Medieval Art Research

Conference – Norwich and the Medieval Parish Church c.900 – 2017 – The Making of a Fine City (17-18 June 2017)

17-18 June 2017, The Weston Room, Norwich Cathedral Hostry (Followed by walking tours and site visits in Norwich on 19 June)

We are delighted to announce details of the research project’s forthcoming conference. All 58 churches, whether existing, ruined or lost, are included in the scope of the project, which seeks insight into how the medieval city developed topographically, architecturally and socially. The Project is intended to reveal the interdependent relationship between city, community and architecture showing how people and places shaped each other during the middle ages. The conference (supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and Purcell) will present the medieval parish churches of Norwich in their immediate local context and in the broader framework of urban churches in Britain and northern Europe. The subject range will include documentary history, the architectural fabric of the buildings themselves and their place in the topography of Norwich, the development of the churches’ architecture and furnishings, the representation of the churches and their post-Reformation history.

Conference fee: £50 per delegate | £40 per student delegate (limited number of places available). The conference fee includes refreshments and sandwich lunch on both days, and a drinks reception in Norwich Cathedral cloister on Saturday evening. St Laurence clerestory

Online bookings: http://store.uea.ac.uk/conferences-and-events/faculty-of-arts-and-humanities/conferencesevents/norwich-and-the-medieval-parish-church-c900-2017-the-making-of-a-fine-city

Booking enquiries, including alternative ways to book: please contact Katie Scales (artsandhumanitiesevents@uea.ac.uk)

For further information, including provisional programme: Conference provisional programme and booking information

Conference supporter logos

CFP: Art and Cross-Cultural Dialogue: Identity and Cultural Diversity

David Gareja Monastery, Georgia, 13-c. mural

The fourth international conference for PhD students and recent PhD graduates will take place in Tbilisi, 28-30 September 2017. The event will focus on cross-cultural dialogue, identity and cultural diversity in culture and art. The topic itself has been a part of our cultural identity, but has not been thoroughly researched due of its complexity.

From antiquity to the present, the history, culture and art of different countries and nations maintains the memory of relations and exchanges of ideas. The reasons for and forms of their relations were different. Whether a peaceful connection, or in some cases invasion and conflict, their coexistence was reflected in different fields of social life, culture and art. In this controversial process, politics, society and people played special roles.

The crossroads as a meeting point of many different states, people, religions and cultures was a very vibrant “place” where unique artistic phenomena were created, where the connections reflected societies, cultures, tastes and fashions. In this cultural diversity each element has a special role.

At our gathering we would like to discuss this topic in a new way from the most interesting and imaginative angles. We invite proposals with new approaches and new perspectives, rethinking old knowledge in relation to cross-cultural relations, cultural diversity and identity.

The topics of the conference include, but are not limited to:

Crossroads as a meeting point of various cultures

Unexpected encounters: cross-cultural dialogue beyond space and time
Where is the border of identity and cultural diversity?
Geographical, epochal and cultural borders through the centuries: similarities and differences between them. Historical backgrounds, influences and cultural identity

Art as one of the main expressions of identity

Coexistence and the process of synthesis through the prism of localcultural traditions

Artists beyond borders
Designed structures in open space as carries of cultural identities
Cross-roads as a melting point of ideas

Memory and memorials

Memory, local traditions and foreign influences: idea, content and form
Places of shared memory. Sacred space and aspects of cultural and religious heritage and inter-faith dialogue

The role of individuals in the formation of the cultural process through history: rulers, clerics, missionaries, ambassadors and travellers
Religious diversity and cultural encounters

What defines identity in the globalisation process?

Rules of attraction: uniting and dividing cultural principles between idealization and demonization

Global and local in work of art or at art exhibitions
Lost in translation: the limits of cross-cultural dialogue

Proposals should include name, contact information (address, phone number, e-mail), title of the paper, short CV(maximum 200 words) and an abstract (maximm 400 words); to be sent by email to conference.phd2017@gmail.com.

For more information, please visit the link: http://phdconference2014.wixsite.com/dmr-ljubljana/copy-of-cfp-2016

Call for Papers for the 2017/18 Academic Year Lecture Series „Art – Research – Gender“ Lecture Series of the Office of Gender Issues, University of Applied Arts Vienna

University of Applied Arts Vienna.jpg Excessively Big Gestures

In the 2017/18 academic year, the transdisciplinary lecture series will pursue excessiveness. Interesting here is what is deemed inappropriate and simply too much in the form of speech, literary writing, and courses of action in the performative arts (including comedy). Or in the realm of queer-feminist activism, and the consciously fanatical, provocative manifestos that repeatedly accompany these articulations, such as Mina Loy’s Feminist Manifesto (1914), Valerie Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto (1967), Bikini Kill’s Riot Grrrl Manifesto (1991), Beatriz Preciado’s Manifiesto contrasexual (2000), Virginie Despentes’ King Kong Théorie (2006), or the feminist migrant collective MAIZ’s deployment of Oswald de Andrade’s Manifesto An-tropófago (1928).

Excessiveness can be found in overshooting the forms and formats through unexpected du-ration, or with litanies and persistent repetitions. A narrowing in the direction of doing, in the framework of an artistic mode of articulation, can also be excessive. Protest forms can be addressed in this way as well – the emphasis should lie on the linguis-tic, on time-based gestures and on activism. We are on the lookout for big gestures that evoke the excessiveness inherent in normative gender relations, such as the deed of a figure like Jeanne Dielman in Chantal Akerman’s 1975 film by the same name. The excessive act here follows an exaggerated accurateness in the daily actions of a housewife and sex work-er, which is gradually interfused with minimal disturbances and consequently becomes the-matized in diverse, but intertwined levels of in/appropriateness.

In the scope of this lecture series, strategies of pooling attention through risky actions in gender-critical terms should be reflected upon, e.g. how existing social asymmetries can be made visible through reversal or escalation without being populistic. Another matter of interest is how possible trivialization as provocation can be met, and also, to what degree an adoption of heroism can be critically countered.

About the Lecture Series:
The „Art – Research – Gender“ lecture series will be held at the University of Applied Arts Vienna over the 2016/17 academic year and can be taken as a course as well. It is organized by the Office of Gender Issues.

Scientists and artists of all disciplines are invited to present their perspectives on the ques-tions raised above. We particularly welcome submissions by young researchers – from the area of their thesis, for example. Speakers are paid compensation of € 300 and can claim reimbursement of travel costs.

Usually, eight lectures are selected for each academic year, which are held on Wednesdays at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. We expect talks to take up to 60 minutes; a discussion follows.

Concept & Organization: Office of Gender Issues

Please submit your proposal by email on or before April 30, 2017, to gender@uni-ak.ac.at
Please include:
• Working title
• Abstract (300 words)
• Short biography
• Your contact data

Submissions are accepted in German or English.

The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) 2017 Conference in The Vatican (7-9 June 2017)

worlds images The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) 2017 Conference in The Vatican is intended for a wide range of participants and interested parties, including digital image repository managers, content curators, software developers, scholars, and administrators at libraries, museums, cultural heritage institutions, software firms, and other organizations working with digital images and audio/visual materials. The conference will consist of two events with separate registration:

IIIF Showcase: Unlocking the World’s Digital Images on Tuesday, 6 June
IIIF Conference, 7-9 June (3 days). The pre-conference Mirador Viewer and Universal Viewer group meetings will take place on Monday, June 5, prior to the Showcase event and conference.

Registration info and more: http://iiif.io/event/2017/vatican/

Publication – Anna M. Migdal, « Regina Cœli. Les images mariales et le culte des reliques. Entre Orient et Occident au Moyen Âge »

regina coeli.jpeg Les images-reliquaires, dont la singularité attire notre attention, se définissent par la complexité de leur composition tant au point de vue artistique qu’au point de vue religieux. Il s’agit ici des peintures sur panneau de bois (plus rarement, sur verre églomisé), ayant fonction de porte-reliques, et décorées dans certains cas de pierres précieuses ou semi-précieuses. Le modèle de tableau-reliquaire : panneau unique, diptyque et triptyque comprenant le portrait de la Vierge à l’Enfant enchâssé dans une large bordure incrustée de reliques, se répandit particulièrement dans la péninsule italienne, et par la suite en Europe centrale. Cependant, les reliquaires polonais, connus sur le territoire de la Petite-Pologne durant le XVe siècle jusqu’au début du siècle suivant, ne sont mentionnés que de manière sporadique dans l’histoire de l’art. Ils sont apparus dans quelques articles, mais sans avoir fait l’objet d’aucune analyse spécifique quant à leur contenu iconographique, leur similarité formelle, ainsi qu’à l’égard de leur usage dévotionnel. C’est pourquoi, nous souhaitons les joindre aux créations semblables répandues dans l’art entre Orient et Occident au Moyen Âge. Dans la même optique, il serait également intéressant de s’interroger sur la continuité de tels objets au-delà de l’époque médiévale.

Historien de l’art, ancienne boursière de l’École française et de l’Académie de France à Rome, Anna M. Migdal est spécialisée dans l’étude des arts plastiques et de l’iconographie du Ve au XVIe siècle. Le doctorat soutenu à l’Université Lumière Lyon II – Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée, a suivi les études à l’Institut d’histoire de l’art de l’Université Jagellon.

Informations pratiques :
Anna M. Migdal, Regina Cœli. Les images mariales et le culte des reliques. Entre Orient et Occident au Moyen Âge, Turnhout, Brepols, 2017 (Hagiologia, 12). Approx. 438 p., 110 b/w ill. + 26 colour ill., 156 x 234 mm. ISBN: 978-2-503-56858-4. Prix : 95 euros.

CFP: Horses in Art: The Familiar and the Alien Session at the International Medieval Congress, Leeds, 4 July 2017: 11.15-12.45

IMC 2017: Last minute call for papers

Below is a list of two-paper sessions which still require a third paper.If you would like to propose a paper for any of the sessions please send your paper to us via email noting the session you have applied for at the top of your message. If we have included contact details for the organiser, please contact them first to discuss your paper.

Session 603

Horses in Art: The Familiar and the Alien

Tuesday 4 July 2017: 11.15-12.45

Organiser: Edgar Rops, Faculty of Law, University of Latvia, Riga

Moderator: Anastasija Ropa, Department of Management & Communication Science, LASE, Riga (Anastasija.Ropa@lspa.lv)

Horses, omnipresent in the medieval life, make a frequent appearance in medieval art in a variety of forms and guises, referring the viewer to the familiar realities or carrying him or her to the realms of fantasy and alterity. Likewise, the connotations of equines and equestrians differs: from the metaphoric and symbolic to the purely practical, the interaction between horses and humans in visual media channels a variety of meanings. The papers presented in this thematic session on horses in medieval art study the representation of equines in various physical contexts: on tapestries and frescoes, as well as manuscripts.

For other sessions still seeking papers at IMC Leeds 2017, see the conference website.

Book Roundup: Recent Publications on Medieval Art in English, French and Italian

Lire les objets médiévaux

Quand les choses font signe et sens

Ce livre prend le « parti-pris des choses », à la confluence de l’histoire, l’histoire de l’art, |’archéologie, l’anthropologie et la philosophie en interrogeant les spécificités de l’objet au Moyen Âge en littérature. Pas encore doté d’une autonomie matérielle propre, l’objet médiéval, carrefour herméneutique, fonctionne comme signe d’une grande plasticité, apte à référer à autre chose qu’à lui-même, à assurer un rôle médiateur et une fonction identitaire ou transactionnelle. Il nécessite donc de prendre en considération son rapport avec le sujet.

Informations pratiques :
Fabienne Pomel (dir.), Lire les objets médiévaux. Quand les choses font signe et sens, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2017 (Interférences). Format : 15,5 x 21 cm. Nombre de pages : 320 p. Illustrations : N & B. ISBN : 978-2-7535-5309-5. Prix : 22,00 €.

The Century of the Flemish Primitives : Late Medieval Art in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp
Author: Vandenbroeck, Paul
Price: $42.50
ISBN: 9789085867272
Record created on 03/04/2016
Description: Schoten: BAI, 2016. 23cm., hardcover, 144pp. illus. English translation of 2014 edition.

Summary: At 152 paintings, the collection of ‘Flemish Primitives’ held by the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp is the largest in Flanders. This publication gives an overview from ‘pre-Eyckian’ painting to some of the highpoints of late medieval art from beyond the Low Countries. Works discussed include altarpieces, secular art, pieces by women religious, Flemish artists elsewhere in Europe, as well as sculpture. Besides the religious views that framed thought, the art of painting is contextualized in a wider perspective on art itself.

MARIA CRISTINA IMPROTA. Il restauro dei portali di San Petronio a Bologna. Studi e approfondimenti, Edifir, 2016, 232 p.
ISBN: 978-8879707442

El presente volumen está dedicado a la presentación del complejo proyecto de conservación y restauración -a nivel de diagnóstico en una fase preliminar- para la caracterización de los materiales constituyentes y para el estudio del estado de conservación de estos materiales en la fachada de la basílica de San Petronio en Bolonia, llevado a cabo por el Opificio delle Pietre Dure.

El O.P.D. ha efectuado la intervención de la restauración de los tres portales de la fachada de San Petronio (la portada central o Porta Magna de Jacopo della Quercia, y las dos portadas laterales, diseñadas por Ercole Seccadenari entre 1524 y 1530) en sólo tres años, afrontando las espinosas problemáticas típicas de las esculturas al aire libre en condiciones severas de conservación.

Se ha aplicado un protocolo de intervención absolutamente innovador que ha permitido obtener resultados ampliamente satisfactorios.

MARIO D’ONOFRIO, MANUELA GIANANDREA (dir.), Fondi nel Medioevo, Gangemi, 2016, 351 p.
ISBN: 978-8849233384

Este volumen contiene las actas de la conferencia internacional celebrada en Fondi en octubre de 2013, un congreso que tenía como objetivo principal dar a conocer los extraordinarios tesoros histórico-artísticos de la época medieval aparecidos durante los últimos quince años en la ciudad de Fondi y su territorio, gracias a una campaña sostenida de restauraciones y de mejoras.

Entre los monumentos y obras redescubiertas y restauradas figuran el monasterio de San Magno, el complejo de San Domenico, la iglesia de San Tommaso d’Aquino, las pinturas del Palazzo Caetani, el complejo arqueológico medieval de Casale Mosillo y los fragmentos pictóricos de Suio.

Además de la importancia evidente y obvia del propio descubrimiento, la mayor parte de las obras dadas a conocer permiten ilustrar un prolongado período de la historia artística de Fondi -desde la Alta Edad Media hasta inicios del siglo XIV- que hasta ahora se mantenía parcialmente en la sombra en favor de la etapa del Renacimiento tardío.

Los nuevos hallazgos permiten ahora poner de manifiesto también un “otro Fondi”, revelando un panorama rico y articulado, vinculado por su naturaleza a la producción artística de la histórica Terra di Lavoro, así como también abierto a la región Marittima medieval, o incluso a Roma.

Fondi, por lo tanto, se revela en estos siglos como un centro cultural entre la Urbe y el Regnum, pasando a formar parte de la relación problemática entre “centro” y “periferia”, que hasta bien entrado el siglo XIII estrechó Roma y Montecassino a su entorno.

CFP: Historians of Netherlandish Art Conference (Ghent, 24-26 May 2018)

Peter Bruegel the Elder, detail of Children's Games, 1560 — Peter Bruegel the Elder, detail of Children’s Games, 1560

Ghent, HNA Conference
Deadline: May 15, 2017

Calls for papers:

[1] Bruegel’s Politics
[2] Utensils in Art: The Object as an Artist’s Model and the Domestic Utensil as Decorative Arts

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CFP: Singular Acts (London, 16 Nov 17)

The Warburg Institute Library London, The Warburg Institute, November 16, 2017
Deadline: May 31, 2017

Singular Acts: The Role of the Individual in the Transformation of Collective Culture

The Warburg Institute will host its second Postgraduate Symposium on 16 November 2017. This year’s Symposium focuses on particular personalities who acted for or against historical and cultural change.

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CFP: Defense(less) city – Revista de Historia da Arte next issue

Deadline: Apr 30, 2017

DEFENSE(LESS) CITY will be the special subject of next issue of the Revista de História da Arte from IHA-FCSH-NOVA.

The city is, by definition, alterity, difference. It is the human accomplishment par excellence, standing out from nature, isolating itself from it. The presumption of defense is inherent to the very idea of the urban. The rite of the city’s birth implies first tracing its symbolic defense precincts, followed by the effective building of its walls. In the Middle Ages, the very definition of a city requires a wall. But it is in Early Modernity that speculation about the city’s defenses reaches its zenith. Defenses are theorized in treatises and tested in fortifications. Throughout the Early Modern period, war becomes an exercise of extreme defense, of siege resistance. Until the time comes for the absolute inoperability of any kind of city walls. The Contemporary city stands literally fuori mura. And yet, cosmopolitan urbanity, supposedly open, is also potentially closed.

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