CFP The Artwork Exposed: Politics and the Arts (1850-1914)

Call for Papers
The Artwork Exposed: Politics and the Arts (1850-1914) Seminar in Collaboration with the Royal Netherlands Historical Society (KNHG)
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 17-18 April 2014

Organized by:
Camelia Errouane (University of Groningen)
Laura Prins (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)

Confirmed key-note speaker: Michelle Facos (Indiana University Bloomington)

Artworks do not stand on their own: they are made for specific goals and presented in certain contexts; they are viewed and consumed by different persons and eventually they are analyzed by critics and historians. Within this social dynamic, the relationship between the arts and politics has always been complex: Governments of all colors have used and abused the arts throughout history, while individual artists, too, have used their works to get their political opinions across. This phenomenon gained special momentum during the rise of nationalism in the nineteenth century and the development of various forms of (mass) communication. Interestingly enough, this was also the period when art history was born as a discipline.

In art history, the last decades have seen an overwhelming number of publications that provide political interpretations of a variety of artworks. It almost seems as if any visual object can be interpreted in ways inscribing it with political significance. Rather than adding yet more interpretations of individual works to the canon of art history, this symposium aims to take the topic further into more theoretical realms by asking questions that touch upon the fundamental relationship between art and politics. Artworks are in the first place visual objects. How can artworks and political history be related to each other, apart from using the first to illuminate the second – and vice versa? How are visual objects able to communicate a political message? How can historians deal with the divide between intention and perception when analyzing artworks? And whose intentions are we talking about: those of the artist, those of the commissioner, or those of the viewer? In this context, do aesthetic aspects, such as the style of a work, its medium and location matter? And if so, how?

The conference sets out to develop new ways of thinking about artworks as objects in networks of intention, interpretation and social relations that include artists, commissioners, critics and the audience. It is the explicit intention of the organizers to step beyond the well-known generalizations of art history, like artistic styles or schools, avant-garde and arrière-garde, modern and traditional. The event offers a platform that brings together young and established (art) historians who are studying the period 1850-1914, concentrating on European art in all media. We invite case-studies as well as theoretical papers; we particularly encourage case-studies from countries that are often excluded from official curricula, such as Scandinavia, Spain, Portugal or Poland.

In the Netherlands, the statement that “art is not the business of the government” by the Dutch politician Jan Rudolph Thorbecke (1798-1872) from 1862 has been a recurring argument in discussions about the relationship between politics and the arts, and in discussions about the role of artists and art institutions within society. Nonetheless, the Dutch government has been a formative factor in the arts, of which the construction of the Rijksmuseum is only the most famous example. The conference will include visits to the Rijksmuseum (1885) and to the Beurs van Berlage (1903). In the original design of both buildings artworks play an important role. The Rijksmuseum, the national museum of a country that portrays itself as essentially Protestant, is decorated with monumental mural paintings that were inspired by decorations of Roman Catholic churches, whereas the Beurs, former seat of the Amsterdam stock exchange, features tile tableaux about the exploitation of the working man and woman’s liberation. Both buildings stirred an enormous controversy when they were completed. Nowadays however, they are considered as hallmarks of Dutch architecture. These visits will allow us to discuss the relationship between arts and politics in the Dutch context.

Please send an abstract for a 20-minute paper (max. 300 words) and a cv to Camelia Errouane (c.f.errouane@rug.nl) and Laura Prins (LSEPrins@gmail.com) no later than 3 November 2013. Speakers will be notified by the end of December 2013. It is the intention of the organizers to publish selected contributions. After the conference the participants will receive more detailed information about the publication.

Courbet-tento KMSKB naar Boston

De geslaagde tentoonstelling 'Gustave Courbet en België' de voorbije lente in de KMSKB Brussel krijgt nog een staartje in Boston, onder de noemer "Courbet: Mapping Realism".

September 1–December 8, 2013
The exhibition maps the travels and influence on foreign artists of one of France’s most prolific and innovative painters, the leader of the realist movement, Gustave Courbet. It expands upon an exhibition shown at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels from May to August 2013 titled Gustave Courbet and Belgium, which examined the role Belgium played in Courbet’s development and the warm response the bold social commentary in his work received from Belgian artists and collectors. Courbet: Mapping Realism adds additional paintings by Courbet in American collections to tell the story of his reception on this side of the Atlantic. A selection of outstanding paintings by Courbet’s American contemporaries, including Elizabeth Boott Duveneck, Martin Johnson Heade, Winslow Homer, William Morris Hunt, Eastman Johnson, and John La Farge, reveals the role he played in shaping American painting.

Organized by the McMullen Museum and the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Courbet: Mapping Realism has been curated by Jeffery Howe and Dominique Marechal. The exhibition has been underwritten by Boston College, the Patrons of the McMullen Museum, the Newton College Class of 1968, and the Newton College Class of 1973.

A volume of essays by American and Belgian scholars (Claude Cernuschi, Jeffery Howe, Jean-Philippe Huys, Dominique Marechal, and Katherine Nahum) edited by Howe accompanies the exhibition.

(info afkomstig van de website: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/artmuseum/exhibitions/archive/courbet/index.html)

Genius, Grandeur & Gêne: kunst, maatschappij en recht in de tijd van Edmond Picard

De Orde van advocaten bij het Hof van Cassatie organiseert op dinsdag 15 oktober 2013 in samenwerking met de Poelaertstichting, die namens beide Brusselse balies ijvert voor het Brusselse Justitiepaleis, in dat gerechtsgebouw een cultureel symposium over kunst, maatschappij en recht in de tijd van Edmond Picard: 'Genius, Grandeur & Gêne. Het Fin de Siècle rond het Justitiepaleis te Brussel en de controversiële figuur van Edmond Picard'.

Programma en informatie zijn te vinden op de website www.advocass.be, waar ook de inschrijving kan gebeuren.

Art Crossing Borders: The Birth of an Integrated Art Market in the Age of Nation States (Europe, ca. 1780-1914) - Thursday 17 October 2013

Art Crossing Borders: The Birth of an Integrated Art Market in the Age of Nation States (Europe, ca. 1780-1914)

Double-session at the international conference ‘Europe and its Worlds: Cultural Mobility in, to and from Europe’ (16-18 October 2013)

Session Convenors: Jan Dirk Baetens (Art History and Literary & Cultural Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen) and Dries Lyna (History, Radboud University Nijmegen)

Respondents: Annemieke Hoogenboom (Art History, University of Utrecht) and Filip Vermeylen (History and Arts, Erasmus University Rotterdam)

Location: Campus Radboud University Nijmegen, Gymnasion, Heyendaalseweg 141, Nijmegen.

Registration: free

See for more information: http://www.ru.nl/europaenzijnwerelden/congres/introduction/


Session 1 - Thursday 17 October 2013, 9:00-11:30

Lindsay Simon (University of Connecticut, USA): “Buying the Monarchy: Collectors of the French Court Style”

Adriana Turpin (Institut d’Etudes Superieures des Arts, Paris, France; The Wallace Collection, London, UK): “Collecting French furniture in the 19th century: appropriation as a form of nationalism?”

Camilla Murgia (Independent scholar): “Beyond Mobility: The Migration of Italian Artists in Early 19th-Century London”

 Renske Cohen Tervaert (Utrecht University; Royal Palace Amsterdam, The Netherlands): “Landscaping a Cultural Industry. The International Demand for National Landscape Painting in the 19th Century”

 Lunch

Session 2 - Thursday 17 October 2013, 14:30-17:00

Barbara Pezzini (The Burlington Magazine, London): “International network, national canon: commerce and criticism of old-masters paintings in London (1900-1914)”

Mayken Jonkman (RKD, The Netherlands), “Celebrating Harmony. International Artistic Conferences and the Exchange of Ideas”

Sharon Hecker (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano, Italy): “Medardo Rosso: the Cosmopolitan Sculptor and the New International Art Market” 

Leanne Zalewski (Randolph College, USA): “European Art, American Culture: Cultural Mobility in Gilded Age New York”

Vier penseelprinsessen in Hingene

Woensdag aanstaande opent in het kasteel d'Ursel in Hingene de tentoonstelling 'Vrouwen met stijl. Vier penseelprinsessen in Hingene'. De tentoonstelling met werk van vier adellijke amateurschilderessen, de periode van Napoleon tot na de Eerste Wereldoorlog omvattend, loopt van 22 september tot 24 november 2013.

In het kader van deze tentoonstelling wordt op 8 november 2013 ook een symposium georganiseerd en verschijnt een publicatie.