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.

COUR: International Summer School: Art Markets: an Integrated Perspective (Antwerp & Brussels)

International Summer School: Art Markets: an Integrated Perspective

Antwerp & Brussels, Belgium

6-10 July 2020

registration: 1 April 2020

Following in the success of the first Art Markets Summer School held in Lyon in June 2019, this unique research, training and networking experience will also take place in 2020.

Participants with an academic or professional interest in the mechanics of the art market will join European and American specialists in art history, economics, sociology, finance,and digital humanities. Together, they will present, share, workshop and discuss theoretical approaches, conceptual frameworks and methodological tools in an amical and relaxed atmosphere.

This immersive experience will inspire and shape new interdisciplinary thinking about the emergence, history and governance of art markets around the world.

The art market is essentially a multidisciplinary object of study. While it is now a significant sector of the global economy, it has long played a seminal role in the circulation and reception of art, and provided the context within which artists created their work. Researchers from disciplines as diverse as economics, finance, law, history, art history or sociology have contributed to a better understanding of the complexity and specificity of this market arena. However, despite the advances made in each of these fields, research on the art market still too often suffers from a compartmentalization by discipline.

The Art Markets thematic school aims to bring together the international community of researchers working on the art market and to offer participants the opportunity to better understand the scientific approaches of other disciplines. Sharing a common knowledge base and concepts is a necessary condition for developing transdisciplinary collaborations. To this end, this training offers an interdisciplinary theoretical approach and familiarizes the participants with methodological tools in line with the most up-to-date analytical methods. The interaction between historical and contemporary analyses from the point of view of economics, finance, and sociology is particularly innovative.

In the era of globalization and digital technology, art markets are undergoing profound changes that are leading to a reconfiguration of the modalities of interaction between actors and intermediaries. Issues related to artistic exchanges, the emergence or decline of markets, financial speculation, the concentration of actors and the role of agents in building the economic and social value of art have accelerated the need to use robust analytical techniques to better understand these issues. It is also worthwhile questioning whether these developments are so new. For instance, the role of various institutions such as auction houses or art fairs benefit from being re-examined in the light of their historical roots in order to understand their function in an increasingly global art market system . At the same time, the analysis of contemporary art markets allows us to shed light with the advantage of hindsight on the practices, mechanisms and strategies put in place since the emergence of markets for visual arts from the 16th century onwards. In addition, quantitative analytical methods, data modelling and visualization have paved the way for important methodological and epistemological explorations.

More information on the 2020 Summer School can be found on the website.