddle period’. In tombs designed by Antonio Canova, old and new motifs of figural grief are constantly played through; John Flaxman fills one sheet after the other with sorrowful processions; within the paper architecture of Étienne-Louis Boullée, mourning and the sublime are connected through the void of cenotaphs; the school of David chooses, in a rather obsessive manner, scenes informed with teariness; large numbers of mourning figures populate the works of the Düsseldorf School. In painting as in sculpture, let alone the graphic arts, grief and sorrow are everywhere; military commanders, politicians, artists, popes are bemoaned, just as family members, suicides and persons sentenced to death. Lost honor or lost homeland, even the flow of time, are occasions of mourning.

These new ways of depicting grief feature a clear distinction from Baroque pathetic formula. The contrary stance compared to everything before is experienced in the most immediate manner—but how to grasp it conceptually? For sure, images of mourning are hallmarked by emotional control; thus we can understand them as an inversion of heightened expression and pathos. Why, then, is there a desire for pictures of painful yet patiently endured loss just in the age of enlightenment and its aftermath, i. e. in a period that is characterized by faith in progress like none before it? For what reason these pictures were considered particularly appropriate for transformations of Christian imagery? Is there a deeper connection between the new visual dimension of mourning and changed gender-specific attributions? Can we establish a causality between the withdrawal of mourners into themselves on one side, and neo-classicist reductionism on the other? What are the effects of the expanded canon of antiquities, operated by contemporary archaeology, on the iconography of mourning? How to define the share of human science—of new anthropological concepts, early forms of psychology, or research into human emotions in terms of physical and medical scholarship—in the visualization of mourning? How to relate, in a methodically sound fashion, the boom of mourning in the visual arts with social and political upheaval?

This conference seeks to explore, on a large scale, these and other questions around the historical theme of mourning. The Art of Mourning is the first edition of the Würzburg Wellhöfer-Colloquium. Every two years, it will investigate research topics from the history of art between 1750 and 1850 from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Organisation
Michael Thimann (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen/Deutsche Gesellschaft für die Erforschung des 19. Jahrhunderts) und Damian Dombrowski (Julius-Maximilians-Universität/Martin von Wagner Museum der Universität Würzburg)

Kontakt
Martin von Wagner Museum der Universität Würzburg, mvw-museum@uni-wuerzburg.de

d o n n e r s t a g ,  5  d e z e m b e r

Michael Thimann, Damian Dombrowski — Begrüßung und Einführung / Welcome and Introduction

Impulsvortrag | Keynote Lecture
• Werner Busch, FU Berlin — Die Kunst des Trauerns: Gezügelte Emotionen in den Bildkünsten, 1750–1850

Sektion 1 | Sentimentalisierte Trauer / Sentimentalised Mourning
• Cordula Grewe, Indiana University Bloomington — Seelenmalerei, oder: Wie bewahrt man seine Fassung?
• Franca Buss, Universität Hamburg — Um die Wette weinen. Johann August Nahls Grabmal für Maria Magdalena Langhans und die Sentimentalisierung des Todes
• Lisa Hecht, Philipps-Universität Marburg — Trauer oder Langeweile? Die Eleganz des ‚Nichtstuns‘ in Damenbildnissen des englischen 18. Jahrhunderts

Sektion 2 | Trauer-Orte / Places of Mourning
• Daniela Roberts, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg — Die Tugend überdauert den Schmerz: Horace Walpoles Grabmal für seine Mutter in der Westminster Abbey
• Eric Sergent, Laboratoire de recherche historique Rhône-Alpes —Mourning and Grief in French Funerary Sculpture
• Martina Sitt, Kunsthochschule Kassel — Trauer-Plätze des Klassizismus: Vielschichtige Aspekte der Gestaltung von Licht und Raum

Sektion 3 | Entgöttlichte Trauer? / Grief without Deity?
• Noémi Duperron, Université de Genève — ‘Touch(ing) with Sentiment’: Gavin Hamilton’s Grievers and Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments
• Maria Schabel, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg — Erneuerung religiöser Bildsprache? Fallstudien biblischer Trauerikonographie um 1800 am Beispiel zweier Werke Johann Martin von Wagners
• Lorenzo Giammattei & Antonio Soldi, Sapienza Università di Roma — Comparing Perspectives of Eternity in the Elaboration of the Mourning Theme in Painting: From Death for a Religiously Connoted Afterlife to Death as an Opportunity to Create an Ethical and Virtuous Model for the Present Time

f r e i t a g ,  6  d e z e m b e r

Sektion 4 | Trauern an der Epochenschwelle / Mourning in the Age of Transition
• Damian Dombrowski, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg — ‘l’ultimo soffio di felicità in Europa’? Tiepolo’s Sense of Loss
• Isabelle Le Pape, DRAC Normandie, Rouen — From Caspar David Friedrich to Courbet’s Enterrement à Ornans: The Image of Mourning in French and German Romantic Painting
• Susanne Adina Meyer, Università di Macerata — Morire con grazia: Bilder des Trauerns im Spiegel des römischen Kunstdiskurses

Sektion 5 | Antike als Trauer-Modell / Antiquity as a Model of Mourning
• Carolin Goll, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg — Trauern in der griechischen Tragödie: Martin von Wagners Zeichnungen nach Euripides
• Johannes Myssok, Kunstakademie Düsseldorf — Canova and the Art of Mourning
• Jochen Griesbach, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg — Niobe ist überall? Zur Antikenrezeption mütterlicher Trauer in Bildern des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts

Sektion 6 | Politisches Trauern / Political Mourning
• Tobias Kämpf, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen — Mourning at Missolonghi: Political Artworks as Compensations for Loss
• Cigdem Özel, Universität Wien — Trauern für die Monarchie am Beispiel von Miniaturporträts Eduard Ströhlings
• Philip Schinkel, Universität Hamburg — Grenzen überschreiten: Männertränen im belgischen Nationalmythos bei Louis Gallait