Enfilade

Conference and Edited Volume | The Gesamtkunstwerk: A Concept for All Times and Places
University of Lisbon, 12–14 March 2014

Proposals due by 15 January 2014

The Gesamtkunstwerk: A Concept for All Times and Places is integrated in the programme Art from a Global Perspective, which began in 2011 at the Artistic Studies Research Centre (CIEBA) of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon (FBAUL).

The concept Gesamtkunstwerk (or total work of art) is defined by the universal, globalizing and totalizing nature of a work of art when it combines painting, sculpture, architecture, music, poetry and other arts. In the specific context of German Post-Romanticism, Richard Wagner (1813–1883) attempted to synthesize the work of art in a resounding combination between symphonic music, dramatic action in text interpretation and stage representation, through painting and sculpture, seeking to awaken in audiences subtle and deep emotions. Although the German concept Gesamtkunstwert was not originally used by Wagner, the eloquent way he refers to an ideal of unification of all art forms by means of theatrical representation presents the «consummation of the artwork of the future».

This conference seeks to rethink the concept of Gesamkunstwerk, analyzing the way artists before and after Wagner, in Europe and the World, combined different forms of art, establishing unequivocal relationships between concepts and materials. We aim at systematizing creative processes that rely on the transgression of the individualizing tradition of the art forms in favour of symbiotic mechanisms between visual arts, multimedia art, performative arts, popular arts, and “primitive” arts. This conference seeks to put into perspective theoretical and practical models of synthesis of arts patent in the several cultural contexts all over the world.

In the context of the Gesamtkunstwerk, beyond these issues, it is important to examine not only the synthesis models of artistic forms, but also textual and visual references often aggregated by works of art. Discussion themes include, although are not limited to:
• Contextualization of historical and aesthetic reflection on the concept Gesamtkunstwerk
• Coalescence of visual arts, performance arts, multimedia art, popular art, and “primitive” arts
• The  Gesamtkunstwerk in the context of architecture: Design for the Total Building
• Film as synthesis of poetics, performance, music, and photography
• The  impact of globalization in the combination of art forms
• Collaborative art
• Anthropophagy as an aesthetic procedure (adaptation and appropriation of styles and artistic forms by other artists, of others works or other cultures)
• Museums and exhibition programming as unifying element of art forms (exhibition and curatorial harmonization of different art forms, settings and interactions between the museum’s architecture programme and museum practice)
• Decorative Arts: application and ornament (decorative arts as an expression of the combination of different forms of art, collaboration between artists – woodcarvers, designers, goldsmiths, painters,
sculptors, upholsterers, etc.)
• Appropriation and Remediation (analysis of processes of artistic recreation, especially via digital art;
• Modern and contemporary perspectives on the Gesamtkunstwerk (extensions of the notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk in Modernism and the contemporary world
• New definitions for the notion of Gesamtkunstwerk
• Questions suggested by installation and the notion of place
• Pastiche and the reinvention of the work of art

We particularly encourage the submission of proposals that crosscut cultural contexts, present diachronic perspectives or establish relationships between different universes. Submissions for a 20-minute presentation and/or edited volume should be forwarded to the Scientific Committee, which will proceed to a peer review. Submissions should be sent by email to agp@fba.ul.pt until 15th January 2014, with CFP Gesamtkunstwerk as subject message. The  abstract should only include title and a maximum of 500 words. The  abstract must be accompanied by a different file with a curriculum vitae (maximum: 1 page) that includes personal identification elements, the submission title, academic affiliation, and a selection of a maximum of 5 bibliographic references. Notification of acceptance will be announced until 15th February 2014. Papers accepted for the conference will be published in a volume. The committee may accept proposed papers only for the edited book. For further information, please send an email to agp@fba.ul.pt.

Organization
Artistic Studies Research Centre, University of Lisbon (CIEBA/FBAUL)

Co-ordination
Rui Oliveira Lopes, PhD (CIEBA/FBAUL)
Fernando António Baptista Pereira, PhD (CIEBA/FBAUL)
Maria João Ortigão, PhD (CIEBA/FBAUL)
Fernando Rosa Dias, PhD (CIEBA/FBAUL)

Working Languages
English / Portuguese

Image credits available at the conference website.

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Collect, Exchange, Display: Artistic Practice and the Medical Museum
MacRae Gallery, Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, London, 6 June 2014

Proposals due by 15 January 2014

For hundreds of years, medical collections have been sites of medical and artistic exchange. Not only were many of their contents created by artists and physicians, but the collections were also often compiled by doctors, who were themselves artistes manqués. Although medical museums have recently received attention in museological and historical studies, they remain relatively ignored within art historical scholarship.

This one-day conference will look at the anatomical, pathological or medical museum from the perspectives of art history and visual culture. Artists have utilised these spaces for the study of anatomy and pathology—as well as for ideas and inspiration—but what do we know about the artists, photographers and craftsmen and women who have
worked within the museum? How can we theorise the collecting practices of the doctors who founded and/or ran these museums? What influence did these spaces and their contents have on artistic practice, visual representation and the writing of art and medical histories? How does the medical museum continue to play a role in contemporary art-making and medical learning? From the wax modelers to the commissioning physicians to the painters and sculptors who were inspired by its contents, this conference will spark a dialogue about the artistry of the medical museum. We encourage papers on all visual aspects of the medical museum in any country from the seventeenth century to the present, and welcome papers from artists, curators and scholars from any discipline, as well as medical professionals. We anticipate publishing a selection of papers from the conference in an edited anthology.

Paper Proposals are due by 15 January 2014. Please send a 250-word abstract, along with a short CV (no more than two pages), to the conference organisers:
• Dr Natasha Ruiz-Gómez, Lecturer in Art History in the School of Philosophy and Art History at the University of Essex, natashar@essex.ac.uk
• Dr Mary Hunter, Assistant Professor of Art History in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University, Mary.Hunter2@mcgill.ca

This conference has been generously funded by the Wellcome Trust.

From ArtHist:

The Enlightened Image: History and Uses of Projection
Université du Québec à Montréal, 22–24 May 2014

Proposals due by 6 January 2014

The purpose of this conference is to reflect on the issues concerning the projection of still images as this way of presenting images, used by museums and universities, plays an increasingly important role in the visual landscape. A projection can be part of an exhibition by artists or curators, its vocation can be recreational or educational, in any situation, the projection still monumentalises the image, which is placed in the heart of a collective experience. Thus, from the early development of magic lanterns in the middle of the seventeenth century, the intermedial transposition has made the projection dedicated to the collective use of the image and gives it a status of mediator to the public.

The sharing of images provided by the projection is transformative: the projection dematerializes images, distances them, changes their scales and proportions, makes them ephemeral, etc. The projection also affects the way images are perceived in particular by focusing its iconicity at the expense of its texture. All these mutations influence how the projected image is received and creates perceptual habitus. The new visual literacies, which inaugurated the conception of numeric screens and their uses, seem to have been initiated by the luminosity of the projected image. Microsoft PowerPoint, for instance, borrows the word ‘slides’ from projection lexicon.

The aim of this conference is to investigate the issues concerning the intermedial transposition operated by projection in order to understand what projection does to the image, how it is used, perceived and its received. These questions will be investigated through a long historical period (from the eighteenth century to today), to build a cultural history of the projection including the paradigm, rather than considering the projection as a pre-cinematographic phenomenon. By tracing the genealogy of techniques dedicated to the exhibition of images, the conference will outline the anchoring of the transition between a print culture and a screen culture.

The expected contributions will explore various aspects of the projection and its history through specific cases (exhibitions, art history lectures, etc.), narratives or representation of projections (advertising posters, scenes in novels, etc.), specific relationships between projection and print, photography or soundscape, technical
developments (Kodachrome, e-readers, etc.) or metaphorical uses of the word ‘projection’ (psychoanalysis, etc.).

Organised by Joanne Lalonde, Vincent Lavoie and Érika Wicky (Department of Art History, UQAM), this conference is held under the auspices of RADICAL (Repères pour une articulation des dimensions culturelles, artistiques et littéraires de l’imaginaire contemporain), a component of FIGURA, centre de recherche sur le texte et l’imaginaire. A 300-word proposal in English or in French, with a brief CV, should be submitted by the 6th January 2014 to wicky.erika@uqam.ca.

From the Call for Papers:

Special Issue of Studi di Memofonte in Tribute to Francis Haskell
Proposals due by 24 November 2013

Fondazione Memofonte is planning a tribute to the memory of Francis Haskell in the form of a special issue of its journal Studi di Memofonte, no. 12, due to appear by July 2014. Titles of proposed papers, together with an abstract of not more than 2000 characters (including spaces) and a CV not exceeding 1000 characters (including spaces), should be e-mailed to the journal’s editors (info@memofonte.it) by 24 November 2013.

Where an abstract is accepted, the editorial board will consider the complete paper by 28 February 2014. This should not exceed 40,000 characters, including spaces, and may be accompanied by up to 10 images at a resolution of 300 dpi. If protected by copyright, permission to reproduce images should already have been obtained.

The special issue will be divided into sections corresponding to the following subject areas:
1. Concerning Patrons and Painters: Patronage, collecting and the history of exhibitions.
2. Concerning Rediscoveries in Art: The visual, historiographical and literary reception of artworks and aspects of the history of taste.
3. Concerning Taste and the Antique: The rediscovery and reception of the antique and antiquarian studies.
4. Concerning History and its Images: The uses of images in historiographical research.

The editorial board, which will include specially invited experts, will give preference to those papers most closely reflecting the methodology adopted in Francis Haskell’s own writings, with their exemplary elucidation of the multidisciplinary links between the history of social institutions and that of the appreciation and interpretation of artworks.

As noted at BARS:

VISTAS is an acronym for Virtual Images of Sculpture in Time And Space. Founded by Hester Diamond, Jon Landau and Fabrizio Moretti, VISTAS will subsidize the publication of new scholarship on European sculpture of the late Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque periods, 1250–1780.

VISTAS will combine old and new. We will marry the most innovative technology to the highest standard of traditional book publishing — all in support of sound, new scholarship. We will produce dual publications, one part in print, the other online. Each will supplement the other, not copy it.

Our target audience is the intelligent lay reader in addition to curators, art historians and students. One of our goals is to provide an enjoyable experience for the reader.

Each book will be paired with an online publication with remarkable digital graphic material. The text will be enhanced by very high-resolution photography and — most exceptionally — 360º photography, panoramic photography and video.

Our Editorial Board will approve books for publication by VISTAS. The books in print will be scholarly, well written and well produced. VISTAS’ books will be readable. VISTAS will emphasize serious original scholarship about visually significant works of art, rather than documents or theoretical analyses. The website will provide a more vivid experience of the sculpture than we have ever had before.

From CODART:

Arts of Display
Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art / Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 65

Proposals due by 1 January 2014

Works of art and their display have always been closely connected. Most art was and is created for exhibition in one form or another, and the history of the display of an art object often forms a meaningful part of its story. Exhibiting art involves strategies, techniques and devices that have much in common with other fields of presentation: theatre, advertising, interior design, book design, the display of goods in shops and shop windows.  These display strategies use techniques that are partly culturally determined, and partly rooted in a biological determination of human perception, as Gombrich, among others, made clear. How we perceive patterns, prefer symmetry and note differences of scale between an object and its surroundings all have a direct bearing on the way art was and is shown. Moreover, changing modes of display and viewing conditions can create new narratives and can even lead to active or performative relationships between the displayed object and the viewer, resulting in playful (or sometimes aggressive) interactions. Finally, rules of decorum and rhetoric often play an important role in the art of display. (more…)

Reshaping Sacred Space: Liturgy, Patronage and Design in Church Interiors
University of St. Andrews, 14 June 2014

Proposals due by 31 December 2013

The conference seeks to present original ideas relating to the design and construction of churches in Catholic Europe between 1500 and 1750. New religious demands, arising out of the Counter-Reformation, led to innovations in both the form and function of the interior space of churches. This conference will provide a forum for presentations on these changes, and for discussion among scholars engaged in similar research. We will consider proposals that may include but are not limited to:
· an art-historical or architectural analysis of the interior of a church built or renovated during this period, in both public and private contexts
· a study of church furnishings (e.g. altarpieces, pulpits, monuments, choir stalls), and their location and function within the church
· an investigation of patronage, both religious and secular; how the patron or donor may have influenced the construction of the church or parts of its interior.

Our plenary speaker will be Dr Martin Gaier, University of Basel, Switzerland. Representatives from the ‘Open-Access and Online Journal System’ of the University of St Andrews Library and the Scholarly Communications team at the University of Edinburgh will give brief presentations on the constantly changing state of online and open-access publishing. This will be followed by a workshop discussion of the implications of open-access for post-graduate scholarship. All students and staff are welcome.

The proceedings of this conference will be published in a special edition of North Street Review: Arts and Visual Culture, the postgraduate art history journal of the University of St Andrews. Submissions will follow the formatting and image copyright guidelines set by the North Street Review, as detailed here. We will also explore the possibility of forming a session, with presenters from our conference, to participate in the 2015 annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America in Berlin. (Submissions for the 2015 RSA conference will not be open until spring 2014, so we cannot confirm this until then.)

Papers will be 20-minutes long, with 10 minutes for discussion afterwards. To submit a proposal, send an abstract of your paper (ca. 300 words) and a CV by 31 December 2013 to: rssconf@st-andrews.ac.uk

Meredith Crosbie and Emanuela Vai,
Conference Organisers and PhD Candidates at the University of St Andrews

From the Italian Art Society:

2014 American Association for Italian Studies Conference
University of Zürich, 23–25 May 2014

Proposals due by 5 December 2013

For the first time, the American Association for Italian Studies (AAIS) will hold its annual conference outside of North America and Italy. Switzerland is an ideal location: it is the only country, outside of the peninsula, where Italian is the national language. The Italian Art Society is glad to sponsor three sessions: two sessions treating photography and one treating early modern architecture. We welcome your paper abstracts.

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Maestri ticinesi, magistri grigioni: Swiss-Italian Architects and Craftsmen in Early Modern Europe
Organizer: Susan Klaiber (Winterthur, Switzerland)

The Italian-speaking regions of early modern Switzerland exported significant expertise in the building trades throughout Europe. These émigré architects, builders, and craftsmen such as stuccatori worked for courts, monasteries, and other patrons in present-day Germany, Austria, Italy, Poland, Czech Republic and elsewhere. While often well-studied by scholars in both Switzerland and the respective regions of migration, international awareness of such careers generally remains low, with notable exceptions such as Francesco Borromini.  Taken
collectively, though, Swiss-Italian architects and craftsmen played important roles as agents of cultural transfer with their itinerant careers in early modern Europe. These figures include Domenico Fontana, Carlo Maderno, and Carlo Fontana in Rome; Enrico Zuccalli and Giovanni Antonio Viscardi in Bavaria; and Giovanni Battista Quadro in Poland.

The scholarly literature on such men is as rich yet dispersed as the architectural culture they embody. Representative publications include, in Italian, the exhibition catalogue Il giovane Borromini (1999), and books by Tommaso Manfredi (2008) and Marcello Fagiolo (ed., 2008); works in German by Sabine Heym (1984), Max Pfister (1991), and Michael Kühlenthal (ed., 1997); or several publications in Polish and Italian by Mariusz Karpowicz. Many of these studies are only available regionally. This session aims to break down these geographic and linguistic barriers and move toward a comprehensive view of  the work of the ‘maestri ticinesi’ and ‘magistri grigioni’ with a comparative transnational approach. The session welcomes papers on any aspect of Swiss-Italian involvement in the building trades anywhere in Europe, ca. 1400-1800. Preference will be given to papers highlighting ties of workers (dynasties, networks), designs, techniques, or materials to Switzerland. Please send a 300-word abstract and a short bio to Susan Klaiber, sklaiber@bluewin.ch, by December 5, 2013.

From the Call for Papers:

The English Urban Renaissance Revisited
A Centre for Urban History, University of Leicester, 18 July 2014

Proposals due by 1 February 2014

In 1989 OUP published Peter Borsay’s The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town 1600–1770. 2014 will therefore mark the 25th anniversary of this seminal text in urban cultural history. It inspired a new generation of researchers and developed some of the key themes that have since dominated the historiography of the ‘long’ eighteenth century:

•    importance of provincial towns in the long eighteenth century as hubs of economic, cultural and political activity
•    the strength and vitality of urban culture beyond the metropolis
•    the transformation of the provincial urban townscape

This symposium is an opportunity to celebrate the anniversary and to:

•    reflect on how eighteenth-century urban and cultural history has developed since 1989
•    consider ‘urban renaissances’ in other European countries
•    discuss new directions and possible collaborations

Papers (of 20 minutes’ duration) are invited on topics relevant to these themes. Please email proposals (300 words max) plus a brief biographical statement (60 words max) to John Hinks jh241@le.ac.uk and Roey Sweet rhs4@le.ac.uk by 1 February 2014.

Objects, Families, Homes: British Material Cultures in Global Contexts
University College London, 11–12 July 2014

Proposals due by 15 December 2013

Proposals are invited for 20-minute papers for Objects, Families, Homes: British Material Cultures in Global Contexts, an end-of-project conference organized by UCL History’s Leverhulme Trust-funded East India Company at Home team. Confirmed keynote speakers include Deborah Cohen, Professor of Modern British and European History at Northwestern University and author of Household Gods: The British and their Possessions (2006) and Family Secrets (2013), in dialogue with Marietta Crichton-Stuart, a descendant of the Marquess of Bute, who has researched how Margaret Bruce designed and furnished Falkland House in Fife in the 1830s and 1840s.

Since 2011, The East India Company at Home project has focused on country houses—and the families and objects that inhabited them—to explore how British material culture developed in a global context during the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The project’s goals have been twofold. First, we have sought to illuminate the broad-ranging ways in which the activities of the English East India Company shaped elite material cultures in Britain—and by doing so, shaped British identities in the Georgian and Victorian periods, and beyond. Second, we have sought to develop new ways of connecting diverse communities of historical researchers (archivists, curators, family historians, freelance historians, local historians, stately home volunteers and university-based historians) and in so doing have weaved otherwise dispersed studies into a transnational material narrative. At the same time, by disseminating research findings through our website we have made them available on an open-access basis.

For the end of project conference we welcome papers from all researchers engaged in investigating the themes and methodologies compatible with the core subjects of The East India Company at Home. These include:

· Distance, longing and return in the imperial family
· Race, gender, class and age: negotiating identities across imperial spaces
· Narratives of empire: colonial collecting, arrangement and display
· Meaningful objects: the role of Asian goods in British material culture
· Making histories: collaboration and engagement across historical research communities
· Building homes and houses in global contexts: research, interpretation and display

Individual papers or whole panel proposals are invited. Please send a 200-word abstract and a brief biographical note (for each paper) to EICathome@ucl.ac.uk by 15 December 2013. Please note in your email whether your paper is part of a panel or an individual submission: if proposing a full panel, indicate in 1–3 sentences its title and overarching theme (in addition to providing abstracts of each paper). The selection committee will notify applicants on its decisions by 31 January 2014. Further details about the conference can be found at http://www.blogs.ucl.ac.uk/eicah. Any queries about the call for papers or conference please email EICathome@ucl.ac.uk. It is hoped that a small number of bursaries will be available for the students and the unwaged.