Enfilade

The eighteenth century in the latest issue of Art History (the entire issue looks extraordinary). . .

Art History 39 (April 2016), special issue dedicated to Art and Technology in Early Modern Europe, edited by Richard Taws and Genevieve Warwick.

• Genevieve Warwick and Richard Taws, “After Prometheus: Art and Technology in Early Modern Europe,” pp. 198–209.
• Etienne Jollet, “The Monument to Louis XIV at the Place Vendôme (1699) as a Technical Achievement: A Question of Interest,” pp. 318–39.
• Hanneke Grootenboer, “A Clock Picture as a Philosophical Experiment: The Tableau Mécanique in the Physics Cabinet of Bonnier de la Mosson,” pp. 340–55.
• Bryan J. Wolf, “Of Air Pumps and Teapots: Joseph Wright of Derby, John Singleton Copley and the Technology of Seeing,” pp. 356–75.
• Ann Bermingham, “Technologies of Illusion: De Loutherbourg’s Eidophusikon in Eighteenth-Century London,” pp. 376–99.
• Richard Taws, “Telegraphic Images in Post-Revolutionary France,” pp. 400–21.
• Barbara Maria Stafford, “Seizing Attention: Devices and Desires,” pp. 422–27.

Jean-Antoine Watteau, Le rendez-vous de chasse, ca. 1717–18, oil on canvas, 124.5 × 189 cm
(London: The Wallace Collection)

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As noted at CAA News (15 March 2016) . . .

Aaron M. Wile is the winner of the 2015–16 James L. Clifford Prize. The prize is awarded annually by the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies to the author of the best article regarding any aspect of eighteenth-century culture. Receiving the award is Wile’s “Watteau, Reverie, and Selfhood,” published by College Art Association in The Art Bulletin.

The Clifford Fund was originally established to support an annual prize in honor of James L. Clifford. Clifford founded The Johnsonian News Letter in 1940, was Secretary to the English Institute, twice a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and third President of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. During his long and energetic life, he produced numerous books, articles, bibliographies, essays, edited collections, editions and, of course, the much beloved, imitated, and quoted Johnsonian News Letter. Accordingly, the Clifford Prize is awarded to the author of the best article on an eighteenth-century subject, interesting to any eighteenth-century specialist, regardless of discipline.

The American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies is a non-profit, educational group founded to promote the study of all aspects of the eighteenth century. It sponsors conferences, awards, fellowships and prizes, and publishes Eighteenth-Century Studies and Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture. Requests for information about the Clifford Prize and nominations may be addressed to: asecs@wfu.edu.

Aaron M. Wile, “Watteau, Reverie, and Selfhood,” The Art Bulletin 96 (September 2014): 319–37.
Watteau’s fêtes galantes break with key aspects of academic art theory in early eighteenth-century France—particularly as put forward by Roger de Piles—to elicit an experience of reverie in the spectator. Watteau’s formal innovations inaugurated a new relationship between painting and beholder that opened up a new sphere of subjective experience, linking the artist’s enterprise with the rise of modern interiority.

The article is available free to everyone through the Taylor & Francis website, until 30 June 2016.

Items pertaining to the eighteenth century in the current issue:

The British Art Journal 16 (Winter 2015/16)

• Editorial: William MB Berger Prize for British Art History 2015 Winner: William Pressly, James Barry’s Murals at the Royal Society of Arts: Envisioning a New Public Art (2014).

• Romana Sammern, “Woman in Bed by Matthew William Peters (1742–1814): Titian, Reynolds, and  Painted Revenge”

• M. T. W. Payne and J. E. Payne “Samuel Collings (d. 1810) and the Manifestation of ‘Annibal Scratch'”

• Neil Jeffares, “Francis Cotes (1726–1770) and His Family”

• Katherine McHale, “George Vertue and the Case of the Counterfeit Paintings: Rescuing the Reputations of Sebastiano Ricci (1659–1734) and Niccolo Cassana (1659–1713)”

• Alex Seltzer, “Catesby’s Conundrums: Mixing Representation with Metaphor”

• Peter S. Forsaith “‘A Far Greater Genius Than Sir Joshua’: Did Joshua Reynolds (1723–1789) Paint John Wesley (1703–1791)?”

• Charles S. Ellis, Review of Giulia Coco, Artisti, dilettanti e mercanti d’arte nel salotto fiorentino di sir Horace Mann (2014).

Ken Gonzales-Day, Panorama of Museum West Pavilion, 2015, chromogenic print, 20.32 x 99 cm, taken in the West Pavilion, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, ©Ken Gonzales-Day.

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British Art Studies recently launched with an impressive premier issue and an exemplary commitment to free and open access, as detailed in the initial issue’s editorial statement. Congratulations! –CH

British Art Studies is free and open access: there are no subscriptions, no passwords, and no fees to pay. All content will be preserved as a free-to-use resource. The ethos of open access is one that YCBA and PMC have adopted for all their digital efforts, in the recognition that conventional proprietary models represent a major obstacle to scholarship. It is published under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC licence, meaning that you are free to share and re-use its contents for non-commercial purposes, provided that appropriate credit is given to the author/s. No permissions are needed. . . .

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The eighteenth century in BAS 1:

British Art Studies 1 (Autumn 2015)

Conversation Piece coordinated by Richard Johns, “There’s No Such Thing as British Art.”

‘Conversation Piece’ is a British Art Studies series that draws together a group of contributors to respond to an idea, provocation or question. The conversation will develop as more respondents enter the debate. Readers can also join in by adding a response.

Thomas Gainsborough, Charity Relieving Distress, ca. 1784, oil on canvas, 127.6 x 102.2 cm (Indianapolis Museum of Art).

Georgina Cole, “ ‘A Beautiful Assemblage of an Interesting Nature’: Gainsborough’s Charity Relieving Distress and the Reconciliation of High and Low Art.”

In the competitive environment of the eighteenth-century London art scene, Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds were often perceived as great rivals. While they shared patrons, sitters, and a stake in the future of British art, their differing artistic approaches caused considerable friction, indeed Gainsborough seceded from the Royal Academy of Art in 1784, boycotting its exhibitions and activities. This essay, however, argues that Gainsborough’s Charity Relieving Distress, painted in the year of his secession, proposes a charitable resolution of their aesthetic attitudes. The complex interrelation of allegorical and anecdotal form is interpreted as a pictorial attempt to reconcile their approaches through the concept of charity, a virtue of powerful artistic lineage in the western tradition, and of contemporary social importance.

Cyra Levenson and Chi-ming Yang, with a photo-essay by Ken Gonzales-Day, “Haptic Blackness: The Double Life of an 18th-Century Bust.”

‘One Object’ is a British Art Studies series that uses an object from a collection as a starting point for collaborative research. Cyra Levenson and Chi-ming Yang have co-authored this essay which is followed by a photo-essay by artist Ken Gonzales-Day and an interview between him and the authors.

We are delighted to announce the launch of Journal18—a new digital publication entirely dedicated to eighteenth-century art and material culture.

Journal18 is an online, open access, peer-reviewed journal devoted to art and culture of the long eighteenth century from around the globe. Inspired by the rich and exciting state of the field of eighteenth-century art history, Journal18 has been founded as a scholarly forum to support and extend that richness. Taking form as a digital publication, Journal18 embraces the accessibility and flexibility of its format, seeking the widest possible engagement with the latest research in the field.

Journal18 will be the first journal dedicated to the field of eighteenth-century art history, and one of the few online and fully open access journals for the discipline of art history more broadly. Appearing twice a year, Journal18 will publish thematic issues of articles investigating all aspects of eighteenth-century visual and material culture. Throughout the year, Journal18 will also offer a forum for intellectual exchange in the Notes & Queries section: a space for short notes, reviews, archival discoveries, or scholarly musings.

Journal18 will launch in Spring 2016 with Issue #1—Multilayered. This inaugural issue of Journal18 will explore the multilayered nature of eighteenth-century art. Contributions will focus on artworks that bear traces of multiple hands as a result of workshop production, cross-cultural exchange, re-use, restoration, vandalism, or other factors.

We are currently accepting submissions for Notes & Queries, but we are no longer accepting submissions for Issue #1—Multilayered. For all inquiries including proposals for contributions to Notes & Queries please contact the editors at: editor@journal18.org. Keep up to date with Journal18 by following us on Twitter @Journal18  and Facebook.

J18 Founding Editors
Noémie Etienne (Getty Research Institute)
Meredith Martin (NYU and Institute of Fine Arts)
Hannah Williams (Queen Mary University of London)

Editorial Board
Nebahat Avcioglu (Hunter College/CUNY); Finbarr Barry Flood (Institute of Fine Arts/NYU); Esther Bell (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco); Daniela Bleichmar (University of Southern California); Jeffrey Collins (Bard Graduate Center, New York); Thomas Crow (Institute of Fine Arts, New York); Craig Hanson (Calvin College); Anne Higonnet (Barnard College/Columbia University); Kristina Kleutghen (Washington University, St Louis); Anne Lafont (INHA, Paris); Ewa Lajer-Burcharth (Harvard University); Mark Ledbury (University of Sydney); Katie Scott (Courtauld Institute of Art); Charlotte Vignon (Frick Collection); Michael Yonan (University of Missouri)