Conference | Eco Edo: Ecological Perspectives
Panoramic Map of the Tōkaidō Highway, Shōtei Kinsui, drawn by Kuwagata (better known as Keisai). Published by Sanoya Ichigorō, Izumiya Hanbei, and Izumoji Manjirō, n.d. (likely 1810). Polychrome xylography, 52 x 24 inches (Los Angeles: Richard C. Rudolph Collection of Japanese Maps, Special Collections, UCLA Library).
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
As noted yesterday at ArtHist.net:
Eco Edo: Ecological Perspectives on Early Modern Japanese Art
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA, Los Angeles, 2 February 2024
Organized by Kristopher Kersey
On 2 February 2024, the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library at UCLA will host the conference Eco Edo: Ecological Perspectives on Early Modern Japanese Art. This is the second of three conferences at UCLA this year on the theme of early modern Japanese art.
The art of Japan’s Edo period (1603–1868) presents a paradox. On the one hand, the nineteenth-century proliferation of ukiyo-e—polychrome woodblock prints of the ‘floating words’ of theater and sex work—made the popular visual culture of this city a familiar component of modern art in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Yet the outsize fascination with ukiyo-e outside Japan has sorely obscured Edo’s far more diverse social, material, and artistic landscapes. In an effort to countervail the enduring stereotypes of early modern Japanese art, Open Edo will present a suite of conferences addressing three interlinked themes: the representation and agency of marginalized groups, the ecological horizons of artistic production, and the ongoing need to counter the myth that Japan in early modernity was somehow disconnected from the rest of the world. Throughout the year-long series, the focus will be both historical and historiographical inasmuch as Open Edo asks how Japanese art history might challenge the discourse of early modernity writ large.
If interested in attending, please register, as space is limited in the Clark Library (also, note that the Clark is housed in a villa in West Adams, about 8 miles east of the main UCLA campus in Westwood). The conference is free and open to the public. Parking is free, and lunch is provided. To register, follow this link. There is no livestream or recording, but an edited volume should follow. Should you have any questions, please email kersey@humnet.ucla.edu.
p r o g r a m
9.30 Coffee and registration
10.00 Director’s welcome by Bronwen Wilson (UCLA), with opening remarks by Kristopher Kersey (UCLA)
10.15 Panel 1
Moderator: Kristopher Kersey (UCLA)
• Greg Levine (University of California, Berkeley), ‘Close Looking,’ but at What? Hasegawa Tōhaku’s Pine Grove and ‘Attentional Deviance’
• Rachel Saunders (Harvard Art Museums), The Birds, Flowers, and Botany of Edo Rinpa
11.45 Lunch, with a display of Clark Library materials in the North Book Room
1.00 Panel 2
Moderator: William Marotti (UCLA)
• Chelsea Foxwell (University of Chicago), What Are Bugs Doing in Edo-Period Paintings?
• Kit Brooks (National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution), Morphing into Madness: Shifting Perceptions of the Japanese Wolf
2.30 Coffee break
3.00 Panel 3
Moderator: Kendall Brown (California State University Long Beach)
• Christian Tagsold (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf), The Thousand Gardens of Edo: Exploring the Nature of the Cultivated Environment
• Nobuko Toyosawa (Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences), The Place of Ecology in Matsudaira Sadanobu’s Gardens
4.40 Plenary discussion with all speakers
5.30 Reception
Scholarships | The Aesthetic Inventions of Ecology, ca. 1800
From ArtHist.net:
The Aesthetic Inventions of Ecology around 1800
Doctoral and Post-Doctoral Scholarships
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 1 October 2024 — 30 September 2027
Applications due by 15 May 2024
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz announces the following scholarships within the framework of the new Mini Graduate College (MGRK), The Aesthetic Inventions of Ecology around 1800 (Die ästhetischen Erfindungen der Ökologie um 1800), funded by the Gutenberg Junior College (GNK):
• 4 doctoral scholarships (m/f/d) with a monthly stipend of EUR 1,550
• 1 postdoctoral scholarship (m/f/d) with a monthly stipend of EUR 1,900
The scholarships are to be filled by 1 October 2024, with a duration of three years. Selection interviews will take place in June 2024.
Requirements
• Excellent university degree (state examination, MEd, MA, or equivalent) in German Studies, English Studies, Art History, Music Theory, or related fields
• An innovative project idea within the research area of MGRK
• Knowledge in the areas of Classicism and Romanticism, as well as in ecological matters
• Interest in interdisciplinary work and team collaboration
• Proficiency in the college’s languages German and English
• Postdoctoral applicants should also present an outstanding dissertation, along with initial presentation and publication activities
Application Documents
• A one to two-page motivational letter explaining the reasons for pursuing the planned doctoral or postdoctoral project, demonstrating expectations from a Mini Graduate College and convincing statements about interdisciplinary work
• Curriculum vitae and academic certificates (high school diploma, MA, state examination, transcript of records for all courses in the master’s program, equivalent foreign degrees, and PhD for postdocs)
• If possible, a list of publications
• If necessary, language proficiency certificates
• A project outline (approximately 5–7 pages) for a project tailored to the college’s theme and methodology
• A work sample (e.g., master’s thesis, dissertation for postdocs) and an abstract (approximately 1 page) of the work sample
• Identification of two university professors who can provide information about personal suitability and academic qualifications
Further details of the research and study program of the Mini Graduate College are available by AESTHOEK1800@uni-mainz.de on request.
The university aims to increase the proportion of women in research and teaching and encourages qualified female academics to apply. Disabled individuals will be given preferential consideration if equally qualified. The college is committed to the principles of diversity and gender equality. International applicants should have sufficient knowledge of German. The MGRK accepts fellows from other funding organizations and guest scholars without offering funding, but with full integration into research.
For inquiries, please contact the participating faculty representatives:
• Prof. Dr. Barbara Thums, Department of German, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, thums@uni-mainz.de
• Prof. Dr. Rainer Emig, Department of English and Linguistics / English Literature and Culture, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, emigr@uni-mainz.de
• Prof. Dr. Immanuel Ott, Music Theory, Mainz University of Music at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, immot@uni-mainz.de
• Prof. Dr. Gregor Wedekind, Department of Art History and Musicology / Art History, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Gregor.wedekind@uni-mainz.de
Please send your complete application documents in electronic form as a consolidated PDF file titled “Name-First Name-Application” by 15 May 2024, via email to the spokesperson of the MGRK:
Prof. Dr. Barbara Thums
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
Faculty 05 – Philosophy and Philology
aesthoek@uni-mainz.de
New Book | Bagatelle: A Princely Residence in Paris
From Rizzoli:
Nicolas Cattelain, with photographs by Bruno Ehrs, Bagatelle: A Princely Residence in Paris (Paris: Flammarion, 2023), 280 pages, ISBN: 978-2080247520, $85.
In 1775, the Comte d’Artois, brother of Louis XVI and future King Charles X, purchased the Bagatelle estate in the Bois de Boulogne on the outskirts of Paris. The sumptuous château he constructed there—designed by François-Joseph Bélanger and modeled on a neo-Palladian villa—along with its picturesque gardens were lauded by prestigious European and American visitors, including Thomas Jefferson. Spared by the Revolution, Bagatelle became the setting for many important moments in European history and was acquired by the city of Paris in 1905. While the park with its magnificent rose garden remained open, the Mansart Foundation, with a team of experts, oversaw an extensive renovation of the château to restore the architectural jewel to its former glory. This beautifully illustrated volume recounts the fabulous history of Château de Bagatelle and its various owners, with spectacular new photography, unpublished archival documents, and insightful text.
Philanthropist and art collector Nicolas Cattelain worked in finance before dedicating himself to art, history, and heritage. He is involved with many international museums and is chairman of the Fondation du Château de Bagatelle. Bruno Ehrs is an award-winning Swedish photographer whose work has been published in Jacques Garcia: A Sicilian Dream, Villa Elena; Vaux-le-Vicomte: A Private Invitation; Château de Villette; Villa Balbiano; A Day at Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte; and Chaumet: Parisian Jeweler Since 1780, all published by Flammarion.
Symposium | Portraiture in 18th-Century Europe
From the DFK:
Portraiture in 18th-Century Europe: Artwork—Social Practice—Circulation
Le portrait au XVIIIe siècle en Europe: Œuvre d’art—pratique sociale—objet de transfert
Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte, Paris, 11–12 March 2024
Organized by Markus Castor, Martin Schieder, and Marlen Schneider
Alexandre Roslin, Self-Portrait with the Artist’s Wife Marie-Suzanne Giroust Painting a Portrait of Henrik Wilhelm Peill, detail, 1767, oil on canvas, 131 × 99 cm (Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, NM 7141).
Whether a manifestation of political power, expression of intimate feelings, an embellishing masquerade, or a faithful likeness, the art of portraiture in the Age of Enlightenment was marked by exceptional diversity throughout Europe. Between the apogee of absolutism and the political, social, and intellectual upheavals of the revolutionary era, it became a mirror of a society in full mutation. The differentiation of taste, changes in the art market, and the gradual establishment of public exhibitions were decisive factors contributing to the variety of effigies. Finally, the criticism of portraiture that flourished at the same time as this artistic genre, wrongly considered as ‘minor’, testified to the growing tension between its social functions and its claim to be a work of art in its own right.
The aim of the symposium is to study portraiture from a multifaceted perspective, tracing its social, theoretical, artistic, and material conditions. Focusing on its development during the Enlightenment in the French context, we also wish to open the discussions up to a European perspective. What concepts and themes shaped the debates surrounding portraits? How did the usages and functions of portraits evolve, and what were the consequences for the production and materiality of these objects? By what means and networks did portrait modes circulate in the various European artistic centers? We intend to shed light on these different aspects in their interdependence, in order to better understand the complex success story of portraiture in the 18th century.
Concept and Organization
Markus A. Castor (DFK Paris), Martin Schieder (Universität Leipzig), and Marlen Schneider (Université Grenoble Alpes/LARHRA)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
m o n d a y , 1 1 m a r c h 2 0 2 4
Speakers are assigned 45-minute slots; specific times, along with breaks, are available here»
14.30 Opening remarks by Peter Geimer (Director of the DFK Paris) and introduction by Markus Castor, Martin Schieder, and Marlen Schneider
15.00 I | Social Practices
Moderation: Martin Schieder
• Elise Urbain Ruano (Musée royal de Mariemont), Portraits transgressifs et modes négligées
• Gerrit Walczak (Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, München), Silk, Lace, and Deception: The Rococo Dummy Board Princesses of Georg David Matthieu
• Lara Pitteloud (Université de Neuchâtel), S’entourer de portraits « regardés comme uniques » : le cas parisien du Comte de Baudouin
• Philippe Bordes (Université Lumière Lyon 2 / LARHRA), Le piège de la célébrité sous la Révolution: les portraits de députés par Adélaïde Labille-Guiard et Jean Louis Laneuville
18.30 Conférence du soir
• Melissa Hyde (University of Florida), Gifted: Women, Portraiture, and the Art of Friendship
Drinks reception
t u e s d a y , 1 2 m a r c h 2 0 2 4
9.30 II | Circulations and Transfer
Moderation: Markus Castor
• Hannah Williams (Queen Mary University of London), Linked Lives: Portraits as Traces of Colonial Networks in Paris’s 18th-Century Art World
• Ulrike Kern (Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main), License to Portrait: Annexation of a Genre in Early 18th-Century British Art Theory
• Marlen Schneider (Université Grenoble Alpes / LARHRA), Portraits à la française? Appropriations et détournements du portrait déguisé entre Paris et Berlin
• Agata Dworzak (Jagiellonian University, Cracovie), Representation and Creation: The Tradition of Portraiture of Church Hierarchs in Central and Eastern Europe in the Second Half of the 18th Century: A Case Study of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
12.45 Lunch break
14.00 III | Theories and Techniques
Moderation: Marlen Schneider
• Marianne Koos (Universität Wien), Resemblance as a Passing Quality: Liotard, La Tour, and the Question of le faire in 18th-Century Portraiture
• Juliette Souperbie (Université Toulouse II Jean Jaurès), L’artiste à l’œuvre: Une mise en abyme du portrait au XVIIIe siècle
• Andreas Plackinger (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg), Zwischen Konventionsbruch, Kunsttheorie und Sociabilité: Plastische Bildhauerselbstporträts im Frankreich des späten Ancien Régime
• Jan Mende (Stadtmuseum Berlin), Die Porträtbüste geht in Serie: Neue Technologien und preiswerte Werkstoffe um 1790
• Amy Freund (Southern Methodist University), Who/What is a Self? Animal Portraiture in 18th-Century France
18.15 Conclusion and perspectives
Exhibition | Petr Brandl: The Story of a Bohemian
Installation view of the exhibition Petr Brandl: The Story of a Bohemian, Waldstein Riding School, Prague (2023).
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Now on view at Národní galerie Praha (as noted at Art History News) . . .
Petr Brandl: The Story of a Bohemian / Příběh bohéma
Waldstein Riding School, National Gallery Prague, 19 October 2023 — 11 February 2024
Curated by Andrea Steckerová
After over fifty years, this exhibition presents the work of the most important Baroque artist in Bohemia, Petr Brandl (1668–1735). On display are his monumental altarpieces—specially restored for the occasion—as well as his portraits and genre paintings of very interesting subject matter. Visitors will also see newly discovered works by Brandl for the very first time. The exhibition is organized around two parallel narratives: the painter’s works and his life.
We have numerous archival documents of Brandl’s life of bohemian revolt, which is remarkable even today, offering interesting contexts for the problems of our time. Brandl was, for instance, a lifelong debtor due to his penchant for the luxury lifestyle of nobility, which he was keen to enjoy himself. It also led him to court battles with his wife Helena over alimony. In addition, Brandl was regularly in trouble with his commissioners, as he often failed to comply with the terms of his contracts. The painter’s unbound life has inspired a contemporary theatre play Three Women and a Hunter in Love, which will be staged together with the exhibition (Geisslers Hofcomoedianten).
None of this, however, changes the fact that Brandl was the highest-paid artist of his time, probably because of his very distinctive and original style of painting, in which we can trace certain parallels with Rembrandt. X-rays and macro-photographs of Brandl’s works complement the exhibition to give visitors a glimpse into the inner workings of his painting.
Andrea Steckerová, Petr Brandl: Příběh Bohéma (Prague: Národní galerie Praha, 2023), 288 pages, ISBN: 978-8070358221, 1050 Czech Koruna / $46.
At Sotheby’s | The Collection of Joseph Baillio
Alexandre-François Desportes, Still Life of the Remnants of a Meal with a Lunging Cat, detail, ca. 1720s, oil on canvas, unframed: 74 × 92 cm (Lot 26, estimate: $200,000–300,000).
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
This Wednesday at Sotheby’s (with viewing still available Monday and Tuesday) . . .
A Scholar Collects
Sotheby’s, New York, 31 January 2024, 10am, (Sale N11437)
Sotheby’s is honored to present A Scholar Collects, a sale [of 41 lots] comprised of paintings, drawings, and sculpture from the collection of the preeminent scholar Joseph Baillio. A visionary art historian who specializes in the art of eighteenth-century France, Baillio is most well-known for his expertise in the pioneering woman artist Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun. His landmark exhibitions on her life and career—first in 1982 in Fort Worth and then in 2016 in New York, Paris, and Montreal—were triumphant in catapulting her to the forefront of scholarship and furthered her indelible mark on the history of art.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
From Neil Jeffares’s accompanying essay on Baillio:
Neil Jeffares, “Joseph Baillio: An Appreciation.”
For most of us the name Joseph Baillio is synonymous with Mme Vigée Le Brun, the artist to whom he has devoted so much of his career and whose reputation now stands at a peak unimaginable before the famous exhibition he organized in the Kimbell Art Museum in 1982. You will of course have a clearer recollection of the vast and astonishing monographic show Joseph presented in the Grand Palais in Paris in 2015 (before moving to New York and Toronto). And we all await the magnum opus, the catalogue raisonné (already signaled in the 1982 catalogue), as the apotheosis of this labor.
But there is so much more to Joseph than just one artist—or even the circle of talent that grew around her . . .
As much as reevaluating and contextualizing familiar masterpieces, Joseph’s work has been the painstaking combination of archival and visual clues to give back the identity of pictures that have been hidden or lost. And he has done that countless times . . .
The full essay is available here»
Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Portrait of the Duchesse de Guiche, née Louise Françoise Gabrielle Aglaé de Polignac, 1784, pastel on two joined sheets of paper laid on canvas, 80 × 64 cm (Lot 19, estimate: $500,000–700,000).
Call for Papers | Cultural History of the Hunt
From ArtHist.net, which includes the German version:
7th Workshop of the Cultural History of the Hunt Research Network
Online (via Zoom), 3 May 2024
Proposals due by 28 February 2024
The Cultural History of the Hunt research network (Netzwerk Jagdgeschichten) was founded in the summer of 2021 to promote academic exchange on the history of hunting. By viewing the topic of hunting from a transdisciplinary perspective, we aim to critically examine the role of hunting in the constitution, transformation, and perpetuation of the culture/nature-divide and related binary hierarchies. This international network brings together researchers at different career stages and consciously understands itself as open to a variety of research approaches regardless of their methodological, regional, and temporal framework, as well as their points of view concerning animal ethics.
The 7th meeting is thematically open. The workshop is intended to encourage an exchange regarding all questions from the field of cultural-historical research on hunting. Please send your proposals for a 20- to 30-minute contribution (maximum 200 words) and a short CV to Laura Beck (laura.beck@germanistik.uni-hannover.de) and Maurice Saß (maurice.sass@alanus.edu) before 28 February 2024.
New Book | Louis-François Chatard
From Éditions Faton:
Sébastien Boudry, Louis-François Chatard et les peintres doreurs du Garde-Meuble de la Couronne sous Louis XVI (Dijon: Éditions Faton, 2023), 208 pages, ISBN: 978-2878443318, €36.
Les peintres et doreurs du Garde-Meuble de la Couronne ont participé à la création des plus beaux sièges du XVIIIe siècle. Leur production illustre la diversité et l’excellence des métiers d’art qui ont fait la réputation de Paris à la fin du XVIIIe siècle. Leur travail apporte finition et éclat au décor des bois après le travail du menuisier et du sculpteur qu’ils mettent en valeur.
Sous Louis XVI, Louis-François Chatard en devient le principal fournisseur. Peintre et doreur, il est également parfumeur. Ses confrères peintres et doreurs comme Julliac ou la famille Chaise tiennent également boutique à Paris en tant que marchands et restaurateurs de tableaux. Cet ouvrage nous fait découvrir cette profession et ce savoir-faire, ceux qui l’exercèrent avec excellence, tout en illustrant les mutations des corporations et de l’artisanat à Paris à la veille de la Révolution.
Historien de l’Art spécialisé en mobilier et objets d’art, Sébastien Boudry obtient un DEA (Master) à l’Université de Paris IV – Sorbonne en 2001. Chargé d’études au Centre des Monuments nationaux depuis 2003, il est en charge de la conservation-restauration des collections de plusieurs monuments depuis 2010. A ce titre il a participé aux projets de restauration et de présentation des collections de l’Hôtel de Sully à Paris (2012), du château de Champs-sur-Marne (2012–13), de la villa Cavrois à Croix (2014–15), du château de Voltaire à Ferney (2017–18), de l’Hôtel de la Marine à Paris (2018–2021), et du château de Bussy-Rabutin (2021–22).
Dresden’s Royal East Asian Porcelain Catalogue Now Available
A decade in development, the online catalogue for Dresden’s Royal East Asian Porcelain collection was recently launched by Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden:
The Dresden Porcelain Project
Researching the Royal East Asian Collection and the Japanese Palace Inventories
From 2014 to 2024, the Porzellansammlung, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, has been the subject of a collaboration between an international team of specialists on an extensive research project aimed at cataloguing the collection of East Asian porcelain owned by Augustus the Strong (1670–1733). Of the initially more than 29,000 Chinese and Japanese ceramic objects, about 8200 are still extant in the Porzellansammlung today. The Japanese Palace Inventories were transcribed, translated and analysed as part of the research into the objects’ provenance.
The project’s findings are available here on the digital platform. The Royal Dresden Porcelain Collection is a publication of the Porzellansammlung. It showcases the objects and emphasises the historical context of the collection.
Team
Cora Würmell, Project Leader
Christiaan J. A. Jörg, Academic Supervisor
Karolin Randhahn, Research Associate
Ruth Sonja Simonis, Research Associate
Advisory Board
John Ayers
Helen Espir
Jessica Harrison-Hall
Peter Lam
Hiroko Nishida
Kōji Ōhashi
Rosemary Scott
Authors
Caroline Allen, Masaaki Arakawa, Eline van den Berg, Denise A. Campbell, Jan van Campen, Teresa Canepa, Menno Fitski, Ron Fuchs II, Tomoko Fujiwara, Ernst Geppert, Christiaan J. A. Jörg, Rose Kerr, Regina Krahl, Anette Loesch, Hiroko Nishida, Kōji Ōhashi, Linda Pomper, Karolin Randhahn, Maura Rinaldi, Miki Sakuraba, William R. Sargent, Ruth Sonja Simonis, Filip Suchomel, Daniel Suebsman, Yue Sun, Heike Ulbricht, Ching-Ling Wang, Liang-Chung Wang, Wen-Ting Wu, Cora Würmell, Pei-Chin Yu
More information and additional credits can be found here»
Call for Papers | Commerce and Circulation of Decorative Arts, 1792–1914
Benjamin Eugène Fichel, À l’hôtel Drouot, 1876 , exhibited at the Salon in 1877, oil on canvas, 61 × 90 cm. [The painting sold for €80,000 at a sale held in Paris by Beaussant Lefèvre on 22 June 2017, as reported by the Antiques Trade Gazette. –CH]
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
From the Call for Papers, which includes the French Appel à communications:
The Commerce and Circulation of Decorative Arts, 1792–1914:
Auctions, Dealers, Collectors, and Museums
Le commerce et la circulation des objets d’art, 1792–1914:
Ventes aux enchères, marchands/es, collectionneurs/ses et musées
Lyon, 25–27 September 2024
Proposals due by 17 March 2024
This international three-day colloquium, to be held in Lyon, France, from 25 to 27 September 2024, will investigate the role played by auctions, dealers, collectors, and museums in the circulation of the decorative arts from 1792 until 1914. Beginning with the ‘ventes des biens des émigrés’ in Revolutionary France and ending with the onset of World War I, these were years of seismic political and socio-economic change that revolutionised the art market.
It was during the nineteenth century that the decorative arts, originally described as ‘curiosities’ and then ‘antiques’, became the subject of intellectual curiosity. The period under review saw the emergence of a more scholarly approach and publications, the development of the antiques trade and of museum collections devoted to the decorative arts, facilitated by the expansion of global trading networks, extended by colonisation and encouraged by international travel and world fairs. London and Paris led the growth of this market, but economic downturn in Britain and France resulted in the mass export of art to the Americas from the 1880s. At the same time, a new cosmopolitan elite stimulated purchase across Europe, competing with museums for prize objects.
These developments were first charted by Gerald Reitlinger in The Economics of Taste: The Rise and Fall of the Objets d’art Market since 1750 (1963) and then by Clive Wainwright in The Romantic Interior (1989). Art market historiography has increased exponentially over recent years with scholarship on dealers (Lynn Catterson, Paola Cordera, Charlotte Vignon, Mark Westgarth), collectors and museums (Julius Bryant, Ting Chang, Suzanne Higgott, Sophie Le-Tarnec, Pauline Prévost-Marcilhacy), collecting culture (Elizabeth Emery, Tom Stammers, Adriana Turpin), and markets and networks of trade (Anne Helmreich, Léa Saint-Raymond), among others as well as a dedicated Journal for Art Market Studies. This has been augmented by the Getty Provenance Index, Bloomsbury Art Market, the Archives Directory for the History of Collecting in America, the creation of specific publishers’ series (from Brill and Bloomsbury), the digitisation of auction catalogues, and two programmes initiated by INHA (one on Connoisseurs, Collectors and Dealers of Asian Art in France, 1700–1939, and the other on Sales of Antiquities in Nineteenth-Century France).
To date, however, scholarship has largely centred on the fine arts. This conference will focus on the commerce and global circulation of the decorative arts in order to open new perspectives and approaches that will provide a more comprehensive understanding of the art market. ‘Decorative arts’ are taken to include: furniture, metalwork, clocks, silverware, ceramics and glass, enamels, small sculpture, hardstones, ivories, jewellery, textiles, tapestries, and boiseries, from Ming dynasty porcelain, Mamluk glass, and Augsburg Kunstkammer objects to Boulle furniture, and Thomire bronzes, not to mention the contemporary Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau movements.
We hope to encourage interdisciplinary dialogue among participants specialising in art history, material culture and economic history. We welcome presentations using new methodologies or technologies for interpreting dealer/ collector/museum records and auction results as well as well as more traditional case studies. Topics for consideration will investigate the inter-relationships between the decorative arts market, connoisseurship, taste, and collecting practice. They may include, but are not limited to the following:
• The repercussions of political and socio-economic change on the circulation of objects
• Auctions and their impact on networks of local and international exchange
• Collectors’ preferences and methods of acquisition (auctions, dealers, agents, and advisors)
• The role of dealers, agents, curators and advisors, their influence on taste and collecting practice
• Networks of trade between Europe, the Americas, Asia, the Middle East, and further afield
• Collaboration and competition within and between networks across borders
• The influence of the circulation of antiques on workshop practice and craftsmanship in the decorative arts
• The involvement of museums in the art market, their role at auctions, and the relations between dealers and curators, trade expertise, and scholarly research
• The impact of public exhibitions on the art market and the trade in decorative arts
• Connoisseurship and expertise across borders: the interrelationship between the discourse of decorative art history and the market (including the use of photography, sale catalogues, museum catalogues, and scholarly publications and journals)
• Cultural transfers through collecting practice
• The visualisation and staging of the collecting space/ interior
• The use of digital tools to analyse the circulation of the decorative arts
We encourage submissions from both early career researchers (PhD candidates) and established scholars, involved in the study of trade, art markets, collections, as well as museums and provenance research. This will be an ‘in-person’ event. It is hoped to cover accommodation for speakers for the duration of the conference. The symposium will be bi-lingual (English is preferred). Please submit abstracts for 20-minute papers (of no more than 350 words), together with a brief biography as an email attachment to camille.mestdagh@univ-lyon2.fr and diana_davis@hotmail.co.uk no later than 17 March 2024. Applicants selected by the scientific committee will be notified by 22 April 2024. Further updates will be posted on the event webpage. We hope to publish a volume of essays stemming from revised conference papers.
Organising Committee
Natacha Coquery (Professeure, Université Lumière Lyon 2, LARHRA), Camille Mestdagh (Post-doctoral researcher, Université Lumière Lyon 2, LARHRA), Igor Moullier (Maître de conférences, ENS Lyon, LARHRA), Rossella Froissart (Directrice d’études, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Études-PSL, SAPRAT), Diana Davis (Independent researcher, PhD, University of Buckingham, UK)
Scientific Committee
Arnaud Bertinet (Maître de Conférences, Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne), Jérémie Cerman (Professeur, Université d’Artois, Arras), Paola Cordera (Associate Professor, Politecnico di Milano), Elizabeth Emery (Professor, Montclair State University, New Jersey), Sandra van Ginhoven (Head, Getty Provenance Index, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles), Anne Helmreich (Director, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington), Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth (Lecturer, University of Edinburgh), Johannes Nathan (co-founder of the Centre of Art Market Studies, Technische Universität, Berlin), Anne Perrin-Khelissa (Maître de conferences HDR, Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès), Florencia Rodríguez Giavarini (Doctoral fellow, UNSAM-CONICET, Buenos Aires), Adriana Turpin (Head of Research, IESA, Paris)
This colloquium forms part of a wider project on the market for decorative arts: OBJECTive – ANR/ Lyon 2 Université / LARHRA : OBJECTive – ANR Objects through the Art Market: A Global Perspective – LARHRA.
Enfilade
leave a comment