2014 HNA/AANS International Interdisciplinary Conference. Boston, June 5-7, 2014
Call for papers
The Conference Program Committee of The Historians of Netherlandish Art solicits Paper proposals for the organization’s quadrennial conference, to be held in Boston, June 5-7, 2014. For the first time, this event will take place together and in cooperation with the conference of The American Association for Netherlandic Studies. We welcome proposals for papers that present new directions in the study of Netherlandish art between 1350 and 1750. Sessions will be two hours long, generally including four papers of 20 minutes in length with ample time for discussion. A series of workshops will also be announced when registration for the conference opens.
General guidelines
1. Current HNA membership is required of all chairs and speakers in HNA-sponsored sessions. (AANS membership will be required for paper participation in AANS-sponsored paper sessions, to be announced separately. Participation in workshops is open to all registrants of the conference.)
2. No one may participate as a chair or speaker in more than one paper session. This does not apply to participation in workshops (where all are encouraged to contribute).
3. See below for the list of paper sessions and descriptions. Please submit proposals directly to the chair(s) of individual sessions. Proposals should include a letter of interest, an abstract of the proposed paper (a maximum of two pages, typed double-spaced), and a curriculum vitae. Please inform session chairs if you submit proposals to more than one session. Papers already published or presented in full to another scholarly conference will not be considered.
Schedule
Proposals for papers due to session chairs by DECEMBER 1, 2013. Chairs determine speakers and reply to all applicants by JANUARY 15, 2014. Full texts of papers due to session chairs by APRIL 15, 2014.
Conference program committee
Susan Anderson ; Margaret Carroll ; Paul Crenshaw ; Stephanie Dickey ; Amy Golahny ; Wijnie de Groot ; David Levine ; Henry Luttikhuizen ; Jeffrey Muller ; Natasha Seaman ; Ron Spronk ; Michael Zell.
List of paper sessions
The Netherlands and the World, 1500-1750
Dawn Odell, Lewis & Clark College, dvo@dclark.edu
Larry Silver, University of Pennsylvania, lasilver@sas.upenn.edu
Thijs Weststeijn, Universiteit van Amsterdam, M.A.Weststeijn@uva.nl
The Low Countries became an essential node in the increased interconnectivity that came with “First Globalization.” Antwerp and Amsterdam were among the Oirst global centers, staple markets for commodities and artworks from outside Europe, especially East Asia. At the same time they produced images for a worldwide public made by a surplus of migrant artists. A fortuitous combination of factors, including successful Dutch mercantile logistics, geographical reach of the Jesuit mission, and a thriving publishing industry made the area a crucible of cultural exchange. The
Netherlands, as a contested fringe area of the Habsburg Empire marked by internal fault lines, thus demonstrated a unique intellectual Olexibility and creative productivity in the Oirst period of intensive artistic exchange between Europe and the rest of the world.
Re-installing, Re-hanging…What’s Next?
Sasha Suda, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Alexandra_Suda@ago.net
Yao-Fen You, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, YYou@dia.org
In the last decade we have seen major museums in North America and Europe, including most recently the Rijksmuseum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, reinstall their Dutch, Flemish and Netherlandish galleries, displaying collections of sculpture and decorative arts side-by-side with pictures. With the occasional nod to works on paper, textiles, and other light-sensitive objects when conditions permit, mixed-media presentations aim not only to represent the varied scope and spectrum of artistic production, but also introduce issues of historical context, function, and display.
This session seeks presentations that reflect on the scholarly—methodological and pedagogical—value and implications of these new museological installations for the field of Dutch, Flemish and Netherlandish art. As an area of art history that was among the earliest to embrace technological analysis and its possibilities, museum- based, object-led research has always played a vital role in the discipline’s development. The increasing prominence of evocative approaches that focus on materiality, object relationships, and more importantly, the stories of Dutch, Flemish and Netherlandish art in its entirety—spurred by collections-based research—inevitably broadens the range of questions asked, and encourages us to reevaluate methods and goals of scholarly research and learning.
Art Beyond Painting in the Northern Renaissance and Baroque
Ellen Konowitz, SUNY New Paltz, konowite@newpaltz.edu
In recent years scholars have addressed works created in media – such as stone, metal, glass, and fabric – that are complex and accomplished in meaning and technique, but have been pushed to the margins of art history in earlier scholarship, often dismissed as a decorative art or craft. Scholars of Netherlandish art now recognize that major works were produced in media other than painting, and that in many cases, prominent artists designed and produced them. Such works may include objects such as a carved mantelpiece or an ensemble of painted furniture, a woven tapestry or piece of needlework, a metal coin or medal, or a stained- glass window. This panel seeks papers that explore the significance of works in media beyond painting. Papers may analyze individual works of art, categories of media, or intermedial projects. The session aims at expanding and more accurately defining the dimensions of artistic production in Northern Europe circa 1350-1700.
Personification: Embodying Meaning and Emotion in the Low Countries,
1400-1700
Walter S. Melion, Emory University, walter.melion@emory.edu
Bart Ramakers, University of Groningen, b.a.m.ramakers@rug.nl
Personification, or prosopopeia, the rhetorical figure by which something not human is given a human identity or ‘face’, is readily discernible in early modern texts and images, but the figure’s cognitive form and function, its rhetorical and pictorial effects, have rarely elicited sustained scholarly attention. As a communicative device, it is either taken for granted or dismissed as mere convention. The aim of the proposed session is to formulate an alternative account of personification, to demonstrate the ingenuity with which this multifaceted device was utilized by late medieval and early modern authors and artists in the Low Countries.
The fact that literary and pictorial genres—the spel van sinne, for example, or its allied tableaux—designed to appeal to large audiences, such as festival plays and royal entries, often utilized allegorical personification, indicates that the figure was seen to accommodate a wide spectrum of tastes and expectations. Personification was also used as an exegetical instrument in sacred imagery of all kinds, both elite and popular, as well as in poëterijen (poetic fictions, such as paintings and prints based on Ovidian mythologies). It operated in multiple registers—sensory and spiritual, visible and invisible, concrete and abstract, heuristic and hermeneutic—and dealt not only in facts, but also in opinions and beliefs. With reference to the visible, current events and situations could be represented by means of personifications that objectified various social groups and institutions, as well as their defining ambitions and the forces that motivated them. As regards the invisible, processes of thinking, feeling, and experiencing were bodied forth by means of personifications designed to reveal how these modi operandi are constituted in the mind, heart, or spirit.
Our interest in personification is motivated by several trends that have emerged over the last decade in cultural (historical) studies, whereby artistic expression is approached from the point of view of the body, performance, and cognition. Seen in light of these trends, personification (along with the texts and images that employ the figure) offers many research opportunities. In methodological terms, personification is susceptible to an approach that balances a more semiotic analysis, focusing on meaning effects, and a more phenomenological analysis, focusing on presence effects. These approaches can be combined to foreground the full scope of prosopopeic discourse—not just the what, but also the how, not only the signified, but also the signifier.
The organizers welcome submissions that address the topic by raising questions about the ways that personification was theorized, interpreted, deployed visually, textually, and/or performatively, and contextualized between 1400 and 1700.
Portraits and Politics in the Early Modern Netherlands, 1500-1700
Stephanie S. Dickey, Queen’s University, dickey.ss@gmail.com
The growth of the art market in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries enabled citizens across a broad spectrum of society to commemorate themselves through painted, printed, drawn, and sculpted portraits. While many commissions served private purposes, such as the remembrance of family members or loved ones, portraits were also displayed in public buildings, exchanged as collegial or diplomatic gifts, and collected for their documentary as well as aesthetic value.
Group portraits of professional and civic leaders flourished in the Netherlands as nowhere else in Europe. Printed portraits created a new market for the likenesses of prominent individuals, initiating a cult of celebrity that still plays a powerful role in popular culture.
This session seeks case studies that explore the social and political functions of portraits in the early modern Netherlands. How did portraits function as public monuments, as declarations of professional or political affiliation, as tools of diplomacy? How did the production or exchange of portraits cement ties between prominent individuals, or between civic, religious, or political groups? How did portraits honor – or create – celebrities, and how were they used as propaganda? How did visual portraits work with other forms of portrayal (such as poetic eulogy) or within larger projects such as state funerals or triumphal entries? Proposals are welcomed that examine portraits in any medium, produced in any region of the Netherlands (the Dutch Republic or Flanders, or their colonies) between 1500 and 1700.
The Production of and the Market for Cheap Paintings in 17th-Century Holland
Eric Jan Sluijter, Universiteit van Amsterdam, E.J.Sluijter@uva.nl
In the 17th century, huge numbers of inexpensive paintings were produced in Holland – in Amsterdam in particular, but also in such cities as Haarlem and The Hague. Inventories abound with anonymous paintings valued at less than five guilders, and several estate inventories of art dealers trading in very cheap paintings are known to us. Many of these works seem to have been bought by people of modest means, but we also find numerous cheap, anonymous paintings recorded in respectable collections of wealthy burghers who owned expensive works by well-known masters. In 1657, the gentleman dealer Johannes de Renialme, for example, who dealt in the highest tier of the market with 41 paintings in his stock estimated between 200 and 1500 guilders, also had 70 works valued between one and three guilders!
A considerable number of these painters signed their pictures, but their names have been neglected in the inventories and remain hidden under the masses of “anonymous” works. Other painters laboured anonymously for art dealers, copying or making paintings after prints, while a third group worked in the studios of successful artists making copies or variants. Very little is known, however, about such practices. The last type seems to have been more common in Antwerp, with its large export market, than in the Dutch cities where the market seems to have been more local.
This session invites papers that address questions such as:
What do we know about painters working – anonymously or under their own name − for art dealers? Were certain types of subject matter especially popular in this lowest level of production? Can we say something about the relation between specific types of cheap paintings and the audiences for whom they were meant? Were these paintings mainly sold at local markets, or were they produced for export (to German and Baltic cities, for example)? What kind of manners do we meet in this section of the art market – did these painters mainly follow the successful artists, or did they work in more old-fashioned styles? What painting techniques and materials were used by these painters? What was the relationship between production time, production costs, and selling prices? What do we know about the practices of copying and varying in the larger studios? Are there significant differences in production practices between the different cities, particularly in Amsterdam and
Antwerp? (Since much more is known about the production of cheap paintings for export in Antwerp, this session will focus on Dutch cities and use our knowledge about the production in Antwerp mainly in a comparative perspective.)
Inside, Outside: Environments of Netherlandish Visual Culture
Rebecca Tucker, Colorado College, rtucker@coloradocollege.edu
Angela Vanhaelen, McGill University, angela.vanhaelen@mcgill.ca
Throughout the Netherlands and its colonial settlements, the period between 1500 and 1700 witnessed the development of many new types of locations for art, including gardens, public entertainment structures, and innovative environments in and around built structures (such as canal homes, country houses, public buildings, and uithofs). While the development of new types of architecture and gardens in this period has long been acknowledged, there has been little study of how such environments operated, and what their impact might have been on the reception and functioning of the art and décor within them. This panel aims to expand the discussion of the location of art to include not only paintings and sculpture but also gardens, built environments, display systems, textiles and furniture ensembles, decorative suites, site-specific works, etc. We welcome papers that focus on case studies in a wide variety of media as well as those that address methodological, thematic, and interdisciplinary questions.
Dutch Classicism Revisited
Judith Noorman, The Morgan Library and Museum, Judith.Noorman@nyu.edu
This session responds to recent interest in Dutch classicist painting, which is reflected in recent monographs and exhibitions on artists such as Karel du Jardin, Jacob Backer, Jan Lievens, Jacob van Loo, as well as many others, and the ongoing so-called Ecartico project.
These recent developments significantly improve the conditions to study the ephemeral classicist history painters as a group and return to the questions posed by Albert Blankert’s exhibition on Dutch classicism in 1999: Did these artists consider themselves a group? How does their work compare? How do the artistic changes relate to changes on the art market? Could their work be related to political and sociological changes? While monographic studies do not fully address these questions, they often raise doubts about Dutch classicism as an art historical category. Some argue to have the epitaph ‘classicism’ replaced with ‘academicism,’ others call into question the need for a single denominator and study shared artistic concerns, such as ‘the antiques’ or ‘welstant.’ These contemplations, and many others along with them, indicate that collectively revisiting Dutch classicism would be both well-timed and propitious
Image Theology and Art Theory in the Low Countries
Maarten Delbeke, Ghent University and University of Leiden, maarten.delbeke@ugent.be
Koenraad Jonckheere, Ghent University, koenraad.jonckheere@ugent.be
While it probably was the most pervasive discourse on art in the Low Countries in history, the study of art theory in the Low Countries has so far paid relatively little attention to the image theologies developed in the age of Reformation and Counter-reformation. This is peculiar. While Platonic and other philosophical paradigms are generally accepted themes in the literature on (Netherlandish) art theory, image-theologies have largely been dismissed even though they were far more widespread and involved a varied array of arguments and concepts.
The image theologies and the debates they spurred were public discussions on (religious) art that engaged a majority of the urban population. They fundamentally affected the nature of art in the public space of the Low Countries in the wake of iconoclasm. Moreover, as several authors since David Freedberg have shown, theologians and polemicists developed sophisticated reflections about the nature of art and its function within society and religion. Finally, the image debates were not confined to learned treatises, but played out in a variety of sources, ranging from theological tracts to hagiography aimed at a general public, and affected high art as well as popular devotional objects.
If ancient philosophy and rhetoric certainly played a fundamental role in the art theory of the Low Countries, it might be worthwhile to consider the image debates as an equally important factor. Therefore, this session invites papers on the development of art theoretical discourse (either in written, visual or material form) in relation to image theologies and theories formulated by Reformed and Catholic writers in the sixteenth and seventeenth century.
Texts on Technique: Materials for Art History 1350-1750
Marjolijn Bol, Universiteit van Amsterdam, M.A.H.Bol@uva.nl
Arjan de Koomen, Universiteit van Amsterdam, A.R.deKoomen@uva.nl
Textual testimonies from the past are an important and much-used source within art historical studies. Besides the study of sources important to readjusting the corpus of art historical data, there is the category of art literature, usually defined as art theory. These treatises are mostly explored for opinions, ideas and theories, stated explicitly or implicitly, and are considered to be the key to the intellectual persona of the artist and his ideological world. The possibility that the artist-writer could be absorbed with issues concerning the manufacture of art, rather than its place in a theoretical framework, is seldom taken into account. Yet, as for instance Ernst van de Wetering’s Rembrandt: The painter at work demonstrates, re-reading art theory from this perspective can reveal important information about the making and history of art objects.
In addition to art theoretical texts, sources dealing with the production of art, the so-called art technological treatises, ranging from recipe books to patents, have mostly been studied to answer material questions about works of art by specialists from the museum world and conservation or applied science, many of them belonging to the Art Technological Source Research Group (ATSR) established within ICOM-CC in 2002. As art technological sources are usually not considered part of the body of art historical literature, these prescriptive and descriptive writings about the manufacture of art works have received little attention from art historians. Nonetheless, if studied together with traditional art historical literature, these texts too can contribute to a fuller understanding of the history and interpretation of art. The struggle with ‘stuff’ as well as the secrets of how to give it form brings us to that place and moment in art where the mental and the material meet.
This panel invites papers addressing texts about making that attempt to bring together the worlds of art history and technical analysis in various ways. By re-reading traditional art historical literature for their discussions about making on the one hand, and, on the other, incorporating art technological treatises into art historical studies, we hope to demonstrate the many ways in which writing about making provides material, conceptual and historical insights into art objects.
Proposals may venture into the following areas:
– Re-reading the treatise not as theory but as instruction for, or reflection upon, the production of art;
– Discussing how art theory reflects upon the properties of materials;
– Examining the relationship between art technological sources and art objects;
– Considering the relation between art technological sources and art theoretical texts;
– Examining how art technological sources and so-called ‘ego-documents’ help us to understand what has been called the artist’s ‘intention’ and the artwork’s ‘original’ appearance;
– Reflecting, with the help of technical texts, upon historical concepts of creation.
Rubens and His Legacy
Nico Van Hout, Koniklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, nico.vanhout@kmska.be
Undoubtedly, Rubens is the most inOluential Flemish painter and through reproduction in print, his compositions had an impact that already reached far beyond European boundaries in his own time. A prodigious creator of images, he barely had competitors. With reason, J.J. Winckelmann and Charles Baudelaire characterized the broad array of subjects treated by him – religious works, mythological scenes, landscapes and portraits – as truly Homeric. As an artistic personality, himself indebted to Titian, Rubens became a role model to Van Dyck,Rembrandt and Velázquez. Although Rubens’s style was attacked, mainly by critics with a protestant background, his artistic legacy lasted for nearly four centuries and had a strong impact on French, British and Austrian art. His work was disseminated throughout the world via reproductive prints from very early on, used by missionaries in Mexico, Peru, Québec and the Philippines.
Rembrandt: Meaning and Interpretation
H. Perry Chapman, University of Delaware, pchapman@udel.edu
Erik Hinterding, Rijksmuseum, E.Hinterding@rijksmuseum.nl
Technical art history has recently contributed a great deal to our understanding of Rembrandt’s art and artistic practice. This session focuses instead on the meaning and interpretation of specific works or groups of works. Papers might address how Rembrandt’s works made/make meaning for himself, for his audience or for today by examining the role of, for example, medium or technique, display and cultural practices, artistic tradition or art theory, religion and ethics. The session is open to a variety of approaches but papers should entail close readings of individual works of art. Particularly welcome are papers that use art-historical evidence and approaches to illuminate relations between style or visual appeal and subject matter, that propose an answer to the question “What is iconography today?”, or that bring art historical approaches and insights to the findings of technical art history.
Technical Art History, open session
Ron Spronk, Queen’s University and Radboud Universiteit, spronkr@queensu.ca
This session welcomes proposals for presentations that integrate findings from the study of materials and techniques into a broader art historical discourse. Topics can range from presentations on the examinations of a single object or ensemble to the study of an artist or an oeuvre, and from technical or methodological discussions to issues of education and communication of research findings. Proposals for papers discussing interdisciplinary initiatives are especially welcome.
Fifteenth-Century Netherlandish Art, Open Session
Hugo van der Velden, Harvard University, velden@fas.harvard.edu
This session welcomes papers on any aspect of Netherlandish art and architecture of the fifteenth century.
Sixteenth-Century Netherlandish Art, Open Session
Jeffrey Chipps Smith, University of Texas, Austin, chipps@austin.utexas.edu
This session welcomes papers on any aspect of Netherlandish (and German) art and architecture of the sixteenth century.
Source: HNA News
L'Agenda des Médiévistes 