Enfilade

From the Call for Papers:

French Art and the Aesthetics of Power

Special issue of Arts, edited by Hector Reyes

Proposals due by 31 July 2026; final manuscripts due by 1 June 2027

French art looms large in the historiography of art history; its centrality is tied to the political role that France played in articulating the very idea of centralized state power for Europe more generally during the transition between the early modern and the modern age. The art of French culture, born of centralized power and encoded with cultural knowledge, has been able to sustain our collective attention, analyses, and interpretations. But as the field and the humanities have reconfigured what constitutes power and how it operates, it seems appropriate to rethink the transparency of the historical narrative that links political centralization to cultural authority to formal manifestation in art.

We invite papers that reconfigure those seemingly streamlined relations in various ways, for example: the identification of new archives that challenge our ideas about the locations or operations of power; new ideas about form, its constitution, or theorization; new ways to think about ‘experience’ as a political, social, or artistic phenomenon; new narratives of cultural patrimony; new theories or ideas of periodization; postcolonial or decolonial analyses. Together, the articles of this Special Issue will compliment and challenge the established narratives of French cultural authority while still taking seriously the artistic object that is at the heart of French patrimony’s power.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors first submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200–400 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the guest editor hectorre@usc.edu or to the Arts editorial office (arts@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editor for the purpose of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

Hector Reyes
Guest Editor
Department of Art History, University of Southern California, Los Angeles