Call for Papers | Wood: Between Natural Affordance and Cultural Values
From ArtHist.net:
Wood: Between Natural Affordance and Cultural Values in Eurasia
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (and online), 31 March — 2 April 2022
Organised by Aleksandra Lipińska and Ilse Sturkenboom
Proposals due by 30 September 2021
In “The Theory of Affordances” of 1977, the American psychologist James J. Gibson coined the term affordance to denote that which environment offers an animal [or a human for that matter] for good or ill. This concept resonated broadly within humanities and, more recently, especially within material culture studies. Wood can be understood as a natural affordance that is one of the most universally available materials in a vast area of the world. Wood comes with its natural and physical characteristics that determine its workability. The use of various kinds of wood is, however, not only determined by the availability and applicability of the material itself but also by cultural values and specific requirements within a society.
This conference aims at bringing together scholars from diverse fields within humanities and science to discuss similarities and differences, continuities and discontinuities in the notions surrounding wood in various cultural contexts within Eurasia until the ‘material revolution’ that followed after 1900. We would like to address the question of the relationships or tensions between the naturally determined affordances of timber and their cultural coding.
Questions addressed may include, but need not be limited to:
• The relation between the substance and the produced object as a result of the tension between natural affordances and cultural practices
• Religious, philosophical, and historical notions of wood in various cultural contexts within Eurasia and their impact on the application of wood in artefacts
• Relationships of wood with other materials within material hierarchies, as a combination in objects/architecture, or as a carrier of designs that may also occur in other materials
• The mobility of wooden objects and their impact in diverse cultural contexts
• The use of wood as a tool or medium, e.g. imprint
• The specificity of working in wood and resulting identities of woodworkers and their works
• Scientific/ dendrochronological analyses of wood and their impact on the interpretation of cultural meaning of wooden objects
The conference is planned to take place as an in-person event, but online attendance will also be made available in a hybrid format. As far as attendants cannot be reimbursed by their home institutions, travel and accommodation costs will be reimbursed by the conveners.
The conference is organised by Aleksandra Lipińska (Professor for Art of the Early Modern Period, Institute for Art History, LMU Munich) and Ilse Sturkenboom (Professor for Islamic Art History, Institute for Art History, LMU Munich).
We kindly ask interested participants to submit, by 30 September 2021, a working title, a maximum 250-word abstract, and a short CV to Ilse.Sturkenboom@LMU.de and aleksandra.lipinska@kunstgeschichte.uni-muenchen.de.
Call for Papers | 2022 Wallace Seminars in the History of Collecting
From the Call for Papers:
Seminars in the History of Collecting, 2022
The Wallace Collection, London, last Monday of the Month (possibly online)
Proposals due by 17 September 2021
The seminar series was established as part of the Wallace Collection’s commitment to the research and study of the history of collections and collecting, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Paris and London. We are keen to encourage contributions covering all aspects of the history of collecting, including:
• Formation and dispersal of collections
• Dealers, auctioneers, and the art market
• Collectors
• Museums
• Inventory work
• Research resources
The seminars—normally held on the last Monday of every month during the calendar year, excluding August and December—act as a forum for the presentation and discussion of new research into the history of collecting. Seminars are open to curators, academics, historians, archivists, and all those with an interest in the subject. Papers should generally be about 45–60 minutes long. Seminars take place between 5.30 and 7pm. While we hope that the seminars can resume in situ at the Wallace Collection at some stage during 2022, the Collection will follow government guidelines about best practice as it evolves in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is quite possible that the seminars will continue to take place on Zoom throughout the year.
If interested, please send a short text (500–750 words), a brief CV, and indicate any months when you would not be available to speak, by Friday 17 September 2021. For more information and to submit a proposal, please contact: collection@wallacecollection.org.
Please note that if seminars take place at the Wallace Collection we are able to contribute up to the following sums towards speakers’ travelling expenses on submission of receipts:
• Speakers within the UK – £80
• Speakers from Continental Europe – £160
• Speakers from outside Europe – £250
Call for Papers | Rethinking Race and Representation in the Francosphere
From ArtHist.net (10 July 2021) . . .
Rethinking Race and Representation in Art History and Material Culture of the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Francosphere
H-France Salon
Abstracts due by 15 August 2021, with accepted papers due by 1 February 2022
H-France Salon invites contributions for a Salon series addressing the theme of “Rethinking Race and Representation in Art History and Material Culture of the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Francosphere.” This Salon builds on the H-France Salons Series entitled “Race, Racism, and the Study of France and the Francophone World Today” [H-France Salon 11.2 (2019)] and seeks to offer new ways and tools for thinking specifically about constructions of race in history, art history, and material culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The editors are open to many directions, but possible angles may include:
• What overlooked artists or artwork should we include to shift our understanding–or what well-known works should we reconsider in the light of new narratives and questions? We welcome essays that focus either on one artist or representation, or on a set.
• What approaches are particularly thought-provoking or effective pedagogically?
• What methods can help us recover the agency of the people who modeled for, or were depicted in, artworks?
• How can we use objects or aspects of material culture?
• How do choices for representing eighteenth and nineteenth century works, i.e. museum displays and curation, renaming or questioning the titles of artworks, decisions about where and how art is displayed in urban and national settings, etc, shape our understanding of those works?
• How do modern ways of representing the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (from graphic histories to public murals to video ) affect our understanding of the past?
• How do we engage contemporary debates, like French debates around race as an ‘American’ category?
Interested contributors should e-mail an abstract (max.1000 words) and CV to the editors Jennifer Heuer (heuer@history.umass.edu), Gülru Çakmak (gcakmak@umass.edu), and Robin Mitchell (robin.mitchell@csuci.edu) by August 15, 2021. Papers (2500–4000 words) will be submitted by February 1, 2022.
As H-France Salon supports multi-media resources, we welcome possibilities that take advantage of the platform. Please contact us with any questions or ideas!
Call for Articles | The Eighteenth Century in Comics and Graphic Novels
From ArtHist.net:
Die Aufklärung und das 18. Jh. in Comic und Graphic Novel
The Enlightenment and the 18th Century in Comics and Graphic Novels
Special Issue of Jahrbuch Der OGE 18
Jahrbuch Der Österreichischen Gesellschaft Zur Erforschung Des Achtzehnten Jahrhunderts 2022
Proposals due by 31 July 2021; completed articles will be due 31 December 2021
Anlässlich ihres 40-Jahr-Jubiläums widmet die Österreichische Gesellschaft zur Erforschung des 18. Jahrhunderts ihr Jahrbuch 2022 Repräsentationen von Aufklärung und dem 18. Jahrhundert in Comics und Graphic Novels. Zwar ist die Rezeption historischer Inhalte in der Populärkultur ein etabliertes Forschungsfeld, doch haben die Text-Bild-Narrationen dieses Mediums—verglichen etwa mit Computerspielen—bislang kaum Aufmerksamkeit gefunden. Vorliegende Arbeiten (wie C. Gundermanns Jenseits von Asterix, 2007) haben einerseits einen fachdidaktischen Schwerpunkt auf Aspekte der Vermittlung, andererseits keinen definierten Fokus auf das 18. Jahrhundert. — Dieses ist aber in mehrfacher Hinsicht interessant: Graphic Novels (etwa zu Voltaire) können Ideen der Aufklärung recht präzise auf den Punkt bringen; manche historisierenden Donald Duck-Darstellungen (etwa jene von Erika Fuchs) spiegeln dagegen durchaus tieferes Verständnis der deutschen Klassik. Dennoch hat sich bislang niemand diesem Thema wissenschaftlich angenähert. Die OGE18 will das mit ihrem Jubiläumsjahrbuch nun ändern.
Gesucht werden wissenschaftliche Aufsätze (im Umfang von rund 40.000 bis 50.000 Zeichen inkl. Leerzeichen), die die Verhandlung von Motiven, Figuren, Ereignissen und Ideen des ‚langen‘ 18. Jahrhunderts in Comics oder Graphic Novels kritisch diskutieren. Aufsätze können in deutscher, englischer oder französischer Sprache eingereicht werden. Abgabetermin ist der 31. Dezember 2021. Die Beiträge werden einem Peer-Review-Verfahren unterzogen. Bei Interesse senden Sie bitte bis spätestens 31. Juli 2021 eine knappe Skizze Ihres Beitrags an die Herausgeber_innen Thomas Assinger (thomas.assinger@sbg.ac.at), Elisabeth Lobenwein (elisabeth.lobenwein@aau.at) und Thomas Wallnig (thomas.wallnig@univie.ac.at).
Call for Papers | The Presence of America in Madrid
From ArtHist.net:
The Presence of America in Madrid
Real Academia de San Fernando, Madrid, 3–4 February 2022 (dates TBC)
Organized by Luisa Elena Alcalá and Benito Navarrete Prieto
Proposals due by 20 September 2021
Organized within the context of the research project AmerMad (América en Madrid: Patrimonios interconectados e impacto turístico en la Comunidad de Madrid / America in Madrid: Interconnected Patrimony and Touristic Impact in the Comunidad de Madrid), in collaboration with the Royal Academy of San Fernando, this colloquium seeks to analyze the current state of knowledge regarding viceregal art in Madrid. As is well known, during the early modern period, hundreds of objects, artworks, painted and illustrated documents, and manuscripts were sent from the Spanish viceroyalties in America to Iberian Spain. This circulation has been the object of renewed academic interest in recent years. In response to this trend, it seems necessary to better understand the particular place that Madrid, as both city (villa) and court (corte), occupied within this broader phenomenon.
The presence of objects with a Spanish American provenance in Madrid has mostly been studied through the lens of the monarchy since the crown was a primary patron, generator, and receiver of all kinds of objects and images, both of documentary and artistic value. Nonetheless, as Madrid grew and developed into a major city in the 17th and 18th centuries, it began to harbor many important institutions that offer other scenarios to explore: great convents, schools, academies, hospitals, and churches with their respective religious congregations, all of them places of productive encounters for many people involved and/or connected in some way with life on the other side of the Atlantic.
One of the aims of this colloquium is to refresh and update what we know about the Spanish American patrimony in Madrid between the 16th and the 18th centuries. Another objective is to consider the place that these works should or could occupy in a renewed narrative of the history of art in Spain that is more inclusive, transversal, and multicultural.
What stories about Madrid and its art have gone amiss? And, have they remained in the background because of traditional disciplinary divides, such as the one that separates Spanish art (or art in Spain) from Spanish American art? How can we think of Madrid as a crossroads where Iberian and colonial art met? How did objects that came from America interact or engage with local developments of taste, consumption, religious practice, devotion and identity, as well as artistic processes and projects taking place in the capital? What kinds of functions did these works have, and how can we characterize their social impact? In addition, we encourage consideration of how these objects were displayed, if they were more or less visible, and how they have been transformed by changing displays, their meanings becoming more or less relevant for Madrid´s society as times changed.
We invite proposals based on original research that can contribute to advancing the current state of knowledge and explore new questions and theoretical frameworks for our better understanding of these unique objects and works of art. Please send proposals (of 400–600 words) along with a short CV to elena.alcala@uam.es and benito.navarrete@uah.es.
• Proposals are due by 20 September 2021.
• Accepted participants will be notified by 1 October.
• Papers can be in Spanish, English, French, Italian, or Portuguese
The conference will coincide with the closing days of the exhibition Tornaviaje: Arte Iberoamericano en España (Museo Nacional del Prado, October 2021 — February 2022), and the colloquium will include a visit. Additional activities are planned to complement the conference, including a study session of the relevant holdings in the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, which will be coordinated by Juan Bordes and Itziar Arana as head of projects at the RABASF.
N.B. — The dates are still to be confirmed; the conference may be held 3–4 February or 10–11 February.
Call for Papers | About Time: Temporality in American Art
From ArtHist.net (which also includes the French version). . .
About Time: Temporality in American Art and Visual Culture
Université de Paris, 4–5 November 2021
Organized by Hélène Valance and Tatsiana Zhurauliova
Proposals due by 30 June 2021
From Afro-futurism to memorials and monuments, from dystopian prophecies to the celebration of an eternal return of American ‘greatness’, American culture is and has always been deeply engaged with the notion of time. This symposium will consider time as it relates specifically to the visual arts of the United States, from the 17th to the 21st century. In doing so, it will unveil time as a fundamental dimension to American culture, despite a long tradition emphasizing the centrality of space.
Over the past decades, a number of historical studies have demonstrated that time is not a straightforward or neutral framework. From discussing the emergence of standardized, rationalized time as concomitant with the rise of industrialization, to analysing the temporalities of colonialism, these studies have shown that the concept of time is historically determined and that it constantly evolves under the pressures of technological, social, and economic factors. Yet in the field of art history, and especially U.S. art history, studies devoted to time as it relates to the visual arts remain comparatively limited in scope and number. This symposium will address this absence by taking a long view at the development of the concept of time in American art and visual culture.
We invite contributions from scholars whose research focuses on the variety of strategies, devices, and formulations that artists used for the concept of time in their work. The symposium will investigate the historical dimensions of such issues as the temporalities of art making and art perception; the idea of the image as a way of arresting time or, on the contrary, time as an integral dimension of the artwork; notions of memory and anticipation; art as a bridge between the past and the future; the circulation and evolving reception of artworks over time; archives and historiographies; the development of timelines of art history or, on the contrary, the concept of art’s ahistoricity. Such comprehensive consideration of the notion of time seems to have particular urgency today, at a moment of intense reckoning with the enduring legacies of the past and the arresting inability to imagine the future, threatened by the climate crisis and the global pandemic.
Please send a proposal (500 words maximum) and a short CV to about.time.symposium@gmail.com by 30 June 2021. Selected contributors will be notified by 25 July 2021.
The conference is organized by Hélène Valance, associate professor of American studies at Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté and CNRS research fellow at LARCA, Université de Paris, and Tatsiana Zhurauliova, associate researcher at LARCA, Université de Paris.
Call for Papers | 18th-Century Dictionaries and Encyclopedias
While CAA isn’t scheduled to finalize decisions until August, we have, on the affiliate end, been selected to represent ASECS at the 2022 annual conference of the College Art Association in Chicago next February. With hopes of soliciting a wide range of papers and participants, we’re circulating this call for papers early. Please send a CV and an abstract (300 words) for 18-minute papers to jgermann@ithaca.edu and CraigAshleyHanson@gmail.com by Friday, 10 September 2021. Presenters will need to be members in good standing of both CAA and ASECS. We’re happy to answer questions. –Jennifer Germann and Craig Hanson
Constructing Art History in and through 18th-Century Dictionaries and Encyclopedias
ASECS Affiliate Session, College Art Association, Chicago, 16–19 February 2022 (format TBD)
Chaired by Jennifer Germann (Ithaca College) and Craig Hanson (Calvin University)
Proposals due by 10 September 2021
Frontispiece from J. Barrow, Dictionarium Polygraphicum: Or, The Whole Body of Arts Regularly Digested (London: Printed for C. Hitch and C. Davis in Pater-Noster Row, and S. Austen in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1735). Getty Research Institute.
Notwithstanding an impressive body of scholarship addressing eighteenth-century encyclopedias generally—particularly Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopedia and the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert—art history as a discipline has yet to produce anything like a comprehensive account of how various artistic discourses of the period were shaped by such reference works—either by ambitious universal dictionaries or by more focused, specialized volumes. In fact, however, the long eighteenth century saw the publication and often significant distribution of a wide range of art and architectural dictionaries, books like Filippo Baldinucci’s Vocabolario toscano dell’arte del disegno (1681), Neve’s The City and Country Purchaser’s and Builder’s Dictionary (1703), John Barrow’s Dictionarium Polygraphicum (1735), François Marie de Marsy’s Dictionnaire abrégé de peinture et d’architecture (1746), Joachim Christoph Gottsched’s Handlexicon, oder, kurzgefasstes Wörterbuch der schönen Wissenschaften und freyen Künste (1760), and Diego Antonio Rejon de Silva’s Diccionario de las nobles artes para instrucción de los aficionados, y uso de los profesores (1788).
This panel invites papers that explore how dictionaries and encyclopedias (broadly defined) mediated and shaped the emerging field of art history for both artistically sophisticated readers and a wider general audience. How were these texts used in the past (and by whom) and how might art historians engage them productively today? And what to make of how these texts have worked to legitimate some objects of art historical inquiry, even as the omissions have also profoundly shaped the field?
For all our twenty-first-century hopes of advancing a comprehensive, global scope, how effectively might any reference work, dependent upon existing scholarship, break from the biases and narratives that have dominated art history as an academic discipline? Should such works continue to be produced and, crucially, in what form? Narrowly focused papers are welcome so long as they also position their subjects within a larger framework. Contributions that reconsider well-known eighteenth-century publications (including universal dictionaries) as well as essays addressing underexplored reference books are encouraged.
Call for Papers | Napoleon’s Legacy
From ArtHist.net:
Imperial Material: Napoleon’s Legacy in Culture, Art, and Heritage, 1821–2021
Online, 3 September 2021
Organized by Matilda Greig and Nicole Cochrane
Proposals due by 12 July 2021
Napoleon Bonaparte died exactly two hundred years ago on a small island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. He had spent the last six years of his life in exile on St Helena, removed from political and military power, in the unusual situation of being able to try to shape and preserve his own posthumous legacy. He was, in a way, phenomenally successful. Napoleon is an instantly recognisable name to this day, and despite growing efforts in recent years to critically revise his reputation and highlight his role in issues such as the reinstatement of slavery, he has largely managed to escape the same level of historical censure as other infamous military dictators. This is perhaps partly because his name has become such an adaptable brand, standing for an entire era of people, places, and events, as well as a full two centuries’ worth of art, craft, and consumer commodities. While other events marking the bicentenary of Napoleon’s death have weighed his contributions to legislative, political, and military reform, less work has been done to confront his vast material, visual, and cultural legacy.
Napoleon’s death in 1821 prompted a frenzy of creation and circulation of materials relating to him, a whirling international trade in objects, images, texts and memorabilia which has essentially never since ceased. Death masks were made, shipped to Europe, waylaid, stolen, copied, and taken around Latin America by one of his doctors. Portraits were exchanged and exhibited, caricatures continued to abound, and actors took on the mantle of the Emperor from the stage to the film set. Personal items belonging to Napoleon were gifted to friends and family, collected by his admirers, and displayed at public exhibitions around the world: his horse, the key to his room, his toothbrush. These items make national headline news to this day when they are rediscovered, are sold for monumental sums to contemporary collectors and serve as key advertising strategies for museums. Napoleonic items can be official or personal, serious or comical, luxury or disposable: the former emperor can be equally thought of as a monumental Neoclassical marvel in white marble, as Joaquin Phoenix, or as a tiny cartoon figure astride a fat pony—yet little work has so far been done to bring together these diverse cultural histories in conversation.
We therefore invite researchers of all disciplines, and museum and heritage professionals, to reflect on the enduring material and visual legacy of Napoleon, what our interpretation and use of it means for the future as well as how it affects our understanding of the past.
Possible themes for papers include:
• Napoleon in theatre, TV and film; in music; in poetry; in art, sculpture and drawing; in books, ephemera, printing, paratext
• Napoleon in exhibitions and museums: museum histories, interpretations of collections, and how objects are presented to the public, including in past, present and future events; how Napoleon is used in marketing strategies or public engagement
• Private collecting and the choices and agency of collectors, including by historians; the memorabilia trade both in the 19th century and up to today; Napoleonic tourism and the creation, looting or buying of souvenirs from significant places
• Gender, sexuality, and Napoleonic memory; involvement of women as collectors, curators, consumers
• Race and empire: critical histories and commentaries on Napoleonic representations
• Medical histories of Napoleonic objects
• Dress, fashion, appearance
• Home décor
• Religion and the macabre
• Animals and Napoleonic symbolism
• The ‘golden’ or ‘rosy’ vs. ‘black’ legend of Napoleon and ongoing critical interpretations
• Comedy and ridicule
• Romanticisation, neoclassical heroism, masculinity
• Circulation and object histories
• Re-enactment
• Public commemoration; plaques, monuments, iconoclasm
• Napoleon and antiquity
Please submit abstracts for short 15-minute papers, along with a short bio, to ImpMatWorkshop@gmail.com by 12 July 2021. (Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words.) Following the workshop, we plan to pursue the publication of selected papers as a collected edition.
Convenors
Dr Matilda Greig (Cardiff University)
Dr Nicole Cochrane (University of Exeter)
Call for Articles | Raconter / Narrative(s)
From the Call for Papers (English and French) . . .
Raconter / Narrative(s), Edited by Marine Kisiel and Matthieu Léglise
Special Issue of Perspective: actualité en histoire de l’art, no. 2022 – 2
Proposals due by 1 July 2021, with completed articles due by 15 December 2021
The journal Perspective’s thematic issue 2022 – 2 will explore the relationships between narration, art and art history. From the stories that inspire images and art objects, to those (re)constituted by its viewers, to the ‘story-telling’ of art historians, this issue is intended to make use of the act of narrating as a productively destabilizing heuristic tool. Even in the absence of figured diegetic content, the image and the art object narrate, if only as witnesses of an era or practices, as vehicles of narrativity. The resulting visual narratives in turn generate other narratives: fictions or legends, scholarly articles or fanciful ramblings, dialogues between artworks or viewers’ monologues. And art historical narratives as well, given that art historians continuously recount the process performatively, with its multiple mises en abyme and comings and goings in the grey areas between fact and fiction, expression and narration, description, analysis, and projection.
The historical place of the terminology of narrative within the field of literary studies also calls for examining the relationship between a narrative in images and its possible written sources. Does representing a story in images amount to imitating the textual narrative or faithfully reproducing its dramaturgy for the eye? What are the possibilities of visual narrativity relative to those of verbal language? The debt of figurative representation to its source has prompted a variety of responses from researchers in art history, some of whom posit the primacy of the written over the visual. Here, the concept of figurative thought (Pierre Francastel, La figure et le lieu : l’ordre visuel du Quattrocento, Paris, Gallimard, 1967) permits a distinction between two equally valid conceptual domains, where each narrative medium has its own logic. This dialectical approach, which connects the narrative image to its cultural environment, then opens the way to multiple interactions and reformulations, in particular through orality and a dialogue between the collective imaginary, individual imaginaries, and visual culture (Hans Belting, An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body [2001], Princeton / Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2011). In methodological terms, the emergence of narratology within French literary theory in the 1970s (Gérard Genette, Figures III [1972], selections translated as Narrative Discourse, An Essay in Method, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1980) provided a body of conceptual tools for renewing the study of the internal mechanisms of the literary narrative, in particular through the distinction between histoire (story), récit (narrative text) and narration (narrating act). The possible influence, or not, of this approach on the theoretical frameworks used in art history to analyze the narrative elements of the artwork or the image merits further consideration. And the same is true for the connections between visual, linguistic, and semiotic studies.
The figured narrative calls on a wide variety of visual means for shaping and spatializing narrative content through still and moving images (analog or digital), architecture, fashion, or art objects. Each work produced—monument, dress, painting, sculpture, film, book, digital interface, art object—requires a match between the narrative in images and its medium, dimensions and volume so as to fashion its visual effectiveness and reception by judiciously condensing or expanding it. Giving visual form to the narrative is also a means of fashioning or recounting its time In sum, this issue of Perspective seeks to take into account all the narrative dimensions, specificities, and potentialities of art objects and works and explore the way(s) the narrativity of the visual is rooted in a lengthy process of legitimization and empowerment.
If the image and the art object narrate, art historians in turn continuously provide a dialogical account of this multifaceted relationship as a kind of story within the story. The history of art, rooted in the works of Giorgio Vasari and Karel van Mander (considered as its modern founders), is based on a narrative exercise, from the ekphrasis of Antiquity to the epic narratives of modernist autonomy, but also anecdotes and biographical legends. The way art historians have forged their discipline by freeing themselves from a willfully mythical literary practice and gradually adopting, fashioning, and discussing ‘scientific’ methods bears witness to a complex relationship with the narrative and narration—otherwise stated, a kind of fiction. Some recent historiographical studies have focused on the question of these close ties between the writing of history and that of fiction. Mark Ledbury, in the collective work Fictions of Art History (Williamstown, Mass., Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute / Yale University Press, 2013), Ivan Jablonka with History Is a Contemporary Literature: Manifesto for the Social Sciences [2014] (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2018), and more recently, Myriam Métayer and Adriana Sotropa, the editors of Le récit de l’histoire de l’art. Mots et rhétoriques d’une discipline (Le Kremlin-Bicêtre, Éditions Esthétique du divers, 2017), for example, have offered fruitful insights. Is it possible to write history without telling stories? From the point of view of the images and art objects or that of the viewers, can—or should—we forego any narrative process? Can we communicate without narrating (or narrating ourselves)? If this is not the case, what epistemological conclusions can be drawn about the way we consider our practice—our writing—of art history? In the era of ‘alternative facts’ and storytelling, when the question of the relative nature of narratives is both a considerable risk and an opportunity, raising question about the making of narrative, the way that art and art history narrate (and narrate themselves), ultimately implies a return to teleological issues: what has meaning, what gives meaning, what creates meaning?
The appearance of an image, be it figurative, aniconic, material, or mental, gives rise to a story and a way of arranging it into a narrative. But does the absence of figuration signify the absence of narrative? For in the same way, the appearance of the image, be it material or mental, figurative or aniconic, gives rise to a desire to narrate. While no one will deny that the image and the narrative act go hand in hand, the precedence of one over the other remains an eternal subject of debate, as are the relaying and embedding processes that engender them, from the time of the paragone to modernist discourse predicting the end of narrative artworks. For the upcoming thematic issue, these different oppositions and complex transmission phenomena can be approached from a variety of vantage points, provided that the analysis is situated within a historiographical perspective addressing the narrative processes at work in the creation and reception of art from the origins to the present day, from symbolic Paleolithic expressions to contemporary cinema. For this reason, specific case studies bearing on iconographic analyses will not be accepted unless they raise broader critical questions.
Proposals involving one or several of the following approaches will be particularly welcome:
• Artists telling stories
• Artists telling their own stories (authorized accounts, etc.)
• Historians recounting the life of the artist (from Vasari to Ernst Kriz and Otto Kurz)
• Historians telling the story of visual narratives (iconography, iconology, interpretation, etc.)
• Synchronic narratives of art history (the ‘great’ movements, the ‘master’ narratives)
• Counter-narratives and re-narrated art historical narratives (historiography, fictionalization)
• The place and possibility of a collective and/or participatory narrative within the discipline
• The socio-political consequences and echos of art-historical narratives and counter-narratives (activism, societal debates)
Published by the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA) since 2006, Perspective is a biannual journal which aims to bring out the diversity of current research in art history through a constantly evolving approach that is explicitly aware of itself and its own historicity and articulations. It bears witness to the historiographical debates within the field, while remaining in continuous relation with the images and works of art themselves, updating their interpretations, and thus fostering global, intra- and interdisciplinary reflection. The journal publishes scholarly texts which offer innovative perspectives on a given theme. These may be situated within a wide range, yet without ever losing sight of their larger objective: going beyond any given case study in order to interrogate the discipline, its methods, history and limitations, while relating these questions to topical issues from art history and neighboring disciplines that speak to each of us as citizens.
Perspective invites contributors to update their historiographical material and the theoretical questionings from which they draw their work, to think from and around the starting point of a precise question, an assessment that will be considered an epistemological tool rather than a goal in itself. Each article thus calls for a new approach creating links with the great societal and intellectual debates of our time. Perspective is conceived as a disciplinary crossroads aiming to encourage dialogue between art history and other fields of research, the humanities in particular, and put into action the ‘law of the good neighbor’ developed by Aby Warburg. All geographical areas, periods, and media are welcome.
Narrative(s), no. 2022 – 2
Editors: Marine Kisiel (INHA) and Matthieu Léglise (INHA)
Issue coordinated with Anne-Orange Poilpré (université Paris 1 – Panthéon-Sorbonne)
Please send your submissions (an abstract of 2,000 to 3,000 characters / 350 to 500 words, a provisional title, a short bibliography on the subject, and a biography of a few lines) to the editorial office (revue-perspective@inha.fr) before July 1st, 2021. Proposals will be examined by the issue’s editorial committee regardless of language (articles accepted for publication will be translated by Perspective). The authors of the pre-selected proposals will be informed of the committee’s decision by the end of July 2021. The complete articles (25,000 or 45,000 characters/ 4,500 or 7,500 words depending on the project) must be submitted by December 15th, 2021. These will be definitively accepted after the journal’s anonymous peer-review process.
Translated from French by Miriam Rosen
Call for Papers | New Approaches to Piranesi
The first installment of HECAA’s Zoom Event Series will feature a roundtable on Piranesi studies, moderated by Jeanne Britton and Zoe Langer, both affiliated with the Digital Piranesi Project at the University of South Carolina.
New Approaches to Piranesi: A Virtual Roundtable
Online, 16 July 2021
Organized by Jeanne Britton and Zoe Langer
Proposals due by 16 June 2021
We are seeking proposals for a virtual roundtable of lightning talks on interdisciplinary approaches to the works of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778). Recent scholarship by Heather Hyde Minor, Carolyn Yerkes, and Susan Dixon, as well as the current bestselling novel Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, have started to open the field of Piranesi Studies to new avenues of research and potentially wider audiences. This roundtable will consist of short presentations of 5–7 minutes followed by ample time for discussion. We hope the proposed format will encourage lively conversation and prompt new critical perspectives that will continue to broaden the interpretation of Piranesi’s works. We welcome topics that include but are not limited to eclecticism, globalism, reception, book history, biographical studies, cartography, collecting, translation, digital humanities, theater, fashion, music, archaeology, and the history of science. We are especially interested in hearing from graduate students, early-career scholars, and professionals engaged in a wide range of disciplinary fields and methods.
Please send an abstract of 150 words, a brief biography, and current contact information. Submissions should be sent to digitalpiranesi@gmail.com by Wednesday, 16 June 2021. Decisions will be sent on Friday, 18 June.
Sponsored by HECAA (Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art & Architecture)
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