Conference | The Hurt(ful) Body before Diderot: Pain and Suffering
From the conference website:
The Hurt(ful) Body before Diderot: Pain and Suffering
in Early Modern Performance and the Visual Arts, c. 1600–1790
Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts, Brusssels, 21–22 November 2013
On the occasion of Diderot’s three-hundredth birthday, the present conference invites papers by historians of both visual arts and performance arts, to address the hurt and hurt-causing body in early modern and eighteenth-century visual culture. The point is better to address spectacles of pain and suffering before Diderot, whereby before is to be understood both physically and chronologically, in terms of images he saw and those that belong to a wider Ancien Régime visual and performance culture.
Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century medicine, philosophy and works of fiction treated pain and suffering as contents of consciousness. Hurt and grief fixed the self in a state of disaffection and refusal, as opposed to the appetites or ‘sociable’ affects of love or admiration. During this time, the hurt body found itself at the apex of art theory (from Lomazzo to Le Brun), informing academic aesthetics, while the genre of tragedy, climaxing in the plays of Racine, was shaping the image of the actor’s craft. Images of saintly suffering were a fixture of post-Trentian Catholic life, but after 1600 they were incrementally visible in both civic theatre and popular imagery as well as aristocratic collecting. All of this culminates in the writings of Diderot, who was an assiduous admirer of spectacles of grief, pest scenes and other sujets de fracas. Such affinities, as present in his criticism as his commentaries on the tableau and the self-possessed actor, seem now more difficult to place, in part because so little is known of the rationale of the spectacle of hurt in the 150 years that preceded him, especially in relation to its socio-historical and performative context. Moreover, accounts of the period tend to segregate semiotic or iconographical developments (explaining continued interest for the Le Brun’s Traité de Passions and its plates) from historical clues that speak to the peculiar positionality of bodies in and of hurt. The disjunctive image of pain and suffering is today too often regarded as simply ‘emotive’, an expression like any other for artists and actors to master.
Through the impact of scholars like Jonathan Sawday, Erika Fischer-Lichte and Amelia Jones, present-day historians are familiar with problems of performativity and ephemerality, of body presence and the spectator’s participative witnessing and intervention. The hurt body can accommodate new diverse and perceptive approaches of the early modern body, as a body in withdrawal, a ‘communicative’ body in flux, or a body split in its desire to escape alterity and a corporeal ‘prison’. Time seems ripe for a self-standing history of the hurt(ful) body, illustrated through staging practices as well as material images (paintings, sculptures, prints), and addressing practices of making, acting and viewing; censorship and divulgation; collecting, directing and interpreting. The conference invites papers that revisit historical forms, practices and pressures of the hurt body, from the staging of blood and the representations of Hercules’ self-immolation to distressed audiences. Maintaining an interdisciplinary focus, speakers might address imaginaries of the hurt body recovered through stage praxis, visual representation and dramatic text. It welcomes papers exploring archival sources documenting (theatrical) communication between audiences and ‘hurt bodies’, or exploring public and elite spaces of performance, urban events and exhibition sites where Diderot and Ancien Régime audiences experienced such encounters.
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T H U R S D A Y , 2 1 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 3
9.30 Registration and coffee/tea
10:00 Welcome and introduction by Karel Vanhaesebrouck (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Tomas Macsotay (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) and Kornee van der Haven (Ghent University)
10:30 Keynote Lecture by Jonathan Sawday (Saint Louis University), Three forms of Renaissance Pain: Michel de Montaigne, John Donne, and Robert Burton
11:30 Coffee/tea break
12:00 Session 1: Discourses of Pain I
• Jürgen Pieters (Ghent University), Hurtful Hamlet: The tragedy of consolation
• Christel Stalpaert (Ghent University), We don’t even know what the hurt(ful) body is capable of: Some reflections on Spinoza and the corporeal turn
13:30 Lunch
14:30 Session 2: Discourses of Pain II
• Frans-Willem Korsten (Leiden University), How Injustice Hurts: Physical Pain, Immaterial Grounds and the Cause of Justice
• Inger Leemans (VU Amsterdam), Clashing Bodies: The physicality of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, 1650–1750
16:00 Coffee/tea break
16:30 Session 3: Acting the Victim
• Stijn Bussels (Leiden University), ‘No knife, no sting is sharper, than this feeling that cuts through the heart’: Performing Pathos in Vondel’s Brethren (1641)
• Charlotte Bouteille-Meister (Paris X-Nanterre), “Flamme qui m’est un doux zéphire, / Parmi l’ardeur de mon martyre” (Céciliade, 1606): Does the martyr’s ambiguous suffering allow any pathetic response?
• Bram Van Oostveldt (University of Amsterdam), Flying, diving and dying bodies: Corneille’s pièces à machines between the marvelous and the sublime
F R I D A Y , 2 2 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 3
10:00 Keynote Lecture by Christian Biet (Paris X-Nanterre), Bloody suffering, performed suffering and recited suffering in the French 17th and 18th centuries: Spectacle and text
11:00 Coffee/tea break
11:30 Session 4: The Visual Culture of Hurt
• Koen Jonckheere (Ghent University), The meaning of the pose: Hurting the divine body in an age of Iconoclasm
• Jetze Touber (Ghent University), Engineering empathy: Inventions of martyrology in the Confessional Age
13:00 Lunch
14:00 Roundtable Discussion: Early Modern Theatricality and the Hurt Body
15:00 Coffee/tea break
16:00 Session 5: Enlightenment Purifications
• Aris Sarafianos (University of Ioannina), Unable to bear the light: Sore eyes, sensory deprivation, multi-media shows and extraordinary cures in late eighteenth-century Britain
• Tomas Macsotay (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), A technology of audience response: Sightlessness, disorientation and corporeal Pathos in the Paris Academy, 1700–1760
17:30 Concluding remarks
Study Day | Art, Animals, and Politics at Knowsley Hall
From the conference programme:
Art, Animals, and Politics: Knowsley and The Earls of Derby
Knowsley Hall, Merseyside, 9 October 2013
Historians, art historians and natural historians will be presenting exciting new research on three of the outstanding legacies of the Earls of Derby and the Stanley family: the art collection, the natural history library and the political archive. Emphasis will be also be placed on the family’s considerable historical and social influence in the north-west of England, as well as their political impact on the national and international stages, notably throughout the 18th and 19th centuries and the first half of the 20th century. For more information or to register, please email events@knowsley.com.
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Keynote Address
David Starkey, The political and cultural significance of Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby
Session 1: Art
· Elspeth Graham (Liverpool John Moores University), The Shakespearean stage: Prescot, Lathom and Knowsley
· Richard Stephens (University of York), The 10th Earl as a collector of old master paintings and patron of the arts at Knowsley during the 1720s
· Jonny Yarker (Trinity College, University of Cambridge), Hamlet Winstanley as an artist, copyist and art-agent for the 10th Earl
· Xanthe Brooke (Walker Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool), Aspects of the old master picture collection at Knowsley during the 18th century
· Gill Perry (Open University), The image of Eliza Farren, Georgian comic actress and Countess of Derby
Session 2: Animals and Edward Lear
· David Attenborough, Edward Lear’s natural history watercolours and prints for the 13th Earl
· Colin Harrison (Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford), Edward Lear’s landscape watercolours in the Derby Collection
Session 3: Politics
· Angus Hawkins (University of Oxford), The forgotten Prime Minister: The 14th Earl Douglas Hurd, Lord Hurd of Westwell: The 15th Earl’s career as Foreign Secretary
· Bendor Grosvenor (Philip Mould Ltd), The Eastern Question and the 15th Earl’s foreign policy
· Jennifer Davey (University of East Anglia), The Invisible Politician: The political career of the 15th Countess of Derby
Symposium Bringing Art into Being in the Early Modern Period
From The Courtauld:
Bringing Art into Being in the Early Modern Period
The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 26 October 2013
Organised by Anya Matthews and Giulia Martina Weston
Complex narratives spanning months, years or even decades exist behind the single bracketed date attached to artworks to indicate their moment of execution or completion. This one-day symposium will explore the ‘ante-natal’ development of early modern art from its conception to its ‘quickening’ and eventual birth. The process fascinated contemporary theorists and continues to raise questions for modern art historians. For example, when was an artistic project considered finished or unfinished? What terms were used to indicate the various stages of bringing an artwork into being, and what implications did these terms have for authorship and authenticity? The creation of art is not the work of a moment or achieved at a single stroke; it involves a series of transpositions from idea to study or plan, from sketch to painting, from plan to building and so on. How did early modern art reflect on the process of its own making?
Ticket/entry details: £16 (£11 students, Courtauld staff/students and concessions). Book online. Or send a cheque made payable to ‘The Courtauld Institute of Art’ to: Research Forum Events Co-ordinator, Research Forum, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN, stating ‘Fifth Early Modern Symposium’. For further information, email ResearchForumEvents@courtauld.ac.uk.
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P R O G R A M M E
9.00 Registration
9.30 Introduction – Anya Matthews and Giulia Martina Weston (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
9.40 Session 1: Inspiration and the Artistic Idea
• Nikola Piperkov (Université Paris I Panthéon, Sorbonne), V(isita) I(nteriora) T(errae) R(ectificando) I(nvenies) O(ccultum) L(apidem): Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s and Adriaen de Vries’ Mercury and Psyche, an Allegory of Artistic and Alchemical Creation
• Anne Bloemacher (University of Münster), Raphael on Invention: Work in Progress Before the Materialisation of the Object
• James Hall (Independent art historian and critic), Sex and Genius: Raphael and Titian as Competing Models of the Creative Artist
• Vasco Nuno Figueiredo de Medeiros (University of Lisbon), Between Heuresis and Mimesis: Artistic Science and the Iconopoiesis as Mediators of the Creative Process
11.30 Coffee and Tea Break
12.00 Session 2: Breaking Boundaries
• Joris Van Gastel (University of Warwick), The Sculptor’s Drawing: An Embodied Approach
• Sefy Hendler (Tel Aviv University): A Paragone in Progress: Parmigianino Recto-Verso Study for Moses
• Claire Gapper (Independent architectural historian), Designing and Executing Decorative Plasterwork in the 16th and 17th Centuries
13.20 Break for lunch
14.20 Session 3: Out of Time
• Carolin Behrmann (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence -Max-Planck-Institut), In/action: The Non-Finito as Sculptural ‘Actio’
• David Gilks (Queen Mary, University of London), An Impossible Monument: Bringing the French Pantheon Into Being, 1791-94
• Foteini Vlachou (University of Lisbon), The ‘Trial’ and Tribulations of Sequeira’s Allegory of Junot Protecting
the City of Lisbon
• Letha Chien (University of California, Berkeley), The Frustrated Ongoing Saga of the Decorations at the Scuola Grande di San Marco
16.10 Coffee and tea break
16.40 Session 4: Artistic Experimentalism: Practices and Methods
• Kamini Vellodi (Independent art historian and practicing artist), Tintoretto’s Stage-Method: A Modern Constructivism
• Carrie Anderson (Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston), Translation and Translocation: Rethinking the Materiality of the ‘Old Indies’ Series
• Stefan Albl (University of Vienna), From Drawing to Painting: The Genesis of Pietro Testa’s Adorations of
the Shepherds and Some Considerations on His Working Methods
18.00 Reception
Symposium | Courtly Rococo in Thuringia
As noted at the Portal Kunstgeschichte:
Höfisches Rokoko in Thüringen: Kunst um Krohne und Pedrozzi
Schloss Heidecksburg, Rudolstadt, Thüringen, 25–26 October 2013
Registration due by 8 October 2013
Der Blickpunkt des Symposiums richtet sich vornehmlich auf das architektonische Werk Gottfried Heinrich Krohnes (1703–1756) und Giovanni Battista Pedrozzis (1711–1778), das den Höhepunkt des Rokoko in Thüringen markiert. Die zu untersuchenden Architekturen und Ausstattungen werden dabei insbesondere nach den zugrunde liegenden Strategien und Intentionen herrschaftlicher Repräsentation befragt.
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F R E I T A G , 2 5 O K T O B E R 2 0 1 3
10.00 Begrüßung durch die Veranstalter Helmut-Eberhard Paulus und Peter-Michael Hahn
10.15 Helmut-Eberhard Paulus (Stiftung Thüringer Schlösser und Gärten), Einführung I: Rokoko – Stil oder Epoche?
10.30 Peter-Michael Hahn (Universität Potsdam), Einführung II: Kulturtransfer und Modernität. Ein altes Herzogtum rüstet auf
10.45 Ernst Badstübner (Berlin), Krohne und seine Auftraggeber in Thüringen
11.15 Heiko Laß (Hannover), Krohnes Lustschlosstypus – Dornburg und die Folgen
11.45 Vinzenz Czech (Universität Potsdam), Die Heidecksburg und das Zeremoniell am Rudolstädter Fürstenhof im 18. Jahrhundert
12.15 Diskussion
12.30 Mittagspause
13.30 Lutz Unbehaun (Thüringer Landesmuseum Heidecksburg), Führung durch Schloss Heidecksburg zum Thema „Schloss Heidecksburg als Zeichen und Symbol territorial-herrschaftlicher Macht in Thüringen“
14.45 Wolfgang Jahn (Ebermannstadt), Pedrozzi in seiner Bayreuther Zeit
15.15 Verena Friedrich (Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg), Rocaillen für Rudolstadt. Der Rokokostuck Giovanni Battista Pedrozzis auf Schloss Heidecksburg in Rudolstadt
15.45 Diskussion
16.15 Kaffeepause
16.45 Eva Krems (Universität Münster), Raumstrukturen im höfischen Rokoko
17.15 Katja Heitmann (Philipps-Universität Marburg), A la mode – Raumkunst des Rokoko am Rudolstädter Hof
17.45 Abschlussdiskussion
18.30 Festvortrag Ulrich Schütte (Philipps-Universität Marburg) „Künstler und Architekten bey Hofe“
S A M S T A G , 2 6 O K T O B E R 2 0 1 3
8.30 Abfahrt nach Dornburg
10.00 Führung durch das Rokokoschloss Dornburg
11.45 Abfahrt nach Jena
12.30 Mittagessen im Schwarzen Bären, Jena
14.00 Weiterfahrt nach Molsdorf
15.30 Führung durch Schloss Molsdorf
16.30 Rückfahrt nach Rudolstadt Ankunft gegen 17.30 Uhr
Exhibition | American Adversaries: West and Copley
Press release (19 June 2013) from the MFAH:
American Adversaries: West and Copley in a Transatlantic World
Museum of Fine Art, Houston, 6 October 2013 — 5 January 2014
This October, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, presents American Adversaries: West and Copley in a Transatlantic World, an extensive exhibition charting the rise and spectacular success of contemporary history painting in the 18th century through the lives and experiences of two colonial American innovators: Benjamin West (1738–1820) and John Singleton Copley (1738–1815). West and Copley—initially friends and eventually bitter rivals—gained phenomenal fame from their theatrical paintings that romanticized current events and captured the imaginations of the art-viewing public. American Adversaries is on view from October 6, 2013, to January 20, 2014.
American Adversaries: West and Copley in a Transatlantic World traces the ambitious, competitive and highly successful lives of West and Copley through oil paintings, works on paper, sculptures and artifacts. At the core of the exhibition are two paintings that catapulted West and Copley into international fame: West’s The Death of General Wolfe (1770; 1779 version) and Copley’s Watson and the Shark (1778). The paintings have not been presented together in more than 60 years and never before in this context.
“This is a remarkable opportunity for Museum visitors to see in the same exhibition these two iconic paintings in the history of art, The Death of General Wolfe and Watson and the Shark,” said MFAH director Gary Tinterow. “Painted nearly 250 years ago and considered strikingly modern in their day, the issues addressed with such dramatic flair have the power to still resonate with viewers today.”
“Long before Jackson Pollock drew international acclaim for his innovative Abstract Expressionist paintings in the mid-twentieth century, West and Copley held center stage in the international art world of the 18th century centered in London,” said Emily Ballew Neff, MFAH curator of American painting and sculpture. “The exhibition addresses how it is that these two colonial artists on the margins of empire come to have such phenomenal success.”
Both born in the same year (1738) in the American Colonies of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley crossed the Atlantic in pursuit of international fame and fortune. London, the cultural and political capital of the empire, attracted and swayed both artists to stay to develop their careers as history painters and neither returned home to America.
West and Copley established a new genre of painting known as contemporary history painting with The Death of General Wolfe and Watson and the Shark. These dramatic large-scale canvases featured compositional elements derived from antique and Old Master sources, yet instead of portraying biblical, mythological or literary heroes, they depicted real people from contemporary life. This exhibition examines these paintings and the period in which they were painted to animate a past that is unfamiliar to many today. It restores the dynamism and modernity of this particular artistic moment as it happened, rather than through the lens of what we later have come to know. These works point to a world informed by the powerful agency of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Confederacy in the Great Lakes region; the scientific and imperial exploration of the seas; the rising role of the media and its relationship to history painting; and the stagecraft involved in managing the perception of a successful artistic career in 18th-century London. In the exhibition, the two key paintings are joined by works of art from all over the Atlantic World, which give them greater context and meaning.
A fully illustrated catalogue, published by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, distributed by Yale University Press and designed by Studio Blue, accompanies the exhibition and features essays by international scholars. The catalogue for this exhibition receives generous funding from Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund.
American Adversaries: West and Copley in a Transatlantic World is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. An indemnity has been granted by the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. The exhibition is made possible through support from the Terra Foundation for American Art.
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38th Annual Ruth K. Shartle Symposium
American Adversaries: West and Copley in a Transatlantic World
Museum of Fine Art, Houston, 5 October 2013
This one-day symposium includes talks by prominent scholars addressing themes developed in the exhibition. Following the symposium, guests are invited to a reception and a viewing of the exhibition. More information is forthcoming. Visit www.mfah.org/calendar for updates.
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From Yale UP:
Emily Ballew Neff with Kaylin H. Weber, American Adversaries: West and Copley in a Transatlantic World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-0300196467, $75.
American artists and innovators Benjamin West (1738–1820) and John Singleton Copley (1738–1815) changed the way history was recorded in the 18th century and became America’s first transatlantic art superstars. Initially friends but eventually bitter rivals, the artists painted contemporary events as they happened, illustrating the transformation of imperial power through diplomacy between British Americans and the Iroquois, and through transatlantic trade, exploration, and the natural history of the West Indies.
Focusing on two iconic works, West’s The Death of General Wolfe (1770) and Copley’s Watson and the Shark (1778), American Adversaries charts the rise of contemporary history painting, and offers a compelling examination of American history and New World exploration. Featuring more than two hundred color reproductions of paintings, works on paper, and objects that informed the artists, this handsome volume also includes essays that shed new light on, among other subjects, West and Copley within the context of the Royal Academy and the use of Western and Native American objects in cultural diplomacy.
Emily Ballew Neff is curator of American painting and sculpture, and Kaylin H. Weber is assistant curator of American painting and sculpture, both at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Symposium | Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade
From The Met:
Symposium: Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500–1800
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 4 October 2013
International scholars explore the impact of the burgeoning textile trade in the early modern period, focusing on specific aspects of how trade textiles influenced global economics, social history, and design aesthetics. The program is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500–1800 and made possible in part by the Clara Lloyd-Smith Weber Fund. Free with museum admission.
P R O G R A M
10:30 Amelia Peck — Welcome and Introduction
10:45 Louise Mackie — Ottoman Turkish Silks in Italian and Russian Trade and Diplomacy
11:15 Rudi Matthee — The Dutch East India Company and Asian Raw Silk: From Iran to Bengal via China and Japan
11:45 Jessica Hallett — Textiles, Trade, and Taste: Portugal and Asia in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
12:15 Masako Yoshida — The International Expansion of Textiles with Flower, Bird, and Animal Designs
12:45 Break for lunch
2:30 Ebeltje Hartkamp-Jonxis — Aspects of the Luxury Trade in Indian Chintzes for the Dutch Market
3:00 John Styles — East Meets West: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century London
3:30 Colleen E. Kriger — Lost and Found in Translation: West African Textiles and Atlantic Trade
4:00 Donna Pierce — Popular and Prevalent: The Impact of Asian Textiles on Colonial Mexico
Conference | The Lives of Objects
From the conference website:
The Lives of Objects
Wolfson College, Oxford, 20–22 September 2013
The relationship between life-writing and objects marks a growing trend in biographical studies. In the first major international conference on the subject, the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing (OCLW) will bring together scholars and curators at the forefront of research in this dynamic area. The conference’s premise is that objects can have lives of their own. Object biographies raise important methodological issues relating to life-writing, and interrogate the fundamental concept of ‘life’. Object biographies also reveal the importance of life-writing to curatorship: the conference will foreground research questions relating to museum management.
The application of life-writing to objects lies at the heart of many recently published biographies, memoirs and histories, including Neil MacGregor’s A History of the World in 100 Objects (2010), Edmund De Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance (2010), Steven Connor’s Paraphernalia: The Curious Lives of Magical Things (2011), Mark Kurlansky’s Salt: A World History (2003) and Lorraine Daston’s Biographies of Scientific Objects (2000). Biographies of objects raise important methodological issues pertinent to life-writing, regarding narrative, structure and chronology; the representation of change and improvement; and the influence of objects in human lives, communities and material history. The study of ‘object biographies’ continues to generate fruitful areas of academic research, including Bill Brown’s work on ‘thing theory’ (2001); Chris Gosden and Yvonne Marshall’s 1999 study of ‘the cultural biography of objects’ (in relation to archaeology); and explorations of value and exchange of objects in cultural and material history, such as the essays included in Arjun Appadurai’s edited volume The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (1986). OCLW’s Conference on The Lives of Objects will bring together scholars and curators at the forefront of research into particular aspects of the theme, and will provide an environment in which fruitful interdisciplinary conversations will occur. Over the three-day event, delegates will enjoy:
• the History Faculty Plenary Lecture by Neil Macgregor (director of the British Museum and author of History of the World in 100 Objects); the English Faculty Plenary Lecture by Jenny Uglow (author of The Lunar Men and The Pinecone); and the John Fell Plenary Lecture by Edmund De Waal (author of The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance)
• over fifty 20-minute papers from a wide range of backgrounds. Papers will offer biographical accounts of particular objects (including, but not limited to, portraits, sculpture, scientific instruments, archaeological finds, domestic artefacts and items of clothing); papers reflecting on the methodology of object biographies or outline existent projects concerned with objects’ lives; papers considering the influence of life-writing on material history and/or archaeology; papers exploring the relationship between curating and auto/biography; the history of the book; the history of museums; and further facets of the conference theme
• an informal workshop, in which delegates will present and discuss the lives and meanings of individual objects
• tours of the Ashmolean Museum, the Pitt-Rivers Museum and the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, with talks by keepers and museum-directors about objects from the museum’s collections
• special conference sessions on ‘The Letter as a Material Object’ by Professor Hugh Haughton (University of York) and ‘The Private (and Public) Life of an Opera Aria’ by Professor Michael Burden (University of Oxford)
• opportunities to socialise with scholars working on this area during the conference, including at conference meals, drinks receptions, a gala conference dinner and other social events
The complete programme is available for download as a PDF file.
Conference | Kent Symposium: Re–presenting Kent
From the Bard Graduate Center:
Kent Symposium: Re–presenting Kent
Bard Graduate Center, New York City, 7 October 2013
William Aikman, Portrait of William Kent, ca. 1723–25 (London: National Portrait Gallery)
Organized in conjunction with the exhibition William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain, on view at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery (September 19, 2013 through February 16, 2014) and the Victoria & Albert Museum (March 22 through July 13, 2014), this international symposium will bring together scholars and curators to examine the life and career of one of the most influential designers of eighteenth-century Britain.
The symposium and related exhibition will explore Kent’s art over three decades (1719–1748)—a period when Britain was defining itself as a new nation and overtaking France as the leading world power. Kent’s versatility and artistic inventiveness set the style of his age and asserted the status of the modern British artist at a time when most patrons and collectors looked to Italy for their art and design. Kent devised a style that catered to the alumni of the Italian Grand Tour and recreated the splendors of Roman palazzi.
The symposium is free. It will take place in the Lecture Hall at 38 West 86th Street, between Columbus Ave. & Central Park West, in New York City. RSVP is required. Please contact academicevents@bgc.bard.edu. Since our Lecture Hall can accommodate only a limited number of people, please come early to assure yourself a seat.
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P R E S E N T A T I O N S
Susan Weber (Founder and Director, Bard Graduate Center), “William Kent: A Historiography”
Julius Bryant (Keeper of Word and Image, Victoria & Albert Museum), “Exhibiting William Kent: Curation and Interrogation”
David Watkin (History of Architecture, University of Cambridge), “Changing Attitudes to Kent from Sustained Hostility to Acceptance in the Twentieth Century”
Matthew Hirst (Arts & Historic Collections, the Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth), “A Country House Repository of Design: William Kent in the Devonshire Collection”
David Jacques (Independent Scholar, Sugnall Hall), “William Kent and the Landscape Garden”
Conference | The Enlightened Gaze in Eighteenth-Century Russia
From the symposium program:
The Enlightened Gaze: Gender, Power, and Visual Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia
Georgia Museum of Art, The University of Georgia at Athens, 1–2 November 2013
Round Box with Catherine II as Minerva, Paris, 1781–82, gold
verre eglomisé, 7.3 cm (Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens)
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Organized in conjunction with the exhibition Exuberance of Meaning: The Art Patronage of Catherine the Great, Georgia Museum of Art (21 September 2013 – 5 January 2014). This exhibition’s assembly of imperial portraits, liturgical vessels, icons, books, and dinnerware provides insight into Russian visual culture from the second half of the eighteenth century and illustrates the complex dynamic between the collecting of historical art and the commissioning of new works of art. Friday evening’s lecture and all sessions of the symposium are open to the public and will take place at the M. Smith-Griffith Auditorium, Georgia Museum of Art, 90 Carlton Street, Athens, GA 30602.
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F R I D A Y , 1 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 3
6:00 The Shouky Shaheen Lecture by Priscilla Roosevelt (Princeton), “Serfdom and Splendor: The World of the Russian Country Estate”
7:00 Reception at the Georgia Museum of Art
S A T U R D A Y , 2 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 3
8:00 Coffee and pastries
8:30 Opening remarks by William U. Eiland
9:00 Session One: Gender and Power in Eighteenth-Century Europe
Presenter and moderator, Alisa Luxenberg (UGA, School of Art)
• Marcus Levitt (University of South California), “On Catherine’s Greatness”
• Michael Yonan (University of Missouri), “How to Be an Empress in Eighteenth-Century Europe: Maria Theresa of Austria and Catherine the Great Compared”
• Emily Everhart (UGA, School of Art), “Enduring Friendship: The Legacy of the Marquise de Pompadour at the Château de Bellevue”
10:30 Coffee break
11:00 Session Two: Verbal and Pictorial Texts
Presenter and moderator, Priscilla Roosevelt
• Jennifer Palmer (UGA, Department of History), “Picturing Slavery in the Eighteenth Century”
• Elizaveta Renne (State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg), “A ‘Toy’ Castle: The Whim of an Ambitious Owner, Chesme Palace and Its Portrait Gallery”
• Edward Kasinec (Columbia University, Harriman Institute), “Two ‘Royal Doors’ from the Reign of Catherine the Great and Their Twentieth-Century Fate”
12:30 Discussion
1:00 Lunch and gallery tour
2:30 Session Three: Intentions and Happy Accidents: The Total Design Environment
Presenter and moderator, Shelley Zuraw (UGA, School of Art)
• Mimi Hellman (Skidmore College), “Lost in Decoration: Thoughts on Intentionality and Visuality in Eighteenth-Century Interiors”
• Asen Kirin (UGA, School of Art), “The Guiding Gaze of the Enlightened Empress: The Architecture of Lookout Spaces”
3:30 Coffee break
4:00 Session Four: The Attitudes to Byzantium after Catherine II
Presenter and moderator, Kristen Regina
• Yuri Saveliev (The Russian Academy of Arts, Moscow), “The Byzantine Idea in the Imperial Patronage of Russian Architecture”
• Yuri Pyatnitski (State Hermitage. St. Petersburg), “The Shadow of Byzantium Over Nineteenth= and Twentieth-Century Russia: A Historical-Mythological Paradox”
5:00 Discussion
Conference | Georgian Pleasures
From the conference website:
Georgian Pleasures
Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institute and The Holburne Museum, Bath, 12–13 September 2013
Georgian Pleasures is an interdisciplinary two-day conference which takes the diversity of the experience of pleasure as its theme. Georgian pleasures were myriad. Some were exclusive — specific to certain classes, ages or genders — others were inclusive and/or overlapping. High life or low life, licit or illicit, private or public, domestic or commercial — there were pleasures to suit all tastes and circumstances. This conference will explore what it was that people of the period enjoyed and what we, as academics, re-enactors and period performers, can learn about society and culture from a better appreciation of pleasure, Georgian-style.
The conference will take place in Bath on 12–13 September 2013. On the 12th the conference will be held in the impressive Queen’s Square home of the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institute and on the 13th in the recently refurbished Holburne Museum, itself the centre-piece of Sydney Gardens, the last of Bath’s famous Georgian Pleasure Gardens. On Thursday evening, there will be a launch for Bath History Journal, volume 13, and the conference will end on Friday evening with a gala musical concert in the grounds of the Holburne Museum. We welcome academics of all disciplines and interested non-specialists. All are welcome!
Keynote speakers:
John Strachan, Bath Spa University
Cynthia Hammond, Concordia, Montreal
Adrian Teal, author of The Gin Lane Gazette
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T H U R S D A Y , 1 2 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 3
9:15 Registration and coffee
9:30 Plenary 1
• John Strachan (Bath Spa University), ‘The Pleasures of the Chase’: The Literature of Late Georgian Fox-Hunting
10:30 Pleasure and Moral Order
• Paul Holden (NT Lanhydrock), ‘The weakest woman sometimes may, the wisest man deceive’: Mary Toft and the Pleasures of Humiliation
• Steve Poole (University of the West of England), Pleasure … and Shame: Reputation and Respectability in Sydney Gardens, Bath, 1820–30
11:50 Theatricality
• Anna Meadmore (Royal Ballet School), John Weaver: The ‘Father of English Pantomine’
• Bill Tuck, From Carnival to Pleasure Garden: The Venetian Connection
12:50 Lunch
14:00 Music
• Nicola Pink (University of Southampton), The Experience of Domestic Vocal Music for Young Gentry Women, 1790–1830
• Andrew Clarke (Bristol University), Loder and Sons, Bath: A Band of Musicians
• Madeline Goold, A Portrait of Mrs Luther, ‘…a Lady of taste and of great discernment.’ Harpsichords, Pianoforte, and Subscription Concert Society in Georgian London
15:20 Tea
15:45 Satire and Conviviality
• Jessica Monaghan (Exeter University), Simulation and Satire: Feigned illness and the Georgian Health Resort in the Works of Christopher Anstey and His Imitators
• Heather Carroll (University of Edinburgh), Pleasure in Excess: Corporeality and Hedonism in the Satirical Prints of Albinia, Countess of Buckinghamshire
• Jeremy Barlow, The Sublime Society of Beefsteaks: Contexts, Traditions, and Early Membership
17:05 Spectacle
• Matthew Spring (Bath Spa University), Bath’s Grand Gala Concerts: A Combination of Pleasure ‘after the Manner of Vauxhall’
• Mike Rendell (London Historians), Roll up, roll up, the Greatest Show on Earth
• Vicky Vanruysseveldt (Vrije Universiteit), Travelling Entertainers and the Use of Public Space in Brabantine Cities
19:00 Wine and nibbles sponsored by Bath History / Launch of Bath History, volume 13
F R I D A Y , 1 3 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 3
9:15 Plenary 2
• Cynthia Hammond (Concordia University), ‘The Gardens will be Illuminated’: Gendered and Georgian Pleasures in the Sydney Gardens, Bath
10:15 Fashionable Consumption
• Elenor Ling (Fitzwilliam Museum), The Allure of Luxury Shops: The Blathwayt Family in London
• Mike Baldwin (London Metropolitan University), Consuming the Harp in Late Georgian England: Products, Services and Customers of the Erat Manufactory, 1821–24
11:15 Coffee — Charles Wiffen will be playing the Schantz fortpiano (1795)
11:30 Healthy Living
• Sarah Spooner (University of East Anglia), ‘Fields of Corn make a Pleasant Prospect’: Gardening and Agriculture in Georgian England
• Linda Watts (Cleveland Pools Trust), The Cleveland ‘Pleasure Baths’: Secluded Pleasures in a Spa City
• Robin Jarvis (University of the West of England), Hydromania: The Natural and Unnatural Pleasures of Swimming in Late Georgian England
13:00 Lunch
14:00 Dance
• Barbara Segal, Dance: A Most Popular Georgian Entertainment
14:30 Music in the Air
• Peter Holman, Politics in the Pit: Directing from the Keyboard [or Not] in the Georgian Theatre
• Andy Lamb (Oxford University), Stealing from the French: The Rise of Wind Harmony Music
• William Summers, Music, Naturalism, and Royal Power Struggles Surrounding Hampton Court Palace, 1716–21
15:30 Tea
15:50 Popular Culture
• Kevin Grieves (Bath Spa University), The Female Bruisers: Women Prizefighters of the Eighteenth Century
• Nick Nourse (Bristol University), Controlling Georgian Pleasures: Music and Entertainment, Legislation and the Law
• Nick Rogers (York University, Toronto), ‘Pleasures for the Poor?’ The Dilemma of Gin Drinking
17:30 Adrian Teal, The Gin Lane Gazette
During the conference Steven Parsons, Diana Russell and Kate James, PGR students at Bath Spa University, will be presenting a poster session.
19:00 Georgian Pleasures — An evening’s entertainment in the manner of a Georgian Garden Gala concert with a pleasure gardens band (The Vauxhall Players) in a specially constructed and lit ‘orchestra’, plus singers, a troupe of entertainers performing a comic intermezzo piece – The Death of Pulcinella, and strolling wind band performing in the gardens between items. The concert will take place outdoors in the Sydney Gardens (Holburne) or at Burdall’s Yard (7a Anglo Terrace, Bath, BA15NH), if the weather is inclement.
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