Exhibition | Dressed by Nature: Textiles of Japan
Opening later this month at Mia:
Dressed by Nature: Textiles of Japan
Minneapolis Institute of Art, 25 June — 11 September 2022
Festival kimono decorated with carp ascending a waterfall made in Akita Prefecture (detail), late 19th–early 20th century, cotton (Minneapolis: Mia, purchase from the Thomas Murray Collection, 2019.20.84).
The Japanese archipelago is home to extremely diverse cultures that made clothing and other textile objects in a kaleidoscope of materials and designs. This exhibition will focus on the resourcefulness of humans to create textiles from local materials like fish skin, paper, elm bark, nettle, banana leaf fiber, hemp, wisteria, deerskin, cotton, silk, and wool. It will showcase rare and exceptional examples of robes, coats, jackets, vests, banners, rugs, and mats, made between around 1750 and 1930, including the royal dress of subtropical Okinawa, ceremonial robes of the Ainu from northern Japan and the Russian Far East, and folk traditions from throughout Japan.
Exhibition | The Three Perfections
Now on view at Mia:
The Three Perfections: Image, Poem, and Calligraphy in Chinese Painting
Minneapolis Institute of Art, 18 December 2021 — 4 December 2022
Zheng Xie (1693–1765), Qing dynasty, Bamboo and Rocks, detail, ca. 1760, 68 x 39 inches, ink on paper (Minneapolis: Mia, gift of Ruth and Bruce Dayton 95.54.2).
Western viewers are often curious about why Chinese artists write on their paintings and what the characters say. This exhibition answers such questions and explores the idea of integrating fine painting, poetry, and calligraphy, known as the ‘Three Perfections’, in a single artwork.
In traditional China, painting was regarded as ‘silent poetry’, and poetry as ‘painting with sound’. Both could only be manifested through the ‘art of handwriting’—calligraphy. Scholars and scholar-artists used calligraphic brushstrokes in their paintings and considered their artworks to be vehicles of self-expression. As a result, painting was not only considered the only art pure and lyrical enough to stand on an equal footing with poetry and contemplative thought, but also something through which one could experience sight, sound, smell, touch, and emotions.
Exhibition | Venice in the 1700s
Francesco Guardi, The Return of the Buncintoro from S. Nicolò di Lido (detail), ca. 1778, pen and brown ink and wash, over black chalk
(Minneapolis: Mia, the John R. Van Derlip Trust Fund 2021.25)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Now on view at Mia:
Venice in the 1700s
Minneapolis Institute of Art, 22 January — 16 October 2022
By the 1700s, the once mighty seafaring republic of Venice had been in decline for 300 years. Yet the island city still had one undiminished power—magic. Grand palaces, churches, flotillas of elegant gondolas floated above luminous reflections. Intricate systems of canals and walkways offered endless unexpected perspectives. Centuries of exquisite art could be found everywhere. With much support from tourists who flocked to see the city’s wonders, Venice’s artistic tradition continued to flourish. Three great artists and their families dominated: Antonio Canale (known as Canaletto), Giambattista Tiepolo, and Francesco Guardi. Mia has long had fine prints and drawings by the first two. This presentation celebrates the recent addition of Mia’s first outstanding Guardi drawing.
Exhibition | Making East London Porcelain
Now on view:
Making East London Porcelain
Stratford Library, London, 1–30 June 2022
It is now over 250 years since the earliest dated pieces of Bow porcelain were produced in London. The success of the Bow Porcelain Factory reminds us that Newham was a global centre for experimentation and creativity during the middle of the eighteenth century. As part of our Making London Porcelain Project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), scientists and curators at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Ashmolean Museum have been researching 15 objects owned by Newham Borough of London. Using scientific analysis, we have been trying to better understand the materials and processes used to create such incredible works of art.
Making East London Porcelain is part of a collaborative science-led heritage project between the V&A Museum and Newham Borough of London, which has been made possible by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s (AHRC) Capability for Collections Fund. Focusing on the celebrated Bow Porcelain Factory, this project brings communities together to explore Newham Borough as a place of creativity, experimentation, and entrepreneurship in the mid-eighteenth century. Co-curated with sixth-form students from Chobham Academy (Newham) and Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School (Chelsea), the exhibition explores how heritage science and re-making practices can help us better understand the places we live today and inspire us to innovate and experiment tomorrow.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Exploring Bow Porcelain
Stratford Library, London, Wednesday, 15 June 2022, 6.00pm
Join us for an object-handling workshop with local artists as we celebrate the launch of the exhibition Making East London Porcelain.
Take part in a conversation with local ceramic artist Julia Ellen Lancaster, one of the Explorer Leach 100 Artists, whose work offers a modern twist on sculptural figures and historic clay recipes, such as those made by the Bow Porcelain Factory. You will have the opportunity to handle and examine historic pieces of eighteenth-century Bow porcelain from Newham’s special collections guided by V&A Ceramics Curator, Dr Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth, and learn about how historic making processes inspire and influence ceramic artists in Newham today.
Call for Articles | William Hogarth and Cinema
Paul Sandby, Satire with Hogarth as a Magic Lantern Projecting a Parody of his ‘Paul before Felix’, 1753, etching
(London: British Museum, Cc,3.12)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
From the Call for Papers:
William Hogarth and Cinema
Special issue of Ecrans (Spring 2024), edited by Marie Gueden and Pierre Von-Ow
Abstracts due by 5 September 2022; drafts due by 30 March 2023
According to Sergei Eisenstein, “Diderot talked about cinema.” It could likewise be suggested that the eighteenth-century artist William Hogarth (1697–1764) inaugurated cinematic discourse. Through his visual and theoretical work, Hogarth offers a crucial contribution to the narrative and aesthetic reflections that predate—and somehow anticipate—the invention of cinema. Eisenstein did indeed comment upon and commend Hogarth’s visual productions (praising in particular his stage-like compositions and visual narratives articulated in sequences of images). The Russian filmmaker admired his English predecessor’s artistic theory, preoccupied with the movement of bodies and gazes: Eisenstein appropriated the idea of a “line of beauty” developed in Hogarth’s The Analysis of Beauty in his directing and editing. Yet, the filmic potentialities of Hogarth’s work and ideas still await extended critical and scholarly attention. The artist’s name appears sporadically in film studies that mention his influence for set designs—especially in Hollywood where Fritz Lang, Mark Robson, and Stanley Kubrick, among others, drew from Hogarth’s works to stage their historical films—and on the legacy of his artistic writings in film theory and criticism. The abundant art historical literature devoted to Hogarth, however, rarely evokes the artist’s cinematographic legacy. A special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Ecrans (No. 20, Spring 2024), to be published in French and English, seeks to explore the largely understudied connections between William Hogarth and global and expanded cinema.
We invite papers on topics that may include (but are not limited to):
• Pre-cinema, with particular emphasis on magic lanterns and early cinema, for example, filmed tableaux vivants
• William Hogarth in Hollywood, especially in the studios’ archives
• The temporality of images and sequencing of visual narratives
• Graphic novels, illustrated journals, and cartoons
• Adaptations of literary ‘Progresses’ between prints, paintings, theatre, performance, film, TV series, etc.
• Case studies from global cinema, including art documentaries
• Experimental cinema, particularly the challenging of narrative linearity
• The legacy of Hogarth’s satirical work in comedy, including productions featuring Hogarth as a character of fiction
• The legacy of Hogarth’s artistic theory and his “line of beauty” in film theory (for example through various visual shorthand systems) and criticism
• Marxist, feminist, and post-colonial currents in the reception of Hogarth’s work
Please submit a proposal by 5 September 2022 in English or French (up to 400 words), as well as a short bio, to the guest editors of this special issue: Marie Gueden (marie.gueden@univ-lyon2.fr) and Pierre Von-Ow (pierre.von-ow@yale.edu). Final papers should not exceed 8000 words. First drafts expected on 30 March 2023 for publication in April 2024. Feel free to contact us if any questions should arise before submitting your proposal. More information about Ecrans is available here.
Library at Trinity College Dublin Preps for Restoration
The Long Room of the Old Library at Trinity College Dublin
(Wikimedia Commons, July 2015)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
From The NY Times:
Ed O’Loughlin, “An Irish National Treasure Gets Set for a Long-Needed Restoration,” The New York Times (28 May 2022). The majestic Old Library at Trinity College Dublin, where some of Ireland’s most ancient and valuable books are stored, is a popular tourist attraction.
The Long Room, with its imposing oak ceiling and two levels of bookshelves laden with some of Ireland’s most ancient and valuable volumes, is the oldest part of the library in Trinity College Dublin, in constant use since 1732.
But that remarkable record is about to be disrupted, as engineers, architects and conservation experts embark on a 90 million euro, or $95 million, program to restore and upgrade the college’s Old Library building, of which the Long Room is the main part.
The library, visited by as many as a million people a year, had been needing repairs for years, but the 2019 fire at Notre Dame cathedral in Paris was an urgent reminder that it needed to be protected, according to those involved in the conservation effort. . . .
Much of the effort will be focused on conserving the historic worked wood that makes up much of the library’s interior and the frames of its windows, as well as improving fireproofing and environmental controls needed to protect the valuable book collection.
Faced with the example of Notre Dame, and the realization that something similar could happen to an Irish national treasure, the government pledged €25 million, with the college and private donors adding €65 million more.
Work started in April, and in October 2023, the Old Library’s doors will close to visitors for at least three years as it moves into full gear. . . .
The full article is available here»
James Malton (1761—1803), Trinity College Library, The Long Room, eighteenth-century watercolour (Wikimedia Commons). From the Wikipedia entry for “Library of Trinity College Dublin”: “The 65-metre-long (213 ft) main chamber of the Old Library, the Long Room, was built between 1712 and 1732 and houses 200,000 of the Library’s oldest books. Initially, The Long Room had a flat ceiling, shelving for books only on the lower level, and an open gallery. By the 1850s the room had to be expanded as the shelves were filled due to the fact that the Library had been given permission to obtain a free copy of every book that had been published in Ireland and Britain. In 1860, The Long Room’s roof was raised to accommodate an upper gallery.”
Symposium | Thinking Europe Visually
From ArtHist.net, where the posting also includes the French version:
Thinking Europe Visually
Centre IMAGO / École normale supérieure, Paris / Musée du Jeu de Paume, Paris, 9–10 June 2022
“If I had to do it again, I would start with culture.” This statement, often erroneously attributed to Jean Monnet, suggests that in the absence of a shared culture, Europe as a political and economic construct remains nothing but a hollow shell. This conference aims to question the disillusioned position which holds that there is no meaningful common European culture, and to do so through images. One way to visualize the potential existence and limits of a European cultural base is indeed to trace the circulation of images—be they works of art, press images, posters, photographs, or even motifs and patterns—in the region, from antiquity through to the present day. What are the images that have circulated most widely in Europe? Are they specific to Europe or are they already globalized? What was their visual and symbolic impact? Is there a ‘visual culture’ specific to Europe and, if so, what might be its distinctive ‘patterns’?
The symposium will take place on June 9 and 10, 2022 in Paris at the Ecole normale supérieure, 45 rue d’Ulm. It is hosted by European Excellence Center Jean Monnet IMAGO (ENS), in collaboration with the project VISUAL CONTAGIONS at the University of Geneva (Switzerland). If is supported by the European agency Erasmus + and by the Swiss national Fund for research.
The symposium is also structured around three exhibitions:
• Contagions visuelles, an exhibition for the Espace de Création numérique du Jeu de Paume (10 May — 31 December 2022, curated by Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel with Nicola Carboni).
• Ces images qui ont fait l’Europe / Those Images That Made Europe, a digital exhibition hosted by Europeana.eu (forthcoming June 2022)
• Correspondances, a ‘real’ exhibition at the University of Geneva (16–30 May 2022) on the circulation of images, with works and texts by students from the chair in digital humanities at UNIGE (Prof. Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel) and the Atelier de Photographie at the Beaux-Arts de Paris led by Marie José Burki.
Organisation
• Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel, Professeure à l’université de Genève, chaire des humanités numériques
• Léa Saint-Raymond, postdoctorante, ENS-PSL / IMAGO
• Centre d’excellence Jean Monnet IMAGO, ENS-PSL (https://www.imago.ens.fr), en partenariat avec le projet FNS VISUAL CONTAGIONS, Université de Genève (https://visualcontagions.unige.ch)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
T H U R S D A Y , 9 J U N E 2 0 2 2
8.30 Welcome and Coffee
9.30 Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel (UNIGE) and Léa Saint-Raymond (ENS-PSL), Introduction
9.45 Keynote
• Adeline Rispal, L’Étoffe de l’Europe®, une œuvre pour tisser l’avenir [The Fabric of Europe, A Work to Weave the Future]
10.45 Pause
11.00 Morning Session
• Areti Adamopoulou (University of Ioannina), The Pediment and the Column: The Persistence of Values
• Fabienne Gallaire (INP), A Stable Continent: On the Horse and the Other Animal Attributes of Europe in Early Modern Allegories, 16th–18th c.
• Eveline Deneer (University of Utrecht), A Light on Europe: The International and Intermedial Trajectory of a Medieval Chandelier at the Turn of the 19th Century
12.30 Lunch
14.00 Afternoon Session
• Sylvain-Karl Gosselet (CNRS, Université de Paris Cité, LARCA), Fashionable Europe: Iconological Wonders à la Bonnart
• Emilia Olechnowicz (Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences), Fabrication of Europe: Europe as the Space and the Myth in Early Modern Costume Books
• Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel (UNIGE), What Images Made Europe in the Era of Illustrated Print? The Imago/Visual Contagions Project
• Nicola Carboni (UNIGE), The Rise of Machines: A Data-Driven Approach to the Study of Image Circulations
• Marie Barras (UNIGE), Visual Hits from the Past: Tracing the Global Circulation of Art Images from 1890 until 1990
17.00 Pause
17.30 Grégory Chatonsky (artist) – Réalisme contrefactuel : l’introduction des images possibles dans l’histoire de l’art [Counterfactual Realism: The Introduction of Possible Images in Art History]
18.30 Roundtable — Europe between Its Vision and Its Images / Vision et images de l’Europe
• Thomas Serrier (Université Lille III), Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel (UNIGE), Léa Saint-Raymond (ENS-PSL) and the team of the journal Le Grand Continent
19.30 Cocktail Reception
F R I D A Y , 1 0 J U N E 2 0 2 2
9.00 Coffee
10.00 Keynote
• Christophe Charle (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), The Cultural Spaces of Europe in the 19th Century
11.00 Pause
11.15 Morning Session
• Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen (Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art, Clark Art Institute), Posture and the Invention of European Art
• Léa Saint-Raymond (ENS-PSL) and Quentin Bernet (Ecole du Louvre), The ‘Madonna of Humility’: A Pattern That Made Europe, 14th–16th c.
12.15 Lunch
13.45 Coffee
14.00 Afternoon Session
• Marie Blanc (Université Grenoble Alpes), An Image of Europe for and by Its Tourists during the Cold War: The Example of Czechoslovakia
• Paolo Villa (University of Udine), War and Peace: The Film « iconeme » of the Urban Square as Mirror of Europe in Translation, 1944–1948
• Lefteris Spyrou (Institute for Mediterranean Studies-FORTH), Promoting a Shared European Cultural Heritage: The Council of Europe’s Art Exhibitions in the 1950s
• Antje Kramer (Université Rennes 2), T 1956-9 by Hans Hartung: A Line Drawn between Europe and Africa?
• Matteo Bertele (Ca’Foscari University of Venice), Defining European Art through International Exhibitions, 1955–1958
18.30 Evening at Jeu de Paume Museum (Auditorium)
à propos the exhibition Visual Contagions / Contagions visuelles; les images dans la mondialisation – Jeu de Paume, Espace de Création numérique — with Marta Ponsa (Jeu de Paume), Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel and Nicola Carboni (UNIGE), and the artists Valentine Bernasconi, Robin Champenois, Nora Fatehi, Thomas Gauffroy-Naudin, Anim Jeon, Rui-Long Monico
U of Buckingham | MA in French and British Decorative Arts
MA in French and British Decorative Arts and Historic Interiors
University of Buckingham, starting September 2022
Bursary applications due by 20 June 2022
Applications are invited for a bursary on the University of Buckingham’s MA in Decorative Arts and Historic Interiors starting September 2022. Generously funded by The Leche Trust, the award is worth £7,500 and will contribute towards course fees. The deadline for bursary applications is Monday, 20 June, 4.30pm.
This unique MA in French and British Decorative Arts and Interiors, taught in partnership with the Wallace Collection, focuses on the development of interiors and decorative arts in England and France in the ‘long’ eighteenth century (c.1660–c.1830) and their subsequent rediscovery and reinterpretation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
A key element of the course is the emphasis on the first-hand study of furniture, silver, and ceramics, where possible in the context of historic interiors. Based in central London, it draws upon the outstanding collections of the nearby Wallace Collection and the Victoria and Albert Museum as well as the expertise of the Wallace Collection curatorial staff and other leading specialists who participate in the teaching.
Bursary priority will be given to applicants:
• with excellent academic qualifications, seeking, or currently pursuing careers in museums, the built heritage or conservation,
• in need of financial assistance,
• have a strong interest in the decorative arts and historic buildings,
• or, for those wishing to go on to pursue academic research in the decorative arts and historic interiors.
The bursary is also open to part-time students commencing their studies in 2022 for whom the funding would be spread over two-years. To be eligible for the bursary, students will need to have applied for and been offered a place on the course.
Online Symposium | Women and Religion in 18th-C France
After Magdeleine Horthemels, Burial of Nuns at the Abbey of Port-Royal-des-Champs (Musée de Port-Royal des Champs).
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
From the conference website:
Women and Religion in Eighteenth-Century France: Ideas, Controversies, Representations
Online, Queen Mary, University of London, 24 June 2022
Organized by Marie Giraud and Cathleen Mair
From Catholics to Protestants, abbesses to lay sisters, or even artists and salonnières, religious women played an important role in the social, cultural, and political life of France during the eighteenth century. Drawing on new approaches and sources, this interdisciplinary symposium will consider the identities, controversies, ideas, experiences, and representations of religious women in the period. It will explore how women of faith navigated, adopted, challenged, or subverted the religious canon, cultural norms, and social conventions as the understanding of religion, politics, and power shifted rapidly throughout the eighteenth century.
The keynote address will be delivered by Professor Mita Choudhury (Vassar College), whose work on gender, sexuality, and the place of nuns within the larger political and intellectual world of pre-revolutionary France lays the groundwork for further studies of women religious in the period.
The symposium will take place online via Zoom and is free to attend. All times in BST. Please click here to register to attend. The Zoom link will be circulated with registered attendees 24 hours in advance. A PDF version of the programme is available to download here.
This event is generously supported by London Arts and Humanities Partnership and the Doctoral College Initiative Fund at Queen Mary University of London.
P R O G R A M M E
9.30 Welcome and Housekeeping
• Marie Giraud (QMUL) and Cathleen Mair (QMUL)
9.45 Panel 1 — Living Faith: Everyday Religion in Women’s Letters
Chair: Ben Jackson (Birmingham)
• Cormac Begadon (Durham University), Nuns and Their Confessors: Appeals, Emotions, and Gender in the English Convents
• Gemma Betros (Australian National University), Marie de Botidoux: Religion in the Life of a Young Woman in Late-Eighteenth-Century Paris
10.45 Panel 2 — Recovering Voices: Women Religious in Print Culture
Chair: Gemma Tidman (QMUL)
• Rebecca Short (University of Oxford), Posthumous Presence: Religious Authority in the Lettres à une illustre morte (1770)
• Sean Heath (Independent Scholar), Je ne suis qu’une femme: Madame de Lionne’s Intervention in the Chinese Rites Controversy, 1700–1705
11.45 Break
12.00 Panel 3 — Faith on Trial: Religious Sects and the State
Chair: Liesbeth Corens (QMUL)
• Sarah Barthélemy (Durham University / Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles), Gender, Catholicism, and Dissimulation: The Trial of Adélaïde Champion de Cicé
• Otto Selles (Calvin University), Prophétesses de Sion: Women and the Multipliant Sect (Montpellier, 1720–1723)
13.00 Lunch Break
14.00 Panel 4 — Contested Meanings: Women Religious and Revolutionary Politics
Chair: Ben James (KCL)
• Corinne Gressang (Erskine College), What Does Liberty Mean to a Nun?
• Richard Yoder (Pennsylvania State University), Jacqueline-Aimée Brohon: Victim-Soul and Revolutionary Prophet
15.00 Panel 5 — Representing Faith: Spaces and Objects of Devotion
Chair: Hannah Williams (QMUL)
• Killian Harrer (University of Munich), Wellsprings of Devotion: Marian Apparitions and Female Pilgrims in Revolutionary France
• Samuel Weber (EHESS), Handmaids of the Sacred Heart: Nuns’ Production of Paraphernalia and the Making of Sentimental Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century France
16.00 Break
16.15 Keynote Lecture
Chair: Miri Rubin (QMUL)
• Mita Choudhury (Vassar College), Reflecting on Gender, Religion, and the Historian’s Craft
Versailles Acquires Portrait of Catherine Duchemin
Press release from château de Versailles, via Art Daily (28 May 2022). . .
Unidentified artist, Portrait of Catherine Duchemin, oil on canvas (Palace of Versailles Dist RMN, C. Fouin).
The Palace of Versailles has just acquired an oil on canvas painting of Catherine Duchemin (1630–1698, the first woman to be admitted as a painter to France’s Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture) in 1663. Acquiring this rare painting serves to further enrich Versailles’ collection of Académie artists’ portraits, which until now has featured men exclusively.
Catherine Duchemin was one of the rare few female painters working in 17th-century France and known to us today. She stands out from her fellow female artists in her achievement in being the first woman admitted to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture on 14 April 1663 upon presenting a painting of flowers that prompted the academy to feel it was a “duty” and an “honour,” “in accordance with the King’s wishes […] to spread her grace among all those who excel in the arts of painting and sculpture […] without regard to differences between the sexes.”
Catherine Duchemin was born in 1630, the daughter of a Parisian painter and decorator who may well have taught her the basics of painting. At the age of 27 in 1657, she married the sculptor François Girardon. Despite a number of pioneering examples at the time, female artists were relatively rare in those days: it would take a further generation for their artistic careers to flourish in Paris. This first admission of a woman to the Académie was of paramount importance, serving as an event that would prompt change beyond Catherine Duchemin’s own life, as others followed in her footsteps up until the early 18th century.
The model’s steady gaze meets the viewer’s eyes as she readies herself to begin painting a bouquet of double-flowered anemones and poppies in a vase. The format of the canvas, the opulence of the armchair, and the elegance of the colourful, black ribbon-embellished clothing are all highly ambitious.
Although the painting is unsigned, cross-referencing it with portraits from the Palace of Versailles’ collection and notably those produced by Académie members may allow for this remarkably well-executed piece to be attributed to a named artist. Catherine Duchemin may have painted the floral composition herself, which would make this portrait the only remaining example of her work. Indeed, the artist “excelled at painting flowers” to the extent that “so real were they, you might almost smell them,” according to her first biographer, Florent Le Comte. The three flowers—one budding, the other in full bloom, and the third a poppy used to symbolise slumber—may be read as an allegory for life.
Once it has been restored, this portrait will fit seamlessly in with the exceptional collection of Académie member portraits that now hang in the Louis XIV rooms. These 17th-century artworks are invaluable testimonies to how the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture would once have worked: a key component in Louis XIV’s arts promotion policy.
Enfilade 
leave a comment