Appel à communication : Congrès de l’American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (Pittsburgh, 31 mars-3 avril 2016)

Le congrès de l’American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) se tiendra en 2016 à Pittsburgh, à l’hôtel Omni William Penn.
Les propositions d’intervention doivent être expédiées aux organisateurs des sessions avant le 15 septembre 2015.

Liste de toutes les sessions prévues  : Sessions de l’ASECS 2016

On trouvera ci-dessous quelques sessions relevant de l’histoire de l’art,  susceptibles d’intéresser  les membres de l’APAHAU :

“The Eighteenth Century on Film” (Northeast American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies)
John H. O’Neill, Department of English, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY 13323; Tel: (315) 859-4463; Fax: (315) 859-4390; E-mail: joneill@hamilton.edu

This special session sponsored by NEASECS invites papers on the topic “The Eighteenth Century on Film.” The session encourages proposals for papers on any aspect of this topic, including film and television adaptations of eighteenth-century narratives (for example “Dangerous Liaisons,” “Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story”), films set in the period (e.g., “Stage Beauty,” “Amazing Grace”), and explorations of eighteenth-century history (e.g., Peter Watkins’s “Culloden,” Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette”). Although this session is sponsored by NEASECS, all members of ASECS are welcome to submit proposals.

 

“Inside the Artist’s Studio”
Heather McPherson, Department of Art and Art History, AEIVA 211, 1221 10th Avenue South, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294; Tel: (205) 934-4942; Fax: (205) 975-2836; E-mail: hmcphers@uab.edu

This session will examine the artist’s studio as a multi-faceted site of artistic experimentation, creation, and display; social interchange and artistic camaraderie; and financial exchange with collectors and dealers that frequently blurred the lines between public and private and art and commerce. I am interested in papers exploring the artist’s studio in the long eighteenth century from diverse national and global perspectives ranging from painting techniques and chemical experiments; to apprenticeship and the role of assistants in producing art and replicas; to the studio’s role as an exhibition venue; to its growing significance as an artistic and literary theme that was closely tied to artistic identity and professional status, sometimes functioning as a figurative self-portrait of the artist. The expanding coverage of the arts in the press and the advent of public exhibitions contributed to the public’s growing interest in the visual arts and the image and personality of the artist.

 

“Empires of Print”
Douglas Fordham, McIntire Department of Art, University of Virginia, Fayerweather Hall, P.O. Box 400130, Charlottesville, VA 22904; Tel: (434) 284-1995; E-mail: fordham@virginia.edu

A quarter century after Mary Louise Pratt published Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, this session reconsiders travel narratives in the long eighteenth century, and it places a particular emphasis on books and reproductive prints as physical objects with their own imperial histories and narratives. With books, prints, and printed ephemera more accessible to scholars than ever before, this session reconsiders “imperial print culture” not just from the perspective of subject matter and thematics, but also as commodities and agents within the flows and networks of Western imperialism. Paper submissions are encouraged from a variety of disciplines and the travel narratives and images may pertain to any region or nation in the long eighteenth century.

 

“Rubens in the Eighteenth Century”
Kaylin Haverstock Weber and Leslie M. Scattone, (Weber) 4120 Oberlin Street, Houston, Texas 77005; (Scattone) 6236 Overbrook Lane, Houston, Texas 77057; Tel: (Weber) (713) 828- 3646 and (Scattone) (832) 419-3364; E-mail: kaylinhweber@yahoo.com and leslie.scattone@gmail.com

Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) cast a long shadow on art and culture not just in the seventeenth century, but throughout the eighteenth century to the present day. Through hundreds of paintings as well as thousands of reproductive prints, the work of Rubens had a major impact on artists, patrons, collectors and writers. In the eighteenth century, the dynamic art market brought even greater access to his work both in Europe and her colonies. While many artists looked to Rubens for artistic inspiration, some also saw him as a model of an artist who attained the status of a gentleman, collector, diplomat, and court painter. His legacy, which has been the subject of a recent major exhibition, is a vast topic that deserves greater investigation. Through this seminar we hope to expand the scope of the current discourse to include not only European art, but also colonial art, as well as Rubens’s influence in terms of art criticism, literature, and fashion.

 

“Satirical Images: Between Sociability, Animosity, and Entertainment”
Kathryn Desplanque and Jessica Fripp, (Desplanque) AAHVS, Duke University, PO Box 90766, Duham, NC 27708; (Fripp) TCU School of Art, PO Box 298000, Ft Worth, TX, 76129; Tel: (703) 395-6335; (667) 207-3316; E-mail: kathryn.desplanque@duke.edu AND j.fripp@tcu.edu 

The use of graphic satire proliferated in the eighteenth century, from the caricature and portrait charges of the Grand Tour (Pier Leoni Ghezzi, Thomas Patch, François-André Vincent), to political caricature on the continent and in England, to the verbal-visual puns of broadside imagery and street cries series, to the complex allegories that criticized and supported the French Revolution. These different genres of graphic satire are difficult to reconcile because they vary widely in tone: some are oppositional, others are sociable, and others still seemed destined primarily for entertainment. Scholarship on eighteenth-century graphic satire has privileged oppositional and political imagery, neglecting the prolific sociable, amusing, and cultural caricatures whose imagery and tone are often more challenging to decode. Recent scholarship, such as The Efflorescence of Caricature (2010), The Saint-Aubin ‘Livre de caricatures’ (2012), L’Art de la caricature (2014), and Ann Bermingham’s 2015 Clifford Lecture, “Coffee-House Characters and British Visual Humor at the End of the Eighteenth Century,” has begun to bridge persistent gaps in the study of graphic satire, putting into conversation formerly disparate genres of satirical imagery. This panel seeks papers that nuance, overturn, or refine the categories applied to graphic satire—oppositional versus entertaining; political versus cultural; sociable versus slanderous. Possible topics might include, but are not limited to: satire (especially political satire) in the light of sociability; how the circulation of these images through commercial or social exchange relates to their format, including tone or medium; and how satire informs our understanding of relationships between individuals and groups, such as friendship, enmity, rivalry, or comradery.

 

“Picturing the News”
Leslie Ritchie, Department of English Language and Literature, John Watson Hall 4th Floor, 49 Bader Lane, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L3N6; Tel: (613) 533-6000 x74429; Fax: +1-613-533-6872; E-mail: ritchiel@queensu.ca

Unlike their image-laden modern counterparts, eighteenth-century newspapers present their readers with a wall of words. Within their tight columns of text, however, eighteenth-century newspapers allude to, advertise, or represent the pictorial in myriad ways. This panel will consider the role played by the pictorial in news media. Topics may include: advertisements for particular artists or prints; allusions to visual arts topoi or particular art works within the news; reviews that rely upon the visual; broadsides, pamphlets and prints that comment on news items using visual means; the typography and formatting of news.

 

“Tableaux Vivants: Life and/as Art in the Eighteenth Century”
Noémie Etienne, Getty Research Institute; AND Meredith Martin, New York University, Department of Art History, New York University, 303 Silver Center, 100 Washington Square E, New York, NY, 10003; Tel: (901) 786-3787; E-mail: msm240@nyu.edu

During the eighteenth century, a whole series of artistic productions aimed to simulate motion and life, at the same time that individuals became ever more preoccupied with performing or embodying static works of art. This session aims to explore such hybrid creations and the boundaries they challenged between animate and inanimate form, art and technology, the living and the dead. Papers may focus on specific objects, such as the automata created by the clockmaker Pierre-Jacques Droz that imitated human acts of writing or harpsichord playing; hyperrealistic wax figures, sometimes displayed in groups or dioramas, that were used for entertainment as well as pedagogical and medical purposes; and “tableaux mécaniques,” mixed-media paintings with motors on the back that enabled the figures represented to move across their surfaces. Other possible topics include the staging of collaborative tableaux vivants in eighteenth-century theaters, gardens, and salons; and related attempts to resurrect or animate ancient artifacts, as in Emma Hamilton’s “living statue” performances. Papers that consider the eighteenth-century specificity of such artistic productions, introduce new methodological perspectives, or discuss relevant examples from outside of Europe are especially encouraged.

 

“‘The Delight of the Eye”: Eighteenth-Century Painting and/as Decoration”
Yuriko Jackall, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. AND Katherine Brion, Kalamazoo College, Jackall: Department of French Paintings, National Gallery of Art, 2000B South Club Drive, Landover, MD 20785; Tel: (202) 842-6089; E-mail: Y-jackall@nga.gov ; kbrion@kzoo.edu 

In 1747, the critic Étienne La Font de Saint-Yenne lamented that painting of the French school had been divested of its rightful purpose: bringing great deeds of the past to splendid visual life. For his contemporaries, La Font argued, painting had become nothing more than another form of vanity or ornamentation, a “delight of the eye” equated with surface treatments such as mirrors, gilding, paneling, and plasterwork. In the context of this lament, he drew a sharp distinction between history painting (broadly defined as narrative representation with moral and didactic intent) and painting as decoration (associated with pleasure and flattery). Apart from some temporary upsets, this distinction held sway over painting and its reception through the nineteenth century and into the twentieth.
The goal of this session is to explore the relationship between painting and decoration in the practice and reception of eighteenth-century art—a relationship that begs to be reexamined, particularly in the light of increasing scholarly interest in later “decorative” impulses. In what contexts was the category of decoration meaningful, and how was it defined? To what extent were site-specificity, the constitution of ensembles, the formal qualities of paintings themselves, and/or other concerns determining factors in the role of  painting as decoration? Was “decorative” painting aligned with, or distinguished from, other “decorative” practices and media? Finally, do the answers to these questions dispute, nuance or confirm La Font’s opposition of decoration and edifying representation? Case studies in a variety of fields ranging from architecture to the decorative arts are welcome, as are papers examining the subsequent historical impact of eighteenth-century models of painting and/as decoration.

 

“Representing the Fragment in the Eighteenth Century”
Olaf Recktenwald, McGill University, School of Architecture, 815 Sherbrooke St. W., Montréal, QC H3A 0C2, Canada; Tel: (206) 938-3446; Fax: (514) 398-7372; E-mail: olaf.recktenwald@mail.mcgill.ca

Whether it be in discussions of architecture, art, music, philosophy, literature, or theatre, the fragment rose to a new level of significance in the eighteenth century. An obsession with torsos, ruins, fragments themselves, and unfinished conditions could be linked to an understanding of nature that found its fulfilment in future growth. In the case of the built artificial ruin, the confidence that architecture could provide humans with true places of dwelling was lost, thus necessitating a desire to return to nature’s garden. Pittsburgh collections such as the Carnegie Museum of Art’s Hall of Sculpture and Hall of Architecture attest to this cultural preoccupation. This panel readily welcomes interdisciplinary readings of the fragment and ones that address either international or local topics.

 

“Violence and Death in Eighteenth-Century Visual Culture”
Amy Freund, Department of Art History, Southern Methodist University, P.O. Box 750356 Dallas, Texas 75275- 0356; Tel: (817) 542-5862; E-mail: afreund@smu.edu 

Chardin’s eviscerated ray, William Blake’s tortured slaves, Copley’s Watson eternally escaping his shark, Goya’s terrifying Disasters of War, David’s deaths of everyone from Hector to Marat: violence and death haunt eighteenth-century visual culture. This panel will explore the depiction of violence and death in eighteenth-century art, with the aim of mapping an alternative history of the visual arts and revising our understanding of aesthetic categories such as the Rococo and Neoclassicism. Topics might include: representations of sick, injured, aging or dying bodies, both human and animal; violent practices (hunting, executions, warfare); the impact of eighteenth-century colonial violence and global war on artistic production; memorialization of the dead (including saints and ancient or contemporary heroes); examinations of objects of violence (arms, armor, the guillotine), domestic or sexual violence; and violence against inanimate things (iconoclasm, the demolition of buildings, attacks on the state or religion).

 

“Portraiture Before 1750”
Jennifer Germann, Department of Art History, Ithaca College, 953 Danby Road, Ithaca, NY 14850; Tel: (607) 274-1527; Fax: (607) 274-1774; E-mail: jgermann@ithaca.edu 

Over the last decades, the topic of portraiture has generated significant scholarly interest. Much of this attention has been focused on painted portraits in the second half of the eighteenth century. This panel proposes to turn attention to the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. What are the major trends or themes emerging in the practice of portraiture at this time? What about sculpted portraits or those incorporated into the decorative arts (such as in tapestries)? How are artists working internationally, within and beyond Europe? What cross-cultural exchanges are emerging with the expansion of colonial networks? Papers are welcomed from diverse cultural traditions around the globe engaging both the analysis of cross-cultural exchange in terms of the approaches to and forms of portraiture as well as facilitating the cross-cultural comparison of portrait traditions.

 

“Illustration, Visual Interpretation, and the Eighteenth-Century Book Market”
Kwinten Van De Walle, Department of Literary Studies (English Studies), Ghent University, Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Ghent, Belgium; Tel: (0032)9 264 36 55; Fax: (0032)9 264 41 74; E-mail: kwinten.vandewalle@ugent.be

In the last two decades, scholars such as Peter Wagner and W.B. Gerard have abandoned the notion that illustrations are secondary to the typographic text proper in favour of a more balanced, and often interdisciplinary, approach which considers book illustration as an important and integral facet of print culture and the book market. Illustrations not only allowed publishers to generate appeal and to distinguish their products from their competitors’, it also had an impact on a reader’s approach to and interpretation of the text. A major intervention in the field is Sandro Jung’s recent book, James Thomson’s The Seasons, Print Culture, and Visual Interpretation, 1730-1842, which is a compelling study of the ways in which book illustration can significantly affect the cultural reception and reputation of texts. This panel wishes to acknowledge the value of book illustration studies and its potential to contribute to and even revise existing scholarly accounts of eighteenth-century literature. Open to presentations on a broad range of illustrations, from up-market productions (such as furniture prints) intended for an elite audience to cheaply manufactured ornaments in widely disseminated print forms (such as ballad-sheets and chapbooks), this panel invites 300-word paper proposals, aiming to consider the visual (re)interpretation of texts as well as the role of illustrations within the broader context of the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century book market in general.

 

“Artists’ Artists in the Long Eighteenth Century”
Ryan Whyte, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences, OCAD University, 100 McCaul Street, Toronto, ON, Canada, M5T 1W1; Tel: (416) 435-9163; Fax: (416) 977-6006; E-mail: rwhyte@faculty.ocadu.ca

In the long eighteenth century, artists commissioned, collected, and published criticism of the work of fellow living artists. Superficially, artists’ patronage and criticism of other artists appears consistent with the activities of the larger world of art, yet in fact it represents a parallel world of artistic engagement that was, and remains, at least partially inaccessible and incompletely understood beyond professional artistic circles. This session aims to shed light on artists’ taste for one another’s work in a period when the emergence of art criticism and periodic public exhibitions of contemporary art created tensions between the increasingly public nature of artists’ careers, and the exclusive, technical nature of studio practice and language.
What did it mean when an artist–rather than a critic or a patron–favored the work of a fellow living artist? Who were considered « artists’ artists, » as reflected, for example, in artists’ collections of one another’s work, and why? To what extent was the notion of an « artist’s artist » even understood beyond the confines of the studio? When artists commissioned, collected, and published criticism of the work of fellow living artists, how and why did their patronage and criticism depart from state and private initiatives? How did homages and rivalries manifest in artists’ portraits of fellow living artists, so prevalent and sophisticated in this period? This session welcomes new approaches to these problems, including interdisciplinary and methodologically innovative papers.

 

“Framing the Eighteenth Century: Borders and Peripheries in Visual Culture”
Daniella Berman AND Blythe C. Sobol, Institute of Fine Arts, 1 East 78th Street, New York, NY 10128, Tel: DB: (203) 687-6666; BCS: (847) 651-4098; E-mail: daniella.berman@nyu.edu and bcs265@nyu.edu

In its entry on bordure, the 1792 Dictionnaire des arts de peinture, scupture, et gravure considers the dynamic between painting and frame, between border and center: “Cependant, d’après les loix d’un gout éloigné de trop de sévérité, la bordure d’un tableau, ainsi que la parure d’une femme, ne doit point fixer les yeux, en les détournant trop de l’objet qu’elle embellit; mais l’une & l’autre doivent faire valoir les beautés dont elles sont l’ornement.”
Watelet and Levesque underscore the distinct remit of the central work of art and its border, in terms of iconographic program and decorative function. How do framing devices augment our understanding of the artworks they surround? How do borders and margins function in visual culture? How intentional is the association between picture plane and the embellishments on the fringe? How vital is the periphery to the center—artistically, and spatially? This panel will explore the complex and sometimes fraught relationship between the artwork and its frame, between the ornament and the ornamented, between the periphery and the center in visual culture of the long eighteenth century.
We welcome a variety of interpretations of the subject of borders and peripheries in the visual arts. Topics might include, but are not limited to, the role of borders in landscape architecture or manuscript illumination; relationships between (literal) framing, display, and status; re-woven tapestry borders; considerations of luxury and superfluity in artistic discourses; and examinations of the role of Paris versus the provinces in artistic production.

 

“Monsters, Fantastical Creatures, Subaltern Life-Forms in the Sciences and Arts » (German Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies) (Deutsche Gesellschaft für die Erforschung des 18. Jahrhunderts) (DGEJ) 
Julian Heigel (Universität Göttingen) AND Dr. Silke Förschler (Universität Kassel), [Heigel,] Universität Göttingen, Kurze Geismarstraße 1, 37073 Göttingen, Germany; [Förschler,] Universität Kassel, Mosenthalstraße 8, 34109 Kassel, Germany; Tel: ( 0049) 151 20465956; E-mail: julian.heigel@web.de & silke.foerschler@uni-kassel.de

The Enlightenment does not drive out the monsters. The Enlightenment is fascinated with the monstrous, the incredible, the deviant. At the same time, norms and boundaries of the animate world and of anthropology are negotiated within these deviations: What is human, what is animal? What is culture, what is nature? What is healthy, what is sick? What is male, what is female? What is beautiful and what is ugly? By describing, examining, dissecting, categorizing and classifying the deviation, it becomes the focus of the sciences as well as the fine arts. Yet its defining factor is its inconceivability.
The planned panel examines the dialogue between a « scientific facticity of deviance » and the portrayal in the arts. How is the idea of deviant or mastered nature reflected in artistic representations, what other images of the the monstrous, such as disgust or fascination with the scary and unexplainable, are produced in the arts and contrasted with the « enlightened monsters »? Contributions from perspectives of art history, musicology and literature are welcome. Please send (via email) 300-word abstracts for 15-minute lectures.