CFP: EXTENDED DEADLINE: Cultures of Belgian Space / Cultures de l'espace belge, 1850-1924 (Hingene)

The organization of the Cultures of Belgian Space / Cultures de l'espace belge, 1850-1924 conference (Hingene, 16-17 October 2020) has decided to extend the deadline for paper proposals to the end of this month, i.e. 31 March 2020. 

This decision should allow those colleagues who currently struggle with corona virus-related, practical issues to send in their abstract.

On the conference: see our post of 20 February 2020.

More information can be found here.

LECT: CANCELLATION Anthea Callen, Enduring Masculinity (Ghent)

Unfortunately, due to the effect of the corona outbreak on international travel, the lecture by Anthea Callen, Enduring Masculinity: the academic nude and ideals of male perfection, foreseen for Friday 13 March 2020 at 18:00 at Vandenhove, is cancelled.

If possible, a new date will be communicated.

The exhibition Strike a pose at Vandenhove remains open and can still be visited on Thursday 12, Friday 13, and Saturday 14 March 2020, between 14:00 and 18:00.

LECT: Anthea Callen: Enduring Masculinity: The Academic Nude and Ideals of Male Perfection (Ghent)

Anthea Callen: Enduring Masculinity: the academic nude and ideals of male perfection
Vandenhove, Centrum voor Architectuur en Beeldende Kunst
Rozier 1, 9000 Gent.
Friday 13 March 2020, 6:00 p.m.

The Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, like many art academies throughout Europe, was founded in the 18th century in emulation of the French Académie Royale de peinture et sculpture. Academic art’s aesthetic ideal and its highest form, the male nude, was central to the French curriculum, which began with copying the casts after Antique sculptures acquired by all such academies. Classical ideals of male bodily perfection whether Herculean or Apollonian were thus ingrained when pupils began Life classes: drawings by men, from the male nude. In conjunction with training in artistic anatomy (including dissection), classicism endowed academic artists with the powerful authority of both science and Greco-Roman ‘truth’. The rise and spread of these macho, racialised and ‘othering’ ideals coincided with the rise of colonisation, and their enduring tenacity from Winkelmann to Hitler is still manifest now in men’s health magazines, and body-building through to cage fighting and white (or black) supremacy.

Anthea Callen

Art historian, art expert, lecturer and painter, Anthea Callen FRSA is Professor Emeritus of the Australian National University, Canberra, and Professor Emeritus of Visual Culture, University of Nottingham, UK. Internationally recognised as a specialist on Impressionist painting materials and techniques, her classic volume The Art of Impressionism: Painting Technique and the Making of Modernity has now been released as a Yale University Press e-book. Her latest book on landscape painting methods, The Work of Art: Plein Air Painting and Artistic Identity in Nineteenth-Century France is published by Reaktion Books (2015). Her new book Looking at Men: Art, Anatomy and the Modern Male Body (Yale, 2018), examines the close relationship of art and anatomy in the formation of modern ideals of masculinity and the male body. Callen appears regularly as an art expert on television, radio and in film. www.antheacallen.co.uk

EXH: Strike a Pose: negentiende-eeuwse academische naakten in Gentse verzamelingen

Strike a Pose: negentiende-eeuwse academische naakten in Gentse verzamelingen
Een initiatief van de UGent Vakgroep Kunst-, Muziek- en Theaterwetenschappen / Onderzoeksgroep ThIS - The Inside Story
Vandenhove (Rozier 1, 9000 Gent)
28 feb 2020 - 14 mrt 2020
Open op do-vr-za, 14-18u

Félix De Vigne, Liggend mannelijk naakt, in profiel, [1842]. UBGent, TEK.003659

In de negentiende eeuw vormde het naaktmodel een hoeksteen van de kunstpraktijk. Bewaarde tekeningen en schetsen geven een intieme inkijk achter de schermen van de academie en het atelier van toen. Ze getuigen van een dubbelzinnige blik: één die slingert tussen theorie en praktijk, tussen traditie en vernieuwing, tussen bewondering en afstandelijkheid, tussen een esthetisch ideaal en de ongefilterde indruk van een lichaam van vlees en bloed.

Strike a Pose toont naaktstudies gemaakt in en rond de Gentse Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten, en belicht zo de rol van het naakt in de negentiende-eeuwse tekenklas. Daarvoor doet ze een beroep op de rijke collecties van twee nabijgelegen instellingen: de Universiteitsbibliotheek-Boekentoren en het KASK (Hogeschool Gent-School of Arts). De uitgekozen werken zijn o.a. van de Gentse kunstenaars Félix de Vigne, Théodore Canneel, Jan Baptist Lammens en Jean Delvin, alsook van de Fransman Jules Breton en de Japanner Torajiro Kojima, die in Gent studeerden.

De tentoonstelling is tot en met zaterdag 14 maart te bezichtigen in Vandenhove, het interfacultaire studiecentrum voor Architectuur en Kunst van de UGent. Meer informatie is te vinden op de website van Vandenhove.

Curator: Thijs Dekeukeleire. Wetenschappelijk comité: Marjan Sterckx, Stefan Huygebaert, Malika M’rani Alaoui, Henk de Smaele.