Exhibition | British Silver: The Wealth of a Nation
Thanks to Courtney Barnes of Style Court for this one. From The Met:
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British Silver: The Wealth of a Nation
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 15 May 2012 — 20 January 2013
The production of silver in Britain was understood to be the embodiment of the country’s prosperity—an outward expression of political stability, taste, and industriousness. This exhibition explores some of the ingredients that made the English silver trade such a vigorous success in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Drawn largely from the Museum’s collections, it also includes extraordinary loans from private collectors, including Paul de Lamerie’s great rococo coffeepot of 1738 and the justly famous Maynard Dish belonging to the Cahn Family Foundation.
Since sterling silver was the coinage of the realm, a silver dinner service was, most literally, worth its weight. But the display and use of silver meant more than riches. Silver was an expression of a patron’s taste and education, designed to celebrate his achievements and complement the architecture of his house.
In England, as in Continental Europe, a rich display of silver was essential to the expression of power. Government officials and emissaries dispatched to foreign courts were expected to entertain in a style that reflected the dignity of the English crown. To ensure that they could set an impressive table, an office holder or ambassador was issued a silver service from the Jewel Office, the division of the royal household responsible for precious metals and jewels. Several examples of silver made for ambassadorial use are included in the exhibition. Although the court was an important source of orders for silversmiths, it did not support workshops of its own, and makers broadened their market by serving the growing professional and merchant classes. (more…)
Conference | Activating Stilled Lives, Specimens on Display
From UCL (as noted at BARS) . . .
Activating Stilled Lives: The Aesthetics and Politics of Specimens on Display
UCL History of Art Department, London, 17-18 May 2012
Conference of the AHRC Research Network, ‘The Culture of Preservation’
The past twenty years saw an explosion of exhibitions fathoming the relations between art and science as well as numerous refurbishments of natural history or former colonial museums. Many of these displays and gallery transformations mobilised specimens, be it taxidermied animals or preserved human body parts. Objects were put into new contexts opening up their meanings, others disappeared in storage or travelled back to the countries where they were once collected. The conference will address the challenges institutions face when dealing with formerly living entities and consider the aesthetics and politics of their display. The idea is to discuss the use of specimens in temporary exhibitions, museums or university collections and the role curators, art and artists have been playing in the transformation of these spaces. We would also like to consider how preserved specimens have changed through the altering contexts in which they have been displayed: One could name the initial transformation of organisms into objects, the more recent re-definition of pathological specimens as human remains, or the dramatic rearrangements that took place when natural history, anthropology or anatomy collections (many dating from the nineteenth century) were updated – coinciding with a shift in audiences, from specialists to a broader public. Historical displays were often significantly altered, or even destroyed and replaced by „techy“ but at times also by sentimental, „post-modern“ installations still awaiting a critical assessment.
Beyond that, the question of preservation shall be considered in a more expanded sense, as this subject area offers a unique opportunity to reflect more broadly on issues of conservation and their ethics and to raise a variety of questions such as: How and why do various cultures preserve elements of what is considered as nature? How does this relate to environmental notions of conservation and extinction? Should flawed specimens be disposed of? Can museums as a whole be considered cultural preserves? Should we preserve the preserves? And last but not least: Do we really need to embalm everything?
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T H U R S D A Y , 1 7 M A Y 2 0 1 2
UCL, JZ Young Lecture Theatre, Anatomy Building, Gower Street
2.30 Mechthild Fend & Petra Lange-Berndt: Exhibiting Preserves
Session One: Reassembling
Chair: Sam Alberti (Director of Museums and Archives, The Royal College of Surgeons of England)
3.00 Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (Historian of Science, Berlin): Preparations Revisited
3.45 Rose Marie San Juan (Art Historian, London): Bones in Transit: the Re-Animation of Human Bone in Early Modern Cabinets of Display
4.30 John MacKenzie (Professor Emeritus of Imperial History, Lancaster): The Natural World and Imperial Legitimation: Hunting, Trophies, Taxidermy and Museums
5.15 Tea break
5.45 Robert Marbury (Artist / Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermy, Baltimore): Personal Computers as the New Wunderkammer and the Rise of Rogue Taxidermy
6.30 Reception at the Grant Museum of Zoology, University College of London (Rockefeller Building, University College London, 21 University Street, London WC1E 6DE)
F R I D A Y , 1 8 M A Y 2 0 1 2
UCL, Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre, Wilkins Building, South Wing, Gower Street (access via Gower Street / Main Quadrangle or Gordon Street)
Session Two: Handling
Chair: Mechthild Fend (Art Historian, London)
10.00 Petra Lange-Berndt (Art Historian, London): Subsculpture: Assembling a Museum of Attractions
10.45 Steve Baker (Artist and Art Historian, Norfolk): Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead
11.30 Tea Break
12.00 Angela Matyssek (Art Historian, Marburg / Maastricht): “Museumlives”: Mould, Decay and the History of the Object
12.45 Lunch break
Session Three: Displaying
Chair: Bergit Arends (Curator Contemporary Art, The Natural History Museum, London)
14.30 Panel discussion on “Curating Specimens” with Claude d’Anthenaise (Director, Musée de la chasse et de la nature, Paris), Christine Borland (Artist, Glasgow), Lisa O’Sullivan (Director, Center for the History of Medicine, New York Academy of Medicine), Johannes Vogel (Director, Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin)
16.00 Tea break
16.30 Anke te Heesen (Historian of Science, Berlin): Displaying the Infinite Amount
17.15 Nélia Dias (Anthropologist, Lisbon): The Fate of Human Remains from the Musée de l’homme to the Musée du Quai Branly
18.00 Final discussion
Film Shows
A series of related films will be shown during the breaks. Details and links are available at Preserves on Film
The event is open and free for all, but please register with pandora.syperek.09@ucl.ac.uk
Call for Papers | Botany and the Visual Arts at UAAC-AAUC
From the conference website (which includes information on additional sessions). . .
Cross-pollinations: Botany and the Visual Arts, 1700 to the Present
Concordia University, Montreal, 1-3 November 2012
Proposals due 4 June 2012
Panel at the Universities Art Association of Canada (UAAC-AAUC) Annual Conference
This session explores intersections between botany and the visual arts since 1700. Plants have held iconographic significance since the Middle Ages, serving as traditional Christian allegories or as more abstract symbols in the Romantic period. Have the botanical sciences, such as phytognomy or Linnaean taxonomy, contributed to the symbolic charge of particular plants? Vegetation has similarly played an ongoing role in the decorative arts, inspiring motifs as diverse as arabesques to the wallpaper patterns of the Arts and Crafts Movement. How has vegetal ornament engaged with the expanding repertoire of botanical illustrations supplied by imperial expeditions? The eighteenth century also witnessed a major shift from a mechanistic to an organic paradigm of the creative mind. Did the study of plant growth and procreation provoke theories of vegetable genius? This session invites proposals across mediums and cultures that consider how botany has influenced the subjects of art, artistic practice, and concepts of artistic generation. Papers that investigate how the arts have shaped knowledge of the vegetable kingdom are also welcome.
Please email abstracts (250 words) and a short bio to Nina Amstutz, the session chair, at nina.amstutz@utoronto.ca. Membership to the UAAC-AAUC required for conference participation.
Call for Reviews from BSECS
Online Reviews of Events
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The British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies has established a new online system for reviews of events which involve significant performances of eighteenth-century works, or the input of scholarship on the eighteenth century. The system is designed to cover theatre, music, media (in all forms), and fine art. The Society is keen to cover as many countries and exhibitions as possible.
The reviews are designed to be more discursive than the usual press reviews, and they remain online with a permanent URL, and are therefore citable. The system can be found at: http://www.bsecs.org.uk/Reviews/.
The Society is looking both for reviewers and for recommendations for fine art events to be covered. In particular we would be delighted to hear of smaller events which might otherwise not receive press attention. The reviews editor, Matthew McCormack, can be contacted through the BSECS website.
Exhibition Programming | The ‘Westmorland’
A posting here at Enfilade noted the exhibition last November. Here we include details on the programming at The Ashmolean.
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The English Prize: The Capture of the Westmorland, an Episode of the Grand Tour
The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 17 May — 27 August 2012
The Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 20 September 2012 — 6 January 2013
Curated by Scott Wilcox, Elisabeth Fairman, and María Dolores Sánchez-Jáuregui Alpañés
The story of the Westmorland, an armed merchant ship sailing from Livorno to London in January 1779, is one of colourful 18th-century personalities and modern detective work. Consigned to the ship, by a cast of characters that included artists, aristocrats and dealers, was a precious cargo of art and antiquities, books, and luxury goods such as 32 wheels of Parmesan cheese. Captured by two French warships on 7 January 1779 and declared a ‘prize of war’, the Westmorland and the goods on board were acquired by King Carlos III of Spain who presented many of the works of art to the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid. Other items were eventually scattered across Spanish museums; one painting ended up as far away as St Petersburg. Reconstructed with archival discoveries and research in Spanish collections, The English Prize presents 120 objects including paintings, drawings, sculptures, books and maps from the fateful voyage, in a vivid recreation of the Grand Tour and the high seas.
The exhibition is the result of an extraordinary research project begun in the late 1990s, with gaps in the story filled by discoveries made in recent years. It was found, for instance, that the mysterious marking ‘P. Y’ on books and drawings in the Academia indicated ‘Presa Ynglesa’ (‘The English Prize’). The original inventories of the ship’s crates which survive in the archives in Madrid are remarkably thorough and have allowed the identification of many items which were on the Westmorland when it was captured. Using these records and studying the notes and marginalia scribbled on books and maps by their owners, it is now possible to link the objects and works of art to the individuals who were sending them home to Britain.
Amongst the highlights of the exhibition are portraits of Grand Tourists Francis Bassett and George Legge (Viscount Lewisham), by Pompeo Batoni; a group of amazingly fresh watercolours by John Robert Cozens made on his first trip to Italy; and portrait busts by Irish sculptor Christopher Hewetson who was working in Rome. Of the tourists, collectors and dealers who had consigned works of art and souvenirs to the Westmorland, we find the Scottish painter Allan Ramsay; the diplomat and dealer John Udny; a Scottish landowner and lawyer, Sir John Henderson of Fordell; and such a high ranking aristocrat as the Duke of Gloucester, brother of George III.
The exhibition website is available here»
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From The Ashmolean:
P U B L I C S T U D Y D A Y
The Experience of Italy: Travel, Collecting and the Grand Tour
Headly Lecture Theatre, Friday, 8 June 2012, 10am–5pm
This special one-day event looks at the cultural context of the Westmorland and its story. As a rare time-capsule, the ship can help us uncover the concerns and interests of British tourists, collectors and artists, from their musical education to their fascination with volcanoes and excavations. Over the day, six distinguished speakers deliver lectures with the opportunity to ask questions and discuss the varied topics.
The Westmorland and the Mechanics of the Grand Tour in the 1770s
Jonathan Yarker, University of Cambridge
Vases and Volcanoes: Sir William Hamilton and Collecting for Posterity
Kim Sloan, British Museum
Enjoying the Souvenirs of Travel: Art and Antiquities at Home
Clare Hornsby, author of Digging and Dealing in 18th-Century Rome
Music and the Musical Outcomes of the Grand Tour
Roderick Swanston, former Professor, Royal College of Music
Women at Grips with the Grand Tour: Adventure, Authority and Anomaly
Chloe Chard, independent scholar
British Artists in Rome
Martin Postle, Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art
Free, spaces limited, to book contact: education.service@ashmus.ox.ac.uk T 01865 278 015
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L E C T U R E S
Uncovering the Westmorland, Step by Step
José María Luzón Nogué, Real Academia de Bellas Artes, Madrid
Thursday, 31 May, 2–3pm
We can reconstruct the extraordinary story of the Westmorland and its cargo thanks to fascinating detective work that began in the 1990s. In this lecture, Prof Luzón, who led the original research project, will take you on the journey which led to the rediscovery of the ship. Free, spaces limited, to book contact E education.service@ashmus.ox.ac.uk T 01865 278015
Marble Mania: Why Was Antique Sculpture So Desirable?
Ruth Guilding, art historian and curator
Wednesday, 20 June, 2–3pm
The Westmorland’s cargo included 23 crates of marble statues, and the ship was one of many which brought the souvenirs of British travellers back to London in the 1770s. Dr Guilding explores the way that antique sculpture was imagined, understood and used by collectors in England at the time. Free, spaces limited, to book contact E education.service@ashmus.ox.ac.uk T 01865 278015
The First English Prize: The Story of the Arundel Marbles
Susan Walker, Keeper of Antiquities, Ashmolean Museum
Wednesday, 27th June, 2–3pm
Dr Susan Walker, Keeper of Antiquities, explores the history of the earliest collection of classical sculptures and inscriptions in Britain, a treasure of the Ashmolean Museum. Free, spaces limited, to book contact E education.service@ashmus.ox.ac.uk T 01865 278015
‘Magick Land’: British Landscape Painters in Italy in the 1770s
Scott Wilcox, Chief Curator of Art Collections and Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings, Yale Center for British Art
Wednesday, 4th July, 2–3pm
Oil paintings and watercolors on the Westmorland by John Robert Cozens, Jacob More, and Solomon Delane point to a community of British landscape painters active in Italy. This lecture examines that community and the impact of Italy, particularly the Roman Campagna, on the development of British landscape art. Free, spaces limited, to book contact E education.service@ashmus.ox.ac.uk T 01865 278015
Carrying off the Colosseum: The Westmorland and Architecture
Frank Salmon, Head of the Department of History of Art, University of Cambridge
Wednesday, 18 July, 2–3pm
The personal treasures that were being shipped by Grand Tourists on the Westmorland included both real and fictitious drawings of Roman antiquities, as well as design drawings intended for building work back in Britain. This lecture will examine those drawings in the light of the wider culture of Neoclassical architecture and interior design in the second half of the eighteenth century. Free, spaces limited, to book contact E education.service@ashmus.ox.ac.uk T 01865 278015
In Conversation — New Discoveries: The Secret Cargo of Relics
Catherine Whistler, curator of the exhibition, and Barry Williamson
Thursday, 19 July, 11.30am –12.30pm
Just before the exhibition catalogue went to press, the Ashmolean was contacted by Barry Williamson who is an authority on the Arundell family of Wardour Castle. The Westmorland had a secret cargo, a box of saint’s relics carefully concealed in a plinth of coloured marbles. This was a gift from the Pope to Henry Arundell, eighth Baron Arundell of Wardour. The international research project had tracked these relics in Madrid in early 1789, but the trail had gone cold. Barry Williamson will talk about his discoveries in the family archives and his quest to find the relics. Free, spaces limited, to book contact E education.service@ashmus.ox.ac.uk T 01865 278015
Exhibition | ‘Fashioning Fashion’
This exhibition from LACMA (on display there from 2 October 2010 to 6 March 2011) is currently on view in Berlin and will travel to Paris in the fall. From the German Historical Museum:
Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700-1915
Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, 27 April — 29 July 2012
Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, 13 December 2012 — 14 April 2013
With Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700-1915 the German Historical Museum is presenting – exclusively in Germany – a unique collection of historical garments and accessories from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. More than 200 years of European fashion history are on display. The renowned Belgian scenographer Bob Verhelst has specially designed the exhibition architecture for Berlin. Glamorous women’s costumes and elegant men’s suits are adorned with elaborately fashioned trimmings. Luxurious clothing of the wealthy haute-bourgeoisie and nobility are shown, including such highlights as the gold-embroidered dress of a Portuguese queen and the turban of the designer Paul Poiret. Fascinating fabrics, exquisitely tailored raiments and precious décor are all to be seen in the museum’s show.
This spectacular exhibition takes us through four chapters focusing on the aesthetic and technical developments of fashion history:
Timeline shows in chronological sequence the changes in the silhouette of women’s dresses and the evolution of men’s suits from brightly coloured to their traditional dark hue.
Textiles informs us about the variety of surfaces that come about through complex weaving, colouring and printing techniques.
Tailoring deals with the process of turning plain material into clothing, with special emphasis on forming, bracing and constricting techniques.
Trim presents the finery of fashionable clothes: delicate laces, magnificent fine-wire embroidery, artful silk trimmings and colourfully patterned and sequined accessories.
Call for Papers | RSA Panel on Confraternities, 1350-1750
This session at next year’s meeting of the Renaissance Society of America could include eighteenth-century topics — and good to know there’s a group dedicated to confraternity studies. Coming from the Midwest, I think April in San Diego sounds lovely. -CH
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RSA Session: Confraternities and Urban Performance, 1350-1750
San Diego, 4-6 April 2013
Proposals due by 1 June 2012
The performances staged by confraternities in the streets and squares of medieval and early modern cities have been the focus of considerable scholarly attention in recent years. The Society for Confraternity Studies seeks to further this conversation by soliciting submissions for a series of panels that examine the relationship between corporate devotion and urban theatre.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to, devotional theatre, sacre rappresentazioni, execution rites, miracle plays, charitable performances, alms collections, relic translations, funeral ceremonies. Submissions are especially welcome from scholars using innovative methodologies to frame and characterize the role of confraternal performance, broadly conceived, in popular devotion. Submissions from all geographical areas and through the time period of 1350 to 1750 are welcome. Please email a brief abstract (maximum 250 words) and a CV to Diana Presciutti (dpresciutti@wooster.edu). The submission deadline is 1 June 2012. The session is sponsored by the Society for Confraternity Studies.
Exhibition | 1740, Un Abrégé du Monde
On at the INHA in Paris this summer, as noted by Hélène Bremer:
1740, Un Abrégé du Monde: Savoirs et Collections autour de Dezallier d’Argenville
Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris, 4 May — 27 July 2012
Alexandre Isidore Leroyde Barde (1777-1828), Choix de coquillages, encre noire et gouache, 125cm × 90cm (Paris: Musée du Louvre)
Naturaliste et historien de l’art, Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d’Argenville (1680-1765) fut membre de nombreuses académies scientifiques, auteur d’une théorie du jardinage, de traités sur les pierres et les coquillages (1742), et de l’Abrégé de la vie des plus fameux peintres de toutes les écoles… (1745-1752). Il fut aussi un grand collectionneur qui possédait plus de cinq cents dessins et de rares spécimens naturels. Pour interroger cette figure symptomatique de la dynamique entre arts et savoirs au XVIIIe siècle, l’Institut national d’histoire de l’art a voulu retrouver la fonction première de l’un des espaces-clefs de la Galerie Colbert, une ancienne boutique, car les savants-collectionneurs du siècle des Lumières étaient étroitement liés aux marchés de l’art et des curiosités naturelles.
L’exposition s’organise donc autour d’un comptoir qui évoque non seulement le long meuble à surface plane sur lequel les marchands échangeaient coquillages, estampes, tableaux et dessins, mais aussi les implantations commerciales sur les côtes des colonies d’où provenaient ces étranges objets naturels, lesquels manifestaient à la fois la soif de découverte du monde et l’ambition encyclopédique de ces amateurs.
Les curieux français du XVIIIe siècle furent avant tout des collectionneurs d’objets, que leur goût portait indistinctement sur les produits de l’Art ou de la Nature. Ils prêtaient également une attention remarquable à l’arrangement, la disposition dans l’espace des choses naturelles et artificielles constituant leurs cabinets. À cet égard, il faut noter que Dezallier fut l’un des premiers auteurs français à théoriser, dans un article de 1727, l’arrangement idéal d’un cabinet de curiosités, tout comme il fut le premier à employer en français le terme muséographie, en 1742.
Les années 1740 sont celles de la métamorphose des lieux de savoirs, puisque l’on passe alors des salles dédiées, dans les demeures privées, à la présentation d’objets de collection, à la création de musées, autrement dit de salles publiques d’exposition, où les visiteurs sont invités à s’instruire. C’est aussi l’époque de la mutation des savoirs livresques, dont les formes et les structures sont alors repensées dans le but de dresser des inventaires totalisants, comme l’Encyclopédie ou les catalogues raisonnés illustrés.
The exhibition press release is available (as a PDF) here»
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From Fage éditions:
Anne Lafont, ed., 1740, Un Abrégé du Monde: Savoirs et Collections autour de Dezallier d’Argenville (Paris: Fage éditions) 304 pages, ISBN: 9782849752609, 35€.
Contributeurs: Nebahat Avcioglu, Lise Bicart-Sée, Sarah Boyer, Sabine Cartuyvels, Pascal Dubourg Glatigny, Jennifer Ferng, Isabelle Flour, Catherine Girard, Martial Guédron, Charlotte Guichard, Pierre-Yves Lacour, Anne Lafont, Gaëtane Maës, Marie-Pauline Martin, Dominique Morelon, Aline Pelletier, Jessica Priebe, Chiara Savettieri, Anke Te Heesen, Isabelle Tillerot
1740 un abrégé du monde traite des modalités de présentation des objets naturels et artificiels au sein des cabinets de curiosités, des relations entre les marchands et les collectionneurs de coquillages, estampes, tableaux, dessins, et des systèmes de classification en vigueur au temps de l’Encyclopédie et de Linné…
Rédigé par vingt spécialistes sous la direction d’Anne Lafont, conseillère scientifique à l’INHA, l’ouvrage gravite autour de la figure du naturaliste, historien de l’art et collectionneur français Dezallier d’Argenville (1685-1765), pivot de la dynamique nature/culture au XVIIIe siècle.
Il est organisé sous la forme d’un abécédaire de vingt-sept articles illustrés abordant des concepts qui sont au cœur de cette enquête sur les arts et les savoirs naturalistes : Abrégé, Amateur, Basseporte, Cabinet, Dessein, École, Fossiles, Grotesque, Histoire naturelle, Illustration, Jardin, Kiosque, Laboratoire, Manière, Numérotation, Ornement, Parterre, Plume, Quartz, Rocaille, Système, Table, Unique, Vernis, Vie, Watteau, Zoomorphose.
Exhibition | Splendeur de la Peinture sur Porcelaine
On at Versailles this summer, as noted by Hélène Bremer:
Splendeur de la peinture sur porcelaine: Charles Nicolas Dodin
et la manufacture de Vincennes-Sèvres au XVIIIe siècle
Château de Versailles, 15 May — 9 September 2012
Du 15 mai au 9 septembre 2012, le château de Versailles présente l’exposition Splendeur de la peinture sur porcelaine. Charles Nicolas Dodin et la manufacture de Vincennes-Sèvres au XVIIIe siècle dans les appartements de Madame de Maintenon et dans la salle des Gardes du Roi.
Cette exposition est consacrée à un des peintres les plus doués de la Manufacture royale de porcelaine au XVIIIe siècle, Charles Nicolas Dodin, dont les œuvres ont été, de son vivant comme au siècle suivant, recherchées par les plus grands amateurs de porcelaine. L’exposition vise à mettre en évidence à la fois l’évolution artistique et la diversité des sources d’inspiration de Charles Nicolas Dodin.
Au long de ses quarante-neuf années à la Manufacture, Dodin a contribué aux plus grandes commandes passées par les rois et leur entourage, en particulier les maîtresses de Louis XV, et par des souverains étrangers, comme Catherine II de Russie. A travers ces œuvres de prestige, l’exposition retrace l’évolution artistique très lisible et éclairante de l’œuvre de Dodin, à l’instar de celle d’un peintre de chevalet contemporain.
Elle met également en lumière la diversité des sources d’inspiration de Dodin, par la présentation des gravures ou des tableaux qui lui ont servi de sources d’inspiration. Ces œuvres permettent de montrer les correspondances très profondes qui, dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle, existaient entre les arts (peintures, dessins, estampes, sculptures, médailles, arts du feu) et l’extraordinaire émulation artistique qui devait en résulter.
Dodin a essentiellement été, comme on le disait au XVIIIe siècle, un peintre “en miniature”, ou un peintre de figures, c’est-à-dire qu’il a exercé ses talents dans le genre le plus élevé dans la hiérarchie en vigueur à la Manufacture. Dès leur exécution, ses œuvres ont figuré dans les plus grandes collections d’œuvres d’art, notamment au château de Versailles, et y sont demeurées au siècle suivant.
Exhibition | Trompe-l’œil: Imitations, Pastiches, et Autres Illusions
From the Musée de la Mode et du Textile:
Trompe-l’œil: Imitations, Pastiches et Autres Illusions
Musée de la Mode et du Textile, Paris, 2 February 2012 — November 2013
Récipient en forme de chou. Göggingen, Manufacture de Josef I de Hesse-Darmstad, 1748-52, faïence émailée (Paris: Les Arts Décoratifs) Photo: Jean Tholance
In the Musée des Arts Décoratifs’ Study Gallery the public can discover the wealth of its collections via selections of rarely or never previously shown works from its storerooms, shown for an 18-month period. Trompe-l’oeil, as its name indicates, is meant to trick the eye, and originated in painting, in which the illusion created by a painted object relies heavily on perspective and chiaroscuro.
In decorative art, this ‘trickery of the eye’ took very diverse forms. Wallpapers, for instance, proved ideal for this form of expression. From the most modest to the most sumptuous, they all imitate materials: wood, lacquer, tiles, straw, velvet, and even framed pictures. Many imitations were of course done for economic reasons, and in this game of substitutes, one sees that for centuries many materials have been imitated by others: marbled ceramics imitating jasper, glazed ceramics imitating porphyry or gold, paste imitating the diamond, linoleum floorboards, and so on. This game of illusions evolved in the 19th century, when, historicism oblige, it was not only materials that were imitated but motifs too. Owen Jones’ famous The Grammar of Ornament, like its French equivalent, Albert Racinet’s l’Ornement polychrome, provided numerous medieval and Moorish motifs for 19th-century creators.
Fashion was no exception and became the theatre of the most outrageous illusions. In the 18th and 19th centuries, wigs, tournures and faux-cul were worn to give false impressions. In the 20th century, illusion focussed less on form than on the fabric itself, with the appearance of false wears and tears, false pockets, false buttons, etc. Like a treasure hunt traversing centuries and materials, this exhibition invites us into the great game of illusion or the ‘vertigo of imitation’.
More information (in French) is available here»
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