Enfilade

Nathaniel Dance, The Antiquarian, ca.1800, pen, ink, and watercolor.

◊    ◊    ◊    ◊    ◊

The application form is available here:

Caricature and the Grotesque: Early Modern Prints and Politics

Graduate Student Seminar led by Peter Parshall, with Cynthia Roman and Freyda Spira

The Lewis Walpole Library and Yale University Art Gallery, 21–22 May 2025

Applications accepted until 12 May 2025 (with rolling acceptance)

Distortion takes many different forms and plays a role in all artistic traditions. In one sense or another the pictorial response to the world has always shown an inclination to turn things inside out. Our task in this two-day graduate seminar will be to consider this phenomenon as it evolves in the graphic arts from the Renaissance into the early nineteenth century. In this admittedly broad setting we shall concentrate specifically on the use of distortion in political and social contexts, especially in printmaking where the wide and efficient distribution of texts and pictures first became possible. How does the use of caricature, satire, and the grotesque inflect the message of an image? What lies behind its preference for the artist and its appeal to the viewer? Does a potentially ‘popular’ medium like printing inevitably lead to the embrace of the grotesque and a conscious degradation of pictorial rhetoric?

We shall approach these questions through a discussion of original works of art, primarily works available in the Yale University Art Gallery and the Lewis Walpole Library. The main areas of study will be: Renaissance prints and the transformation of the grotesque; the invention of modern caricature with particular attention to anti-Semitism; the flourishing of British caricature in the eighteenth century; William Hogarth and social satire as political argument; and last, Francisco Goya and the relation between realism and fantasy. There will be short readings for each of four sessions held over two consecutive days. The emphasis will be on group discussion conducted as an open forum and inviting all manner of inquiry pertinent to the questions being addressed and the objects at hand.

With space limited to 10 participants, this program is open by application. Applications will be reviewed and successful applicants notified on a rolling basis until 12 May 2025, or until enrollment is filled. This seminar is sponsored by the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. Please contact cynthia.roman@yale.edu with questions.

• Peter Parshall, former Jane Neuberger Goodsell Professor of Art and Humanities at Reed College and Curator of Old Master Prints at the National Gallery of Art
• Cynthia Roman, Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Paintings, the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University
• Freyda Spira, Robert L. Solley Curator of Prints and Drawings, Yale University Art Gallery

Peter Parshall has written and lectured widely on early modern art with special emphasis on the history of prints, the history and the organization of collecting, and Renaissance art theory. He co-authored with David Landau The Renaissance Print (1994), recipient of the Mitchell Prize. Among exhibitions curated are: The Unfinished Print (2001); Origins of European Printmaking (2005) with Rainer Schoch; and The Darker Side of Light: Arts of Privacy, 1850–1900 (2008). Since formal retirement he has pursued several topics of current interest and is presently writing a book on art and politics.

The Museum of the Home is located in almshouses, built in 1714, in Hoxton, East London.

◊    ◊    ◊    ◊    ◊

From the project description:

Netherlandish Networks:

Home-making in an Age of Emerging Global Capitalism, 1565–1799

AHRC Doctoral Studentship, Open University with the Museum of the Home and Queen Mary, University of London

Applications due by 7 April 2025

We are delighted to invite applications from students for a PhD Studentship in the Department of Art History at the Open University funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in partnership with the Museum of the Home (London) and the Centre for the Studies of Home at Queen Mary, University of London.

The project will explore the hidden histories behind a set of early modern objects belonging to the Museum of the Home, including a Flemish tapestry, Delftware, Chinese porcelain, japanned furniture, and items inlaid with rosewood. These diverse objects all share one quality: a relationship to the Netherlandish maritime trading networks (‘Netherlandish’ here refers to the profoundly entwined economies and cultures of what is roughly now Belgium and Holland). These Netherlandish networks spanned the globe but at their centre lay the cities of Amsterdam and Antwerp, not least because their Sephardic Jewish communities facilitated otherwise difficult trading connections between Northern Europe and the extensive Spanish and Portuguese Empires. London and the emerging British Empire relied heavily on these Netherlandish networks, especially across the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Crucially, these networks allowed for the circulation of religious and other refugees, merchants, skilled craftworkers, and enslaved people as well as materials like tropical hardwoods, objects like ceramics, clocks, and metalwork, and types of design that were then copied locally.

Key Research Questions
• What are the most efficient ways of mapping the many and complex journeys behind the interior fittings and furnishings that constituted home-making in early modern England as it became part of a global economy that, in turn, rested on colonialism and enslavement?
• How were early modern homes made in and through objects—so visually, spatially and materially—in relation to two overlapping immigrant communities (Sephardic Jews and Netherlanders)?
• To what extent were homes made in temporary lodgings such as boarding-houses or through public spaces such as churches or synagogues? In this process, how were objects mobilised in ritual and less formal behaviour?
• How can objects best be used to instantiate specific social histories about immigration, colonialism, and enslavement?
• What broader historical, curatorial, and art-historical methodologies may be developed from studying objects with hidden histories?

As part of the studentship, the successful candidate will be expected to spend significant periods of time with the collections at the Museum of the Home in east London. Research will also be undertaken at relevant archives across London, including the National Archives at Kew, which holds an extensive range of port books recording merchant shipping into most English ports from between 1565 and 1799.

The candidate will be co-supervised between the Open University and the Museum of the Home. Professor Clare Taylor and Dr Margit Thøfner, from the Department of Art History will supervise from the Open University, and Ailsa Hendry, Collections Manager and Lara Baclig, Community Producer, will supervise on behalf of the Museum of the Home.

Clare Taylor is a specialist in early modern interiors, material culture, and design. She has been lead supervisor for a number of Collaborative Doctoral Awards, including with the National Trust, the National Railway Museum, and the Sanderson archive. Margit Thøfner specialises in Netherlandish art, visual and material culture from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ailsa Hendry’s experience stretches across collections care and curation and she has worked on many projects exploring early modern European history. Lara Baclig specialises in community engagement and decolonial practice in collecting and displays.

More information is available here»

From the Call for Expression of Interest, with the French version available here:

Doctoral Thesis on the History of Art and Visual Studies

Spain and Ibero-America, particularly New Spain, ca. 1650–1870

Directed by Tomas Macsotay and Émilie Roffidal

Applications due by 11 April 2025

This call is addressed to students wishing to prepare a doctoral thesis on aspects of the history of art and visual studies in Spain and Ibero-America, particularly New Spain, ca. 1650–1870. We will support the candidate in the preparation of a thesis proposal to be submitted in France. If the proposal is accepted, the candidate will benefit from the collaboration of two art history departments in Spain and France, enabling him or her to obtain a European doctorate.

p o s s i b l e  t o p i c s

1  Artistic Academies in the Ibero-American Space
• Exchanges with Italy and France, artistic models
• Interpersonal and inter-institutional networks
• The relationship between the fine arts and the applied arts, in particular with the luxury and semi-luxury market; the role of the Juntaso de Commercio and Sociedades económicas de amigos del país
• The circulation of theoretical and archaeological knowledge
• Local heritage and the movement to create a Spanish artistic identity (casticismo, cultura andaluza)

2  Religious Art in Ibero-America
• Ecclesiastical interiors, furnishings, and religious sculpture as embodiments of the transformation of religious practice
• Text-image relationships, in particular through the study of printed sermons and panegyrics
• Relationships between ‘Baroque’ art and ‘neoclassicism’, between devotion in the private and public spheres
• The question of regional models and neoclassical reform (particularly neoclassicism in Madrid and Valencia)
• The place of antiquity in the vocabulary of forms

3  The Journey to Spain, published and unpublished
• Travelogues as an expression of the reception of Spanish art
• The reception of art (perception, intertextuality, and narrativity in commentaries on monuments and works of art)
• The journey as a search for a common artistic repertoire versus local identity

4  Engraving in the Ibero-American Space
• The use of engraving to show a diversity of images: landscapes, religious and/or political ceremonies, works of art, the population, everyday life, etc.
• Links between the real and the imaginary (compositions, recompositions, etc.)
• The question of violence, revolt, and upheaval
• Engravers and the image market

Candidates must have sufficient communication skills in French and Spanish (C1 or at least B2 levels). To apply, please send a cover letter, a thesis proposal on one of the proposed themes (3,000–6,000 characters), and a transcript of Master’s result list. Successful candidates will receive support in preparing their application for a doctoral contract (funded thesis) and in writing their final thesis proposal.

Directors
• Tomas Macsotay, associate professor, Pompeu Fabra University, tomas.macsotay@upf.edu
• Émilie Roffidal, senior researcher, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FRAMESPA laboratory, UMR 5136, Toulouse), emilie.roffidal@univ-tlse2.fr