Enfilade

A late addition to the CAA 2015 sessions:

Did You Read That? Art Editing on the Web
Session at the 103rd Annual Conference of the College Art Association
New York, 11–14 February 2015

Proposals due by 31 July 2014

Sponsored by the Association of Art Editors, the session “Did You Read That? Art Editing on the Web” will explore the current state of art editing on the web. Panelists will discuss the varying levels of work and practices involved in editing texts for publication online, from the mechanical and technical aspects (research, fact checking, making corrections after publishing) to larger conceptual and ethical matters (changing attitudes toward quality). Writers and editors today have access to a wide range of resources—from Google searches and Wikipedia to JSTOR and Oxford Art Online—that were unavailable (and even unimaginable) twenty or thirty years ago. How has the advent of such resources affected the editorial process?

This session, whose format will be a roundtable conversation, with the chair serving as an active interviewer rather than a passive moderator, will focus on specific examples and case studies rather than on generalizations and abstractions. Speakers, who may include authors, critics, editors, or publishers, will address personal and academic
websites, online versions of printed publications, born-digital journals, and blogs; they may also consider the training of younger writers, critics, historians, and editors.

The chair seeks four participants for the session. Speakers are not required to present a paper prepared in advance, although a brief presentation of five to ten minutes can be accommodated. Please send a letter of interest, a CV, and your area(s) of professional interest and expertise to Christopher Howard at chris@christopher-howard.net.

From the conference website:

The Beauty of Letters: Text, Type, and Communication in the Eighteenth Century
Birmingham, 14–15 March 2015

Proposals due by 1 July 2014

The Baskerville Society, in conjunction with the University of Birmingham and Birmingham City University, is pleased to announce the theme for its second two-day conference, The Beauty of Letters: Text, Type, and Communication in the Eighteenth Century.

In his preface to Paradise Lost (1758), John Baskerville described himself as ‘an admirer of the beauty of letters’. This conference takes his phrase as a starting point to explore the production, distribution, consumption and reception, not only of letters, but also words, texts and images during the long eighteenth century (c. 1688–1820). This conference will consider how writing, printing, performance and portrayal contributed to the creation of cultural identity and taste, assisted the spread of knowledge and contributed to political,
economic, social and cultural change in Britain and the wider world.

Writing: teaching of writing and penmanship; styles of handwritten script; copybooks; shorthand; handwritten documents such as diaries, account books, letters, legal and parliamentary documents; the creation of texts by authors, poets and playwrights of the eighteenth century.*

Printing: printers and typefounders; technology and technology transfer; typefaces and typography; manufacture and distribution of texts; libraries, and education; publishing and bookselling; the production of different forms of print media: books, newspapers, encyclopaedias, dictionaries, conduct manuals, scientific and medical literature, histories, travel literature, religious, legal and political texts, ephemera and street literature.

Performance: the enactment and communication of text in theatre, music, politics and education through writing and performance of plays, ballad operas, songs and lyrics; the presentation of scripts and musical scores; censorship; theatre programmes; theatre merchandising; speeches; sermons; scientific lectures.

Portrayal: the visual representation of text in maps; scientific drawings; architectural drawings; astronomical sketches; political/satirical cartoons; posters, labels; signs and shop-fronts including both architectural and fascia lettering; advertising.

*please note the conference is not exploring literary criticism

The Conference organisers, Professor Caroline Archer and Dr Malcolm Dick are inviting contributions from academics, heritage professionals, research students and independent scholars. Please send a suggested title, synopsis (200 words) and biography (100 words) via a word attachment to both: caroline.archer@bcu.ac.uk and m.m.dick@bham.ac.uk; by: 1 July 2014.

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The Baskerville Society is an international society dedicated to the study of the eighteenth-century typographer, printer, industrialist and Enlightenment figure, John Baskerville (1707–75).

From The Courtauld:

Sixth Early Modern Symposium | The Intelligent Hand, 1500–1800
The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 8 November 2014

Proposals due by 30 June 2014

Organised by Austeja Mackelaite and Camilla Pietrabissa

The hand—the ‘instrument of instruments’—has fascinated artists, scientists and philosophers from Aristotle onwards. Its remarkable dexterity, anatomical complexity, and the ability to manipulate were seen as defining features distinguishing humanity from animality, as well as indicators of the superiority of the former. Taking as its starting point the sixteenth-century humanist Dominicus Lampsonius’ claim that ‘the Netherlander / Has intelligence in his hand’, this one-day Symposium will investigate the hand both as the means and the subject of representation in Early Modern art and visual culture.

Participants are invited to explore the hand as the locus where the relations between manual labour and ingenium, workshop and academy, the ‘low’ and the ‘high’ are defined and negotiated in the production of artistic value and new knowledge. Traditionally held to be subordinate to the creative drive of the mind, the artist’s hand may also be considered as an autonomous agent, manifesting itself on the surface of artworks through individual style, the manipulation of media or as an iconographic motif.

We welcome proposals for papers that explore the theme of the intelligent hand from the early modern period (c.1500–1800) including painting, sculpture, architecture, decorative arts, graphic arts, and the intersections between them. Papers can explore artistic exchanges across nations and cover non-European subjects. Contributions from other disciplines, such as anthropology and the history of science, are also welcome. Topics for discussion may include, but are not limited to:
·  Formal and informal training of the artist’s hand
·  The hand of the master and the ‘hands’ of his workshop
·  The relationship between an artist’s hand and his individual style
·  The sense of touch in relation to sight and other senses
·  Gesturing as the language of the hand in visual representations
·  The hand in anatomical and scientific treatises
·  The hand as a mnemonic device
·  Historiography of the hand

Please send proposals of no more than 300 words along with a 150 word biography by 30 June 2014 to austeja.mackelaite@courtauld.ac.uk and camilla.pietrabissa@courtauld.ac.uk. Organised by Austeja Mackelaite and Camilla Pietrabissa (The Courtauld Institute of Art).

Picturing the Eighteenth-Century Novel through Time:
Illustration, Intermediality and Adaptation
Special Issue of Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies (2016)
Guest-edited by Christina Ionescu and Ann Lewis

Abstracts due by 1 August 2014

‘Have you noticed that no book ever gets well illustrated once it becomes a classic?’, asked in passing Aubrey Beardsley when faced with the challenge of illustrating Les Liaisons dangereuses in the Art Nouveau era. Yet visually intriguing and conceptually intricate illustrations of eighteenth-century classics are abundantly present at key moments in the history of the book (Romanticism, the fin-de-siècle, the interwar period, amongst others). Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Voltaire’s Candide, Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Héloïse, Goethe’s Werther and Bernardin’s Paul et Virginie are just some examples of canonical texts that have inspired artists not only through time but also across national boundaries and different media. Such texts have produced visual corpora that are as vast as they are diverse. The timeless fascination with Paul et Virginie, for example, has resulted not only in illustrative series that steadily accompanied the text in its various incarnations as a book, but also in drawings, prints, sculptures, caricatures, tapestries, ceramics, clocks, etc., which circulated and were displayed independently of the text. Artistic transpositions and intermedial engagements with eighteenth-century bestsellers range from these visually static, yet geographically mobile forms of expression, to dynamic, performative adaptations such as films, operas and plays.

In spite of the increasing availability of digital images, critical approaches still tend to privilege the authorially sanctioned series (such as Gravelot’s engravings for Rousseau’s bestselling novel, commissioned and designed with the writer’s direct involvement), or ‘intervisual paradigms’ (patterns of iconographic representation considered independently of their text of origin). Moreover, theatrical or cinematic adaptations of eighteenth-century novels are seldom considered in relation to other forms of visual crossover, such as book illustration and decorative objects, though they all a priori rely on similar processes of visualising and adapting the text. The comparative analysis of different series of illustrations and of other forms of artistic representation of the same novel through time and space, however, allows us to explore the complexity of adaptation, to understand the visual representation inspired by text as an intermedial product and cultural phenomenon, and perhaps to grasp the fascination that the eighteenth century continues to exert upon us.

We invite submissions of papers that address any of the following questions through interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approaches:
•    How does the illustration of an eighteenth-century novel through time respond to new techniques and to changing views of the function of illustration itself?
•    How do successive generations of artists shape the reception of an eighteenth-century novel at different moments in time?
•    How do illustrated translations of eighteenth-century classics reflect the geographical, linguistic and cultural displacement of the original text?
•    How does the gradual shift from the poorly paid artisan to the internationally known artist affect the illustration of an eighteenth-century classic?
•    How do publishers operating from lucrative centres of book production (Amsterdam, Brussels, The Hague, London, Paris, etc.) respond to the specific expectations of their subscribers or readerships in regard to illustration?
•    How do artists, publishers and/or stage directors facilitate or negotiate verbal/visual crossover? What is their respective involvement in this process?
•    How do individual artists re-view an eighteenth-century text when they illustrate it again for a different publisher or edition?
•    How does the phenomenon of extra-illustration exemplify a unique rapport of visual closeness between the collector and text? How is the reading process impacted by the insertion within a single volume of parallel illustrations of the same scenes, which were executed at different moments in time?
•    How do objects inspired by eighteenth-century novels become cultural artefacts and exist independently of the text? How are they integrated in home décor, private collections or museum space? And what impact do they have as things commissioned, inherited, or collected?
•    How is visual representation transposed from one medium to another (for example, from book illustration to film adaptation)? What are the similarities and differences in the ways in which the text is visually adapted for each medium of expression?

Please send an abstract of 500 words to a.lewis@bbk.ac.uk and cionescu@mta.ca by 1 August 2014. The deadline for submission of completed articles will be June 2015 (approximately 8000 words). Articles may be in French or English. As is usual for peer-reviewed journals, all final decisions concerning the acceptance of articles for this special issue will be made by the JECS editorial board. We also intend to host a workshop around the collection at the BSECS annual conference in January 2016.

A late addition to the CAA 2015 sessions:

Home Subjects: Domestic Space and the Arts in Britain, 1753–1900
HBA Session at the 103rd Annual Conference of the College Art Association
New York, 11–14 February 2015

Proposals due by 15 August 2014

Session chairs:
Melinda McCurdy (Associate Curator of British Art, Huntington Art Collections), mmccurdy@huntington.org
Morna O’Neill (Wake Forest University), morna.oneill@gmail.com
Anne Nellis Richter (independent scholar and adjunct instructor, American University), anne.nellis@gmail.com

Home Subjects is a new research working group which aims to illuminate the domestic display of art in Britain. Our goal is to examine the home as a place to view and exhibit works of art within the historical context of the long nineteenth century.

Recent scholarship has emphasized the importance of the house itself and notions of ‘domesticity’ as important touchstones in British culture. At the same time, art historians have tended to focus on a history of British art premised on the display of art in public; according to this important narrative, British art developed in relationship to the public sphere in the eighteenth century. Art institutions and exhibitions asserted the importance of the display of art in forming audiences into publics in cultural and political terms. Such efforts continued in the ‘exhibition age’ of the nineteenth century, when display of artwork in museums, galleries, and special exhibitions solidified the important role given to art in articulating a public sphere. This narrative overlooks the continuation of older paradigms of display, especially those premised on the private and domestic audience for works of art. Within this context, the country house takes it place alongside the townhouse as an important venue for the display of art. We aim to explore this ‘counter-narrative’ of the home as the ideal place to view works of art, a view which permeated all areas of art and design and which persisted throughout the nineteenth century, despite the prevailing narrative of the development of public museums.

Also at stake in this project is a reconsideration of domesticity and its relationship to modernity. Important recent scholarship has illuminated some of the ways in which entrenched narratives of modernity and artistic modernism were defined in opposition to the domestic sphere. In a typical avant-garde gambit, artists distinguished works of art from objects of interior decoration by rejecting the private and the domestic.

This session aims to bring together scholars whose work addresses this topic in order to posit a new trajectory for modernity, one that can be traced through the private, domestic sphere. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
• the display of easel painting and its relationship to the domestic interior
• decorative arts, their status as works of art and relationship to interior decoration
• domestic architecture and museum/gallery architecture, both public and private
• collecting and taste
• the interrelationship between private and public modes of display and decoration

Proposal abstracts should be no more than 500 words, and should be accompanied by a current 2-page c.v. and must be received by email to homesubjects@gmail.com by August 15, 2014. Please also include a mailing address, telephone number, and email.

A late addition to the CAA 2015 sessions:

The Materiality of Art and Experience in the Eighteenth Century
ASECS Session at the 103rd Annual Conference of the College Art Association
New York, 11–14 February 2015

Proposals due by 1 July 2014

The recent interdisciplinary ‘material turn’ in the humanities and social sciences has, according to anthropologist Daniel Miller, followed two distinct paths. The first is to emphasize artifacts, to create object theories in which things are investigated as they relate to social processes. The second is a more totalizing conception of materiality, one far broader in its implications. It encompasses consciousness, knowledge, history, theory, and sensation and conceives all of them as rooted in material conditions: the immaterial is expressed materially and accessible only through it. Materiality enables the structures of human experience to exist. Art History has largely followed the first path in its interrogation of objects and their social meanings. This panel asks what can be gained by following the second. How did the materiality of eighteenth-century art, its physical presence and its capacity to elicit an embodied relation to a viewer, shape or determine human experience? How did art objects broadly defined engage the eighteenth-century material world? How did new and coveted materials alter the experience of eighteenth-century collectors, connoisseurs, antiquarians, and others who engaged with art? And more broadly still, how did eighteenth-century art make the immaterial material?

Please send an abstract and C.V. to Michael Yonan (yonanm@missouri.edu) and Kristel Smentek (smentek@mit.edu) by July 1, 2014.

As posted at H-ArtHist:

Object Fantasies: Forms and Fictions
Munich, 7–9 October 2015

Proposals due by 31 July 2014

Interdisciplinary Conference of the Junior Research Group Premodern Objects: An Archaeology of Experience (Elite Network of Bavaria / Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich)

In modern understanding, the word ‘object’ signifies something material, spatially defined and functionally determined. These notions are accentuated by the word objectivity, which defines an ideal, systematic mode of grasping objects as ‘subjects’ that presumably operate neutrally and scientifically. In contrast, the Latin word
‘fantasia’ has, since antiquity, signified an apparition or the ability to imagine something that can equally be an image, a concept or, also, an object.

The conference takes the latter alternative meaning, that is, the non-objective experience of objects as well as recent positions of thing studies as the basis for inquiry into the creative act in the reception and construction of objects. How, for instance, do the object fantasies let the borders between object categories or objects and creatures blur? What role do they—equally nourished by illusion and experience—play in the perception and handling of material objects? To what degree do perceptions of and references to objects have a lasting effect on the conception and creation of other material objects or fictional objects in images and texts? And finally: What correlation exists between the creative handling of the objectual, the self-perception of subjects and the concrete and imaginary conditions of their social lives? The conference will pursue these as well as other lines of questioning of different formal as well as fictional possibilities in the creation of objects. Welcome are papers from all fields of human sciences on individual objects, object categories and systems, objects in images and texts, objects with images and script as well as object theories. The travel and accommodation costs of the speakers will be covered. The conference serves as a preparation for an anthology on the same topic. Working languages are English, German, French and Italian. Please send a one page abstract and a short CV by July 31, 2014 to objektfantasien@kunstgeschichte.uni-muenchen.de.

From Winterthur:

Sewell C. Biggs Winterthur Furniture Forum
New York Furniture: From New Netherlands to Empire State
Winterthur, Wilmington, Delaware, 4–7 March 2015

Proposals due by 1 September 2014

Chest, 1700–35. Bequest of Henry Francis du Pont 1958.1144. Photo by Gavin Ashworth

Winterthur solicits paper proposals for the 2015 Sewell C. Biggs Winterthur Furniture Forum From New Netherlands to Empire State: New York Furniture, to be held March 4–7, 2015, at Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library, Winterthur, Delaware.

This forum will focus on the multifaceted furniture of New York and adjacent communities in New Jersey and Connecticut with talks that explore Dutch origins, English styling, and the ascendancy of designs marketed by nationally known manufacturers. Especially welcome are topics with an end date before 1870 that examine: expressions of ethnic and cultural identity in the production and consumption of furniture; links between the cabinetmaking and building trades and the architectural settings of furniture; labor and shop practices; mass production, the introduction of new designs and international marketing strategies. Other topics are also encouraged.

Proposals for presentations 30 minutes in length should include a brief letter of interest, one-page abstract, and short cv and may be e-mailed to: jlane@winterthur.org or mailed to: Furniture Forum 2015, Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library, 5105 Kennett Pike, Winterthur, DE 19735.

I’ve no idea how flexible the end date of 1700 is for the larger Palatium project, but I imagine this workshop will be of interest to many readers. -CH

From the Call for Papers:

Making Room for Order: Court Ordinances as a Source
for Understanding Space at Early Modern Princely Residences
Kalmar Castle, Sweden, 2–3 October 2014

Proposals due by 22 June 2014

Organized by ESF Research Networking Programme PALATIUM with Linnaeus University, Kalmar

One of the obvious sources when analysing how space was used at early modern royal residences are court ordinances. These are however far from as clear‐cut as they may seem. In several instances we can see how a world of order emerges that can easily be an illusion. Court ordinances are thus a rich material to use, but a source that poses a number of important methodological questions. The value of court ordinances has long been apparent. Already in 1761 Friedrich Carl Moser used court ordinances while compiling his work Teutsches Hof‐Recht. A more scholarly approach came later however. In 1905 and 1907 Arthur Kern published Deutsche Hofordnungen des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts. This was an important step in making court ordinances accessible for research. After Kern various court ordinances have been published for principalities such as Kleve, Aragon, Brandenburg and Burgundy.

For court studies, the analysis of court ordinances has been indispensable. In his groundbreaking research on early modern courts, David Starkey made extensive use of the Eltham Ordinances. The possible Burgundian influences on the late Plantagenet English court, through court ordinances, is an on‐going debate. In later years two important scholarly works on early modern court ordinances have been published. The first, edited by Werner Paravicini, was Höfe und Hofordnungen 1200–1600 in 1999. This was the result of a conference in 1996 by the Residenzen‐Kommission. The second large volume, Zu Diensten Ihrer Majestät: Hofordnungen und Instruktionsbücher am frühneuzeitlichen Wiener Hof, was published in 2011 by Jakob Wührer and Martin Scheutz.

Thus, some scholars have highlighted court ordinances recently. They have however not focussed specifically on royal residences and the interplay between architecture and court life. This leaves a fruitful and rich vein for PALATIUM to tap into. The workshop in Kalmar is aimed at analysing from a methodological standpoint how we can understand the uses and ideas of space at court by deploying court ordinances as a source. It will be necessary to include not just court ordinances proper but also instructions and similar sources. The differences between court ordinances, instructions and other court laws/regulations were fluid at the time and this should be reflected in the discussions.

Naturally court ordinances have methodological issues. Why was a court ordinance drawn up? Was the aim to enforce economy at court or to enhance magnificence? The information we can draw from court ordinances depends to a large degree on such reasons. A number of evident questions to discuss leap to mind. Can we see how the shift from peripatetic to more sedentary courts is reflected in court ordinances? Will court ordinance reflect specific palaces rather than a generic group of royal residences for a prince?

Another obvious issue is how court ordinances both reflect reality and norms. Can we see if court ordinances were translated verbatim without any consideration for spatial differences between courts? Would court ordinances be switched from one architectural setting to another? Did this result in changes in architectural layout? What happened if a new court ordinance clashed with the existing palace plan? Yet another issue concerns whether we can see how different court ordinances influence each other? The example of Burgundy and the court of Edward IV have already been mentioned. Were certain court ordinances especially influential?

The interplay between the spatial reality and court ordinances must always be kept in mind. Perhaps we can deduce what a lost court ordinance looked like by using the architectural material, which can indicate both functions and shifts in those functions.

Papers will be organised around the following three topics:

I. Space and Function: Norm versus Reality
Court ordinances are interesting on two levels. First, they tell us something about prevailing ideas and attitudes within courtly society at the time. Second, they might tell us something about how reality was organised. The second half is, however, far from straightforward. As a normative source, court ordinances pose special problems. How certain can we be that ordinances paint a true picture of how space was used at court? We need case studies that analyse how far the norm was realised. What can ordinances really tell us about the use of certain spaces at certain ceremonies?

II. Invention or Tradition?
Did court ordinances actually introduce real change in how space was organised at princely courts? Can we see if court ordinances precede or follow real changes in palatial space? Perhaps a court ordinance merely reflected already existing usage rather than introducing new ways? Might court ordinances act as a conservative force?

III. A Source Leaving the Residence Partly in Shadow?
An evident methodological issue when using court ordinance is whether there are spaces at royal palaces that fall outside court ordinances? Will certain areas not be covered? Will the hunt, gardens or the menagerie be outside the usual scope? Does that mean that these areas were less constricted by ceremony and regulation? (more…)

As posted at H-ArtHist (click the link for the German version). . . 

Exhibiting Art for Sale: The Commercial Gallery Space from the 18th Century to the Present
Technische Universität Berlin, 29 November 2014

Proposals due by 10 July 2014

Those who exhibit art for sale will carefully consider the manner in which the objects are presented. Many such concepts are based on the evocation of a historic context: dealers in old master paintings, for instance, tend to show their selection in period frames and with furniture which stems from the same epoch as the exhibits. Galleries of contemporary art, on the other hand, often present their shows in so-called white cubes, futuristic spaces that avoid all periodization, thus suggesting the timeless appeal of the art they offer for sale. Other galleries again choose to dramatize their setting with unexpected, contrasting combinations of objects originating from different periods and a variety of regions.

The commercial gallery thus provides a space where the significance of art is set in complex relation to its market value. This rarely considered subject will be explored by the 3rd Workshop of the Forum Art and Market, TU Berlin. By investigating the strategies of cooperating and competing agents, this conference not only aims to reveal modes of presentation typical for specific periods; it also seeks to address the changing concepts of selling exhibitions as a reflection of the art market’s history from the 18th century to the present day.

Proposals for contributions may for instance address the following aspects:
• the presentations of objects and the design of selling exhibitions (frames and bases, lighting, furniture, wall colours and covering, arrangement of exhibits, the size of spaces and their succession, show cases, shop windows, etc.) in art galleries, auction houses, academies, art fairs, museums and exhibition spaces managed by art associations
• the (changing) purposes of exhibitions in the art trade (such as providing information, education and pleasure, adding value, enabling pricing and sales) and the visitors they address
• the marketing and reception of such presentations in word and image (catalogues, advertisements, published reviews, artists’ notes, correspondence, etc.), also in comparison with non-commercial art exhibitions

Conference languages are German and English. Please send proposals (maximum 2000 characters), and a brief curriculum by 10 July 2014 to: exhibitingartforsale@gmail.com. Additional information on the conference cycle of the Forum Art and Market and its annual workshops may be found here.

Convenors: Dorothee Wimmer, Johannes Nathan, and Bénédicte Savoy, assisted by Lukas Fuchsgruber