Registration: The Turbulent Mind (5/16-17/2014)

The Turbulent Mind: Madness, Moods and Melancholy in the Art of the Nineteenth Century

Ghent, Museum of Fine Arts,

In collaboration with the Research Platform XIX and the European Society for Nineteenth-Century Art

May 16-17, 2014

With the support of the Research Foundation - Flanders, Flemish Art Collection, Museum of Fine Arts Ghent, Dutch Postgraduate School for Art History (OSK), Ghent University - Faculty of Arts and Philosophy

On May 7, 1824, Eugène Delacroix wrote in his diary: “I do not care for reasonable painting at all. I can see that my turbulent mind needs agitation, needs to free itself, to try a hundred different things before reaching the goal whose tyrannous call everywhere torments me. (...) If I am not quivering like a snake in the hands of Pythoness, I am cold; I must recognize it and submit to it; and to do so is happiness.”

In these lines, Delacroix evoked the age-old theme of the mad artist, tormented but divinely inspired, balancing on the verge of insanity and genius. The attraction of this idea to Delacroix was hardly an isolated phenomenon. The rise of romanticism saw an exploding interest in the irrational and its potential to liberate the arts, and even the world at large, and this interest resonated throughout the rest of the nineteenth century. 

On the occasion of the Théodore Géricault exhibition in the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, the museum joins forces with the Research Platform XIX and the European Society for Nineteenth-Century Art to organise a two-day conference to explore the theme of madness and art in the nineteenth century, a time when artists first deliberately turned for inspiration to the mentally deviant and fully developed the idea of art as an expression of the emotional self. The conference brings together international specialists in the field and deals with both the myth of the artistic temperament and representations of madness, moods or melancholy.

Organising committee: Jan Dirk Baetens (Radboud University, Nijmegen), Koen Brosens (KU Leuven), Rachel Esner (University of Amsterdam), Bruno Fornari (Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent), Jenny Reynaerts (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), Johan De Smet (Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent), Marjan Sterckx (Ghent University) and Cathérine Verleysen (Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent)

Scientific committee: Werner Adriaenssens (Royal Museum of Art and History, Brussels), Maite van Dijk (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam), Mayken Jonkman (RKD, The Hague), Herwig Todts (Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp), Francisca Vandepitte (Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Brussels), Filip Vermeylen (Erasmus University, Rotterdam) and Catherine de Zegher (Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent

More information:

Jan Dirk Baetens, Radboud University Nijmegen: j.baetens@let.ru.nl

Cathérine Verleysen, Museum of Fine Arts Ghent: catherine.verleysen@gent.be

Admission: € 40 (students € 25) 

Includes coffee breaks and lunch on 16 and 17 May

Max. registrations: 100

Registration: Email to catherine.verleysen@gent.be (mentioning your institutional affiliation), and transfer of the registration fee to: 

AGB Kunsten en Design – Botermarkt 1 – B-9000 Ghent – Belgium

IBAN BE11 0910 1974 1448

BIC GKCCBEBB

Mentioning name of participant and ‘The Turbulent Mind’ 

Confirmation of registration takes place only after receipt of the conference fee.

Languages: English / Français

http://www.mskgent.be

http://www.werkgroep-xix.blogspot.be

http://esnaonline.wordpress.com

Special Event: Touching the Book: Embossed Literature for Blind People in the Nineteenth Century (7/18-10/30/2013)

Peltz Gallery, Ground Floor, School of Arts, Birkbeck, London WC1H 0PD

July 18 – September 16, Monday-Friday 9-8pm.

September 17 – October 30, Monday – Saturday, 9-8pm

This free exhibition explores the history of literacy for blind and visually impaired people in nineteenth-century Britain and Europe through the development of embossed literature. It introduces visitors to the variety of embossed writing systems that blind people were taught prior to the widespread adoption of braille at the end of the nineteenth century. There was fierce debate in this period between educators who favoured a system based on the Roman alphabet that could be read still by sight and those who advocated for an arbitrary system – such as braille – more suited to finger reading.

Touching the book: Embossed literature for Blind People brings together a rich array of material, including important examples of early classbooks, spiritual guides, the first specially-commissioned embossed Bibles, writing devices, pamphlets and visual images. It details how early embossing attempts were motivated by religious desire to enable blind people to read the word of God directly through touch. This fuelled investment in embossing processes which in turn improved the quality and durability of embossed books.

Most significantly however, the development of finger-reading practices helped to create new communities of literate blind and visually-impaired people who began advocating for reading and writing systems best suited to the needs of blind people. The exhibition highlights individuals in the nineteenth-century blind community who both raised the profile of and were instrumental in improving literacy for blind and visually-impaired people, including Laura Bridgman, William Moon, G.A. Hughes, Louis Braille and Thomas Rhodes Armitage.

http://blogs.bbk.ac.uk/touchingthebook/

Reminder: Edited Collection Poetry in Painting: The Lyrical Voice of Pre-Raphaelite Paintings (12/1/2013; 5/30/2014)

Poetry in Painting: The Lyrical Voice of Pre-Raphaelite Paintings

An Edited Collection

Sophia Andres (andres_s@utpb.edu)

Brian Donnelly (briandonnelly@english.ucsb.edu)

Abstract deadline: December 1, 2013. 

This interdisciplinary collection of essays seeks to offer new insights into Victorian culture and society through Pre-Raphaelite perspectives captured in the relationship between Pre-Raphaelite paintings and the poems which inspired them.   Authors are invited to choose paintings by Pre-Raphaelite artists and their associates that have been inspired by poems, or poems inspired by Pre-Raphaelite paintings, and discuss the means by which the textual is transfigured into the visual or the visual into the textual.   The goal of this work is primarily, but not exclusively, twofold: (1) to explore the interpretive perspectives on paintings which poems disclose; (2) to examine the Victorian or modern, cultural or sociopolitical, concerns that inform visual and textual relations inspired by Pre-Raphaelite art.

Letters, reviews and journals may be used to convincingly reinforce the connections between poems and paintings.  Through a textual and visual journey, this work should reflect an innovative approach to Pre-Raphaelite art and Victorian poetry.  Of particular interest are paintings and poems which have not hitherto received substantial critical attention.  Since this interdisciplinary work will address both scholarly and general audiences, writers are encouraged to avoid scholarly jargon and lengthy footnotes.

The collection is an international and egalitarian collaboration; we invite scholars of any level or discipline to submit an abstract.

Topics might include (but not limited to) the following:

• The Spiritual and the Material
• The Past in the Present
• Imperial Expansion
• Historical Indeterminacy
• National Identity
• Modernity
• Natural and Supernatural
• Rural Industrialization
• Fantasies of Utopia
• Social Changes
• Psychological and Ideological Conflicts
• Kaleidoscopic Visions
• Music in Poetry and Painting
• Rossetti’s Painted Poems
• Psychological Drama
• Transgressions of Spatial and Temporal Boundaries
• Mythologies
• Prostitution
• The Pre-Raphaelite Shakespeare
• The Pre-Raphaelite Dante
• Youth and Beauty
• Class Conflicts
• Shattered Illusions
• Romantic Longings
• Promiscuous Eroticism
• Gender Transgressions
• Social Entrapments
• Materialism
• Women’s Choices
• Vulnerable Domesticity
• Moments of Seduction
• Dream Visions
• Visionary Experiences

Abstract deadline: December 1, 2013. Please submit an abstract of 300-500 words and a brief CV to preraphaelites2013@gmail.com. Authors will be notified by February 3, 2014, whether or not their abstract has been accepted.  The deadline for the full length chapter, if accepted, is May 30 2014.  Chapters should be between 4,000-5,000 words in length, accompanied by an abstract of 200 words. Preliminary inquiries are welcome: kindly address them to preraphaelites2013@gmail.com

CFP: AAH 2014 "Sea Currents: The 19th-Century Ocean World" (11/11/2013; 4/10-12/2014)

Association of Art Historians

London, Royal College of Art

April 10-12, 2014

Deadline: November 11, 2013

Convenors of Session: 

Kathleen Davidson (U of Sydney)

Molly Duggins (U of Sydney)

Vast and fluid, the oceanic spaces of empire in the 19th century inspired an imaginative and multifaceted aesthetic discourse that intersected with colonial and scientific expansion. From the seashore, which emerged as a site of leisure, liminality and transgression, to the seabed, which was perceived as a perilous but alluring frontier, marine environments captivated contemporary practitioners and audiences alike on a local and global scale.

This session presents a new perspective on the art and history of empire as manifested through maritime traditions. Whereas, the oceanic imperium has been viewed in terms of its formal presence and official exchanges across the globe – often with regards to naval power, exploration and navigation – this session will take a closer look at more informal imperial ocean networks. Changing conceptions of the marine world were shaped by increased immigration and maritime trade, steam travel, the fluid circulation of media and technology, the diversification of science, the popularisation of rational entertainment, the rise of spectacular exhibitionary culture, and a gender system in flux.

Taking a comparative approach, this session will address the informal and intimate encounters and exchanges that occurred across 19th-century empires by artists, scientists, travellers, theorists and cultural critics, publishers, and consumers. The panel chairs invite papers that explore how various individuals and groups considered and negotiated the relationship between different visual, tactile and abstract representations of the ocean environment mediated through art, science, architecture, design, craft, text or performance.

Abstracts (max. 250 words) for papers of 25-30 minutes are to be sent to Kathleen Davidson (k.davidson@ozemail.com.au) and to Molly Duggins (mdug3194@mail.usyd.edu.au) by November 11, 2013.

For more information on the 40th Annual Association of Art Historians conference: http://www.aah.org.uk/annual-conference/2014-conference

CFP: International Cross-Disciplinary Conference "Gold in/and Art" (12/30/2013; 9/18-9/19/2014)

Organized by Université Toulouse II – Le Mirail (C.A.S. 801) / S.A.I.T.

; 18-19 September 2014, Musée Paul-Dupuy, Toulouse, France



Call for Papers: Gold in/and Art



In the wake of the 2009 conference on “the eloquence of colour” organized by
 the French Society for Word and Image Studies (S.A.I.T.), this 2014
interdisciplinary symposium wishes to examine the unique position of gold
 across literature and the arts in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Indeed
gold is a pigment like no other. Its materiality inevitably conjures up a
complex and paradoxical symbolism which typically negotiates tensions between
the mythical and the political, the beautiful and the commercial, the sacred
and the profane, the invisible and the tangible, the untarnishable and the
ephemeral, virtue and lucre, the collective and the singular, the social and
the private. “Gold in/and Art” therefore purports to continue the exploration
of the dialogue between the arts inaugurated by previous S.A.I.T. conferences,
while confronting such issues of cross-fertilization with an analysis of the
processes of valuing/devaluing/revaluing at work in literature and the arts.
Gold will be envisaged under all its forms, as mineral, colour, light and/or
value—whether it be financial, ethical, mystical, philosophical, or aesthetic
value. The conference theme therefore lends itself to a multiplicity of
approaches which may be economic, historical, political, cultural, artistic,
philosophical, literary and/or linguistic.



Taking as a point of departure Gérard-Georges Lemaire’s observation about
gold’s omnipresence in the history of art and its renewed fascination among
contemporary artists (see G.G. Lemaire, L’or dans l’art contemporain, Paris:
Flammarion 2011; and exhibitions such as “Gold” in 2012 at the Belvedere in
Vienna or “Going for Gold” in 2013 at the Seattle Art Museum), researchers are
encouraged to examine works of 19th-century art/literature or writings on art/
literature which give gold pride of place, either because they foreground gold
as their primary material or because they capitalize on myths and legends
about gold.



We are also interested in receiving proposals for papers studying the
intersection between art and economics, building on the work of critics such
as Jean-Jospeh Goux (L’art et l’argent: la rupture moderniste 1860-1920;
Frivolité de la valeur; Symbolic Economies; The Coiners of Language), Marc
Shell (The Economy of Literature, Money; Language and Thought; Art & Money),
Catherine Gallagher (The Body Economic), Mary Poovey (Genres of the Credit
 Economy) or Regenia Gagnier (Individualism, Decadence and Globalization; The
Insatiability of Human Wants: Economics and Aesthetics in Market Society;
 Idylls of the Marketplace: Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public).



Finally, from a political, philosophical, epistemological, moral, religious or 
spiritual point of view, it may be helpful to keep in mind Zarathustra’s
comments on gold : “Tell me, pray: how came gold to the highest value? Because
it is uncommon, and unprofiting, and beaming, and soft in lustre; it always
bestoweth itself. Only as image of the highest virtue came gold to the highest
value. Goldlike, beameth the glance of the bestower. Gold-lustre maketh peace
between moon and sun” (Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, chapter XXII).
Indeed, gold has traditionally been used as a standard—of purity, value, 
soundness or excellence. But how has this notion been either consolidated or
challenged in 19th- and early 20th-century art and literature? Do we still
believe in the universal and eternal prestige of gold understood as a
benchmark of value? Or has the possibility for such a consensus disappeared
with the emergence of more diversified centres of power?

Possible topics may include but are not limited to:



•  The materiality of painting: the economy of pigments

• The re-writings of Biblical stories or myths and legends in which gold
plays a major part (the Golden Calf, Danae, King Midas, Croesus, Hercules in
the Garden of the Hesperides, Jason and the Golden Fleece etc.)

• Art and gold in utopias and dystopias

• Numismatic fiction

• Gold and religion – Gold and the mystic eye – Conversion vs.
convertibility – Gold and light

• Theories of art: the golden mean, the golden age, etc.

• Representations of the artist’s creative alchemy

• Symbolic intermedial economies: how does intermediality (i.e. cross-
fertilization between various media or art forms) operate productively? What
are the benefits/profits of such an intermedial dialogue for the work of art/
the artist/the reader/the spectator?

• Aesthetic revolutions and speculation – Economic crises and crises in
representation

• The art world: artistic institutions, critics, and art dealers

• Gold and the literary/artistic canon - Post-colonial perspectives on gold
– Gold and gender: the “gilded cage” of womanhood, gendered approaches to gold
– Gold and queer theory

• Gold in artistic movements: Orientalism, Impressionnism, Japonism, the
Aesthetic Movement, Art Nouveau, etc.



Please send a 500-word abstract with a short bio to Catherine Delyfer
(catherine.delyfer@univ-tlse2.fr) no later than December 30, 2013. Selections
 will be made by March 1st, 2014. Papers will be delivered in English. A 
selection of papers will be published.

CFP: Edited Collection Poetry in Painting: The Lyrical Voice of Pre-Raphaelite Paintings (12/1/2013; 5/30/2014)

Poetry in Painting:  The Lyrical Voice of Pre-Raphaelite Paintings

An Edited Collection

Sophia Andres

andres_s@utpb.edu

Brian Donnelly

briandonnelly@english.ucsb.edu

This interdisciplinary collection of essays seeks to offer new insights into Victorian culture and society through Pre-Raphaelite perspectives captured in the relationship between Pre-Raphaelite paintings and the poems which inspired them.   Authors are invited to choose paintings by Pre-Raphaelite artists and their associates that have been inspired by poems, or poems inspired by Pre-Raphaelite paintings, and discuss the means by which the textual is transfigured into the visual or the visual into the textual.   The goal of this work is primarily, but not exclusively, twofold: (1) to explore the interpretive perspectives on paintings which poems disclose; (2) to examine the Victorian or modern, cultural or sociopolitical, concerns that inform visual and textual relations inspired by Pre-Raphaelite art.

Letters, reviews and journals may be used to convincingly reinforce the connections between poems and paintings.  Through a textual and visual journey, this work should reflect an innovative approach to Pre-Raphaelite art and Victorian poetry.  Of particular interest are paintings and poems which have not hitherto received substantial critical attention.  Since this interdisciplinary work will address both scholarly and general audiences, writers are encouraged to avoid scholarly jargon and lengthy footnotes.

The collection is an international and egalitarian collaboration; we invite scholars of any level or discipline to submit an abstract.

Topics might include (but not limited to) the following:

• The Spiritual and the Material
• The Past in the Present
• Imperial Expansion
• Historical Indeterminacy
• National Identity
• Modernity
• Natural and Supernatural
• Rural Industrialization
• Fantasies of Utopia
• Social Changes
• Psychological and Ideological Conflicts
• Kaleidoscopic Visions
• Music in Poetry and Painting
• Rossetti’s Painted Poems
• Psychological Drama
• Transgressions of Spatial and Temporal Boundaries
• Mythologies
• Prostitution
• The Pre-Raphaelite Shakespeare
• The Pre-Raphaelite Dante
• Youth and Beauty
• Class Conflicts
• Shattered Illusions
• Romantic Longings
• Promiscuous Eroticism
• Gender Transgressions
• Social Entrapments
• Materialism
• Women’s Choices
• Vulnerable Domesticity
• Moments of Seduction
• Dream Visions
• Visionary Experiences

Abstract deadline: December 1, 2013. Please submit an abstract of 300-500 words and a brief CV to preraphaelites2013@gmail.com. Authors will be notified by February 3, 2014, whether or not their abstract has been accepted.  The deadline for the full length chapter, if accepted, is May 30 2014.  Chapters should be between 4,000-5,000 words in length, accompanied by an abstract of 200 words. Preliminary inquiries are welcome: kindly address them to preraphaelites2013@gmail.com

Public Lecture: Hilary Fraser (Birkbeck): ‘Art and the Literary in Victorian England’ (10/22/2012)

Birkbeck Forum for Nineteenth-Century Studies presents:

Hilary Fraser (Birkbeck): ‘Art and the Literary in Victorian England’

Monday 22 October, 6.00 pm

Keynes Library (Room 114), School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square, WC1H 0PD

Free. All welcome.

The lecture will be followed by a reception to celebrate the start of the Autumn term programme of talks.

Programme for Autumn Term 2012

This term’s visiting speakers include George Levine (30 October), Muireann O’Cinneide (14 November), Deirdre Coleman (19 November), Clair Hughes (27 November), and Gowan Dawson (3 December). Further details will be posted shortly at our website <http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/our-research/research_cncs/our-events> and circulated via the mailing list.

Email <birkbeckforum@gmail.com> to join our mailing list, and follow us on Twitter @BirkbeckC19

Seminar: Sacred Traditions and the Arts (10/11/2012)

Thursday 11 October, 18.00 – 19.30 (Research Forum South Room)

The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN

Speaker (1): Dr Michaela Giebelhausen (University of Essex)
Invisible Cathedral: Reconsidering the Sacred in Today’s Art Museum

Speaker (2): Professor Frances Spalding CBE (Newcastle University)
Helen Sutherland, Patron and Collector: Art and Sacrament in the Fells

The seminar on Sacred Traditions and the Arts is a joint venture between the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King’s and The Courtauld Institute of Art. It seeks to place researchers in dialogue who are working on any aspect of the sacred and visual culture. It is open to all scholars and students who have an interest in exploring the intersections of religion and art regardless of period, geography or tradition.

On 11th October, Dr Michaela Giebelhausen will present a paper titled Invisible Cathedral: Reconsidering the Sacred in Today’s Art Museum. Professor Frances Spalding will speak on Helen Sutherland, Patron and Collector: Art and Sacrament in the Fells. These papers both explore the boundaries of sacred experience and sacrament in relation to institutional and personal contexts. Art collecting, display strategies, and the importance of space and place will be foregrounded in relation to modern Europe.

There will be ample time for discussion and questions following the papers. The event will be concluded by an informal reception.

Open to all, free admission

This seminar is jointly organised by Professor Ben Quash (King’s College London) and Dr Ayla Lepine (The Courtauld Institute of Art).
 

The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN

tel +44 207 848 2785  

http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/researchforum/index.shtml

Event: Art versus Industry? (3/23-24/2012)

This two-day international and transdisciplinary conference aims to re-evaluate the intersections between the visual arts and industry in Britain during the long nineteenth century, with speakers including Dr Lara Kriegel (Indiana University), Dr Tom Gretton (University College London), Dr Colin Trodd (University of Manchester) and Dr Steve Edwards (Open University). Booking is open until Friday 9 March 2012. Please visit http://artvindustry.blogspot.com/  for further information and to download the booking form.

Both days: £20.00 (£15 for students)

Single day: £10.00 flat fee

Presentations:

Friday 23 March 2012
Lara Kriegel (Indiana University): Filaments of History: Ladies, Lace, Labour and Nation at the Fin de Siecle

Panel one: De-centering the narrative

• Lara Eggleton (University of Leeds): Surface Deceits: Owen Jones and John Ruskin on the Ornament of the Alhambra
• Sally Tuckett (University of Edinburgh): Colouring the Nation: Scottish Turkey-Red Design and Manufacture
• Natasha Eaton (University College London): Subaltern Colour? Art, Industry and Colonialism in Britain and India
• Renate Dohmen (University of Louisiana at Lafayette): The Calcutta International Exhibition of 1883-4: A Differenced Vision of the Great Exhibition?

Panel two: Labour, class and invention

• Jasmine Allen (University of York): The Status of Stained Glass at the International Exhibitions
• Anne-Marie Millim (University of Luxembourg): "A substitute for moonlight": The Cultural Value of Mining in The Graphic (1870s)
• Frances Robertson (Glasgow School of Art): Crank-Pin Tracks and Corinthian Columns: Engineers and Draughtsmen as Visual Technicians
• Ben Russell (Science Museum): James Watt's Workshop: A Nexus Between Art and Industry

Tom Gretton (University College London): Industrialised Graphic Technologies Feature the World of Art: The Illustrated London News and The Graphic c. 1870 - 1890

Saturday 24 March 2012
Colin Trodd (University of Manchester): Affinity and Alienation: Civility, Barbarism and Discourses of Design Culture, 1862-1894

Panel three: Making and mechanical perception

• Ann Compton (University of Glasgow): Building a Better Class of Craftsman? Re-examining Issues of Education, Craftsmanship and Professional Practice in Sculpture and Related Trades, c. 1880-1925
• Gabriel Williams (University of York): 'Mechanical Dexterity' and Sculpture Machines at the Great Exhibition
• Nicole Bush (Northumbria University): Mechanical Patterns: The Role of Brewster's Kaleidoscope in the Age of Morris and the Machine
• Patrizia Di Bello (Birkbeck): 'Camera-Medusa': Stereoscopic Photographs of Statuettes

Panel four: Electrotypes and the aesthetics of electricity

• Alistair Grant (University of Sussex, Victoria and Albert Museum): Galvanic Engraving in Relief: The Origins of the Art of Electro-Metallurgy
• Angus Patterson (Victoria and Albert Museum): For the Promotion of Art: The Formation and Influence of the Victoria and Albert Museum's Electrotype Collection
• Graeme Gooday and Abigail Harrison Moore (University of Leeds): Decorative Electricity: The Gendered Aesthetics and Ethics of Domestic Electric Lighting

Steve Edwards (Open University): Picture Capitalism

The full program is available here.  

CFP: "Excavating the Art of Advertising," a 2011 UAAC-AAUC Conference Session (5/24/2011; 10/27-29/2011)

Call for Papers for a Session at the 2011 UAAC- AAUC  Conference

(Universities Art Association of Canada)
Carleton University / Université de Carleton
Ottawa, ON
October 27-29

Excavating the Art of Advertising / Aller au fond de l'art de la publicité

This panel will explore the art of advertising in the period before World War II. Over the course of the long nineteenth century, advertising developed into a large-scale industry that recognized the power of the image. Such advertisements were alternately described as an art of the people or as one of the horrors of modern life. With this panel, I aim to excavate the practices and discourses of advertising in order to reconsider its place in the visual culture of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. I seek to uncover collaborations and continuities between art and advertising, while also examining the tensions and ruptures that were pervasive. Proposals on any aspect of art and advertising will be considered.

Session Chair
Andrea Korda, Ph.D. 
andrea.korda@uleth.ca

Deadline: May 24th, 2011
Please send your abstract to Andrea at andrea.korda@uleth.ca