Appel à communication : The art of mourning (Würzburg, 6-7 dec. 2024)

THE ART OF MOURNING. Emotion and Restraint in the Visual Arts, 1750–1850.
First Wellhöfer Colloquium, Thursday 6–Friday 7 December 2024
Würzburg, Martin von Wagner Museum der Universität Würzburg and Toscanasaal der Residenz

Organized by: Martin von Wagner Museum der Universität Würzburg (Damian Dombrowski) und Deutsche Gesellschaft für die Erforschung des 19. Jahrhunderts (Michael Thimann)

Deadline: Jan 31, 2024

In an acclaimed essay of 1986, Yve-Alain Bois identified “The Task of Mourning” as a characteristic feature of painting in the later twentieth century. However, this emo-tionally charged purpose had already been ubiquitously present in many forms of artistic expression in the decades around 1800, before it became overshadowed by the materialistic art movements from the middle of the nineteenth century. Prior to that, images of mourning occur with overriding frequency, to such an extent that they lend themselves for questioning the polarity of Neo-classicism and Romanticism.
From c. 1750, mournful motifs and sentiments are conspicuously present in virtually all genres within the visual arts. Art historical research has addressed this phenomenon mainly by investigating the impact of secularization and its subsequent dissolving of iconographic norms (e. g., Werner Busch, Das sentimentalische Bild, 1993). In fact, mourning as existential subject matter is isolated, sometimes devoid of moralistic or theological linkage, for the first time during the later Enlightenment, sometimes referred to as ‘saddle period’. In tombs designed by Antonio Canova, old and new motifs of figural grief are constantly played through; John Flaxman fills one sheet after another with sorrowful processions; within the paper architecture of Étienne-Louis Boullée, mourning and the sublime are connected through the void of cenotaphs; the school of Jacques-Louis David chooses, in a rather obsessive manner, tragic scenes informed by sentiments of lament; large numbers of mourning figures populate the works of the Düsseldorf School. In painting as in sculpture, let alone in the graphic arts, grief and sorrow are everywhere; military commanders, politicians, artists, and popes are bemoaned, just as family members, suicides and persons sentenced to death. Lost honor or lost homeland, even the passing of time, are occasions of mourning.
Tiepolo’s depiction of the grieving Achilles in the Villa Valmarana (1757) already fea-tures a clear distinction from Baroque pathetic formula. The contrary stance compared to everything before is experienced in the most immediate manner—but how to grasp it conceptually? For sure, images of mourning are hallmarked by emotional control; thus, we can understand them as an inversion of heightened expression and pathos. Why, then, is there a desire for pictures of painful yet patiently endured loss just in the age of Enlightenment and its aftermath—in a period that is characterized by faith in progress like none before it? For what reason were these pictures considered particularly appropriate for transformations of Christian imagery? Is there a deeper connection between the new visual dimension of mourning and changed gender-specific attributions? Can we establish a causality between the withdrawal of mourners into themselves on one side, and neo-classicist reductionism on the other? What are the effects of the expanded canon of antiquities, caused by contemporary archaeology, on the iconography of mourning? How to define the share of human science—of new anthropological concepts, early forms of psychology, or research into human emotions in terms of physical and medical scholarship—in the visualization of mourning? How to relate, in a methodically sound fashion, the boom of mourning in the visual arts with social and political upheaval?

The conference seeks to explore, on a large scale, these and other questions around the historical theme of mourning. Possible topics range from the history of motifs to the history of mentality. Contributions from related disciplines, such as musicology, literary studies, or history of science are equally welcome. Accepted languages are English and German. Papers should not exceed 20 minutes.
Contributors are invited to submit an abstract (max. 2,000 characters, including spac-es) accompanied by a brief CV (max. 1,500 characters, including spaces) before January 6, 2024 to michael.thimann@phil.uni-goettingen.de and damian.dombrowski@uni-wuerzburg.de. Participants will be contacted by January 31, 2024.
„The Art of Mourning“ is the first edition of the Würzburg „Wellhöfer-Colloquium“. Every two years, it will investigate research topics from the history of art between 1750 and 1850 from an interdisciplinary perspective.