Medieval Art Research

CFP: Aby Warburg and Nature (Hamburg, 15-16 Jan 15)

ABY WARBURG AND NATURE
Workshop, University of Hamburg, Warburg-Haus, 15 – 16 January 2015
Deadline: 31 August 2014

Organizers: Frank Fehrenbach and Cornelia Zumbusch (University of Hamburg)

Aby Warburg’s references to enlivenment, life forces, and the afterlife of images are evidence for the paradigmatic meaning of the natural for his conceptualization of the emergence and re-emergence of pictorial formulas. From wind and the bewegtes Beiwerk (‘accessory in motion’) in his dissertation on Botticelli, to stars in his studies on astrology, to lightning in his lecture on snake rituals, nature surfaces again and again in his work as an image-generating entity. Warburg himself systematically addressed the connections between art and nature; it is thus all the more surprising that this aspect of Warburg’s work has been the subject of so little research. Warburg’s ‘pathos formulas’ anchor images to motor functions and the kinetics of the human body. His studies of expression, as well as his notion of a collective pictorial memory that nourished the visual arts from antiquity through the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, are clearly oriented towards anthropological, physiological and psychological models of human nature. Warburg thus identifies the basis of human image-making as an attempt to grasp the ‘moved life’ of the natural, against the background of conceptions and descriptive means drawn from natural magic, natural philosophy, and the natural sciences.

Warburg’s basic project to link the study of the visual arts with cultural studies is itself strongly related to natural scientific models of his time. This can be seen in his idiosyncratic, often tentative adoptions of such terms and contaminations as mneme (mnemonic traces that operate in the life of images); Erbgut and Erbmasse (‘inheritance’; ‘hereditary mass’); kinetic and potential energy; dynamogram (a kind of ‘energetic sign’); engram (‘energetic’ mnemonic traces); and Energiekonserve (‘canned energy’). It is to these areas that our workshop wishes to apply itself – not simply to plumb the capacity and range of Warburg’s vocabulary, but rather to take a closer look at his intersecting of cultural studies and the natural sciences. What methodological status do genetics, evolutionary biology, social psychology, affect psychology, or even physics or mathematics have for Warburg’s understanding of images? What role do Warburg’s own systems of record, his sketches and formulas, play in all this? Is the importing of abstract concepts and models from the natural sciences just a matter of ‘nice analogies’, as Saxl would have us believe – or can we lay bare an epistemology of transfer between cultural studies and the natural sciences which could also be illuminating for current fluctuations between the two?

Please submit your proposal of no more than 300 words and a short CV to
naturbilder@uni-hamburg.de by August 31, 2014.

CFP: Visual Narratives – Cultural Identities (Hamburg, 27-29 Nov 14)

CFP: Visual Narratives – Cultural Identities. A trans- and interdisciplinary conference at the University of Hamburg
Hamburg, 27-29 November 2014
Deadline: 31 July 2014

Increasingly, cultural studies focus on stories and the narration of stories as important catalysts for the constitution, confirmation, and modification of cultural identities. Not only in times of what seems like floods of images but since images are made a large part of these stories and narratives is communicated by visual media. Constantly it can be observed that elaborate iconographic programs are developed to establish specific meanings more or less successfully as essential elements of cultural identities.

To analyse and interpret visual media from such a perspective it is, on the one hand, necessary to develop categories to describe their narrative aspect. The current state of research is heterogeneous: On narratology of film and graphic literature there are rich discussions and developed methods and theories whilst research in the field of single and static images is quite fragmentary. On the other hand methods have to be explored which facilitate cultural interpretations of visual narratives and which may decode the deeper meanings transmitted – also from times and epochs long gone. Finally, it has to be considered how narrative contents participate in the construction of cultural identities.

Basic questions for the conference could be:

– By which means may the narrative aspects of visual media be described?
– Which are the methods to decode the transmitted messages?
– Which strategies are used to construct cultural identities visually?
– Do, in turn, changed or modified identities lead to different patterns of stories and narrations?- What can be gained from a comparison of visual-narrative communication with other forms, for example literary ones?

The conference is organised by students of archaeology, art history, and cultural anthropology. It will contain lectures and workshops on the main topics and provide opportunities for detailed discussion. We are especially looking for trans- and interdisciplinary contributions which deal with the analysis and interpretation of narratives and narrations in visual media from narratological and (visual) culture studies perspectives. There is no limitation to certain times or cultures. The contributions are going to be published after the conference. Proposals for lectures (30 min) or workshops (60 min) in German or English may be sent to mail@kulturkundetagung.de (contact persons: Jacobus Bracker, Clara Doose-Grünefeld, Tim Jegodzinski and Kirsten Maack) until 31 July 2014. Abstracts should not exceed 300 words. Further we would be grateful to receive a short academic CV. We encourage establiched scholars and especially young scholars and students of all levels to contribute. Funding of speakers’ travel and accommodation expenses can currently not be guaranteed. However, participation in the conference is free of any charge.

For further information, see the conference website.

Conference: English Fourteenth-Century Illuminated Manuscripts in the British Library

English Fourteenth-Century Illuminated Manuscripts in the British Library
London, British Library Conference Centre
Monday, 1 December 2014

The British Library is pleased to announce an AMARC conference to celebrate the launch of Lucy Freeman Sandler’s book Illuminators and Patrons in Fourteenth-Century England: The Psalter Hours of Humphrey de Bohun and the Manuscripts of the Bohun Family. Details are as follows:

Speakers: Paul Binski, Alixe Bovey, Julian Luxford, Nigel Morgan, Kathryn Smith, and Lucy Freeman Sandler

Evening book launch and reception hosted by Sam Fogg, at the Sam Fogg Gallery

Registration fees: £20 general, £15 for AMARC members, £10 for students. Lunch provided.

To register, send a cheque made out to AMARC to Kathleen Doyle, Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts, The British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB. Foreign delegates may register and pay on the day. Places limited to 80.

Source: British Library Medieval manuscripts blog

UPDATE: This conference has been so popular it has been moved to a larger lecture hall and more places are now available. http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2014/10/illuminated-manuscripts-conference-more-places-available.html

(Updated) Conference Programme: Fifty Years after Panofsky’s Tomb Sculpture (London, 21 June 2014)

(Updated) Conference Programme:
Fifty Years after Panofsky’s Tomb Sculpture.
New Approaches, New Perspectives, New Material

Saturday 21 June 2014, 10.00 – 18.00 (with registration from 09.30)
Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN

‘Tomb Sculpture will remain….among the basic works which determine turning points in the history of our discipline’. (Review in Art Bulletin, 1967).

The Courtauld Institute will be holding a one-day conference in 2014 to mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Erwin Panofsky’s Tomb Sculpture: Four Lectures on its Changing Aspects from Ancient Egypt to Bernini, comprising the lectures delivered originally in the fall of 1956 at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York. Panofsky’s lectures represented a new attempt to consider funerary monuments as artistic objects, charting developments in their iconography, style, form and function within the broader chronology of art history. Panofsky also emphasised the importance of tombs as evidence for changing (and sometimes contradictory) attitudes towards the deceased.

Examining monuments across Europe, from the Medieval to Early Modern periods, this conference will explore the legacy of Panofsky’s work as well as showcase the developments in research techniques and approaches that have led to new insights into tomb sculpture.

Ticket/Entry Details: £16 (£11 students, Courtauld staff/students, concessions). Please note that online booking for this event has now closed. However, limited places will be available on the day on a first come, first served basis (cash payment only).

For further information: http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/researchforum/calendar.shtml

Organised by Professor Susie Nash, Ann Adams and Jessica Barker (The Courtauld Institute of Art).

PROGRAMME

09.30 – 10.00 Registration

10.00 – 10.40 Professor Susie Nash (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
Welcome and Introduction: Erwin Panofsky’s Tomb Sculpture. Four lectures on its changing aspects from Ancient Egypt to Bernini (1964).

10.40 – 11.00 Break for refreshments (provided – Seminar Room 1)

SESSION 1: Reassessing Panofsky (Chair: Ann Adams)

11.00 – 11.25 Shirin Fozi (University of Pittsburgh): ‘From the ‘pictorial’ to the ‘statuesque’: Rudolf of Swabia, Widukind of Saxony, and the Problem of Plastic Form

11.25 – 11.50 Geoff Nuttall (Independent Scholar): ‘Delicate to the point of evanescence’: Panofsky, Ilaria del Carretto and Jacopo della Quercia

11.50 – 12.15 Jessica Barker (The Courtauld Institute of Art): Prospective and Retrospective: Joint Memorials in the Middle Ages

12.15 – 12.30 Panel questions

12.30 – 13.30 Lunch (not provided)

SESSION 2: New Approaches, New Perspectives, New Material (Chair: Michaela Zöschg)

13.30 – 13.55 Luca Palozzi (Edinburgh College of Art): ‘To Carve a Living Person out of Stone’: Petrarch, Pandolfo Malatesta, and the Origins of the Renaissance Humanist Tomb in Fourteenth-Century Italy

13.55 – 14.20 Christina Welch (University of Winchester): Cadaver monuments in England

14.20 – 14.45 James Cameron (The Courtauld Institute of Art): Competing for ‘dextro cornu magnum altaris’: Tombs and Liturgical Seating in English Churches

14.45 – 15.00 Panel questions

15.00 – 15.30 Break for refreshments (provided – Seminar Room 1)

SESSION 3: Reconstruction, Materials and Conservation (Chair: Kim Woods)

15.30 – 15.45 Kim Woods (The Open University): Introduction on materials

15.45 – 16.10 Martha Dunkelman (Canisius College): Deconstructing Donatello’s Brancacci Chapel

16.10 – 16.35 Marisa Costa (University of Lisbon): Does technical investigation fully answer art history questions? The case study of a Portuguese copper tomb from the early fifteenth century.

16.35 – 16.50 Panel questions

16.50 – 17.00 Summary: Ann Adams & Jessica Barker

17.00 – 18.00 Dr Phillip Lindley (University of Leicester)
Keynote: Taking leave of Panofsky

18.00 RECEPTION (Front Hall)

CFP: Memorializing the Middle Classes (Edited volume)

CFP: Memorializing the Middle Classes (Edited volume)
Deadline: 30 June 2014

Building on the session “Memorials for Merchants: The Funerary Culture of Late Medieval Europe’s New Elite” (College Art Association Annual Meeting, 2014), this edited volume offers papers that investigate the habits and strategies of patrons of commemorative art ca. 1300-1700, while considering what relationship, if any, existed between patronal strategies and choices and location in societal hierarchy. The rising fortunes of merchants, lawyers, and other professionals allowed middle-class patrons to commission private tombs in numbers not seen since Roman times.

While historians and anthropologists have looked broadly at European commemorative practices of the later Middles Ages and Renaissance, art historians have tended to focus on individual patrons, monuments, artists, or institutions. Memorializing the Middle Classes begins with an overview of Roman, Early Christian, and Byzantine precedent, offering a long view of continental commemorative culture. Essays by an international group of scholars follow to provide comparative analysis of the socio-cultural significance of memorialization both within particular cities and regions and across Europe. Papers that explore issues of social networks, the privatization of communal spaces, individual and corporate identities, personal and public memories, the relationships between the living and the dead, and other questions regarding commemoration, the use of space, and the patronage and reception of tombs and other memorials.

To submit a proposal, please send the following to
annecleader@gmail.com no later than 30 June 2014:

author’s name/affiliation
chapter title (15 words max.)
abstract (300 words max.)
selected bibliography
estimated number of illustrations and type (photo, chart/graph, map)
or a working list of illustrations
scholars (including contact information) who could serve as a peer reviewer for the book proposal
list of books that complement/compete with proposed volume and the target audience for your essay
cv
short biography in prose (100 words max.)

Please direct all questions to the editor, Anne Leader, at annecleader@gmail.com

CFP: Meanings of Erasure (Kalamazoo, 14-17 May 2015)

CFP: Meanings of Erasure
Session at the 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies
Kalamazoo, 14-17 May 2015
Deadline: 15 September 2015

Recent scholarly interest in whiteness, emptiness, and material destruction that pervade medieval visual culture demonstrate a shift in focus: where art historians have historically focused on figuration, they now turn to the instances of material absence. This session will explore the notion of erasure and its function in transforming the object being partially or completely defaced, expunged, rubbed out. How does erasure augment and subvert the meanings of the original image? What does it tell us about the process of engagement with medieval material culture? Does erasure ever equal silence, or does it announce itself as a loud presence on manuscript pages, stone exteriors, and wood and canvas surfaces? And what of the erased word: how does that compromise or transmute the complex text-image relationships? Submissions from scholars in any discipline are welcomed.

Please send your abstract, along with the paper proposal form (which can be found here: http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html), to Elina Gertsman at exg152@case.edu, by September 15, 2014.

Conference: Colour (London, 26 June 2014)

Conference: Colour
Warburg Institute, London, 26 June 2014
Registration deadline: 22 June 2014

This colloquium is being organised by the Warburg Institute and the National Gallery in conjunction with the exhibition on “Making Colour” at the National Gallery and will include an early morning viewing of the exhibition from 9.00 to 10.00 a.m.

The conference is organised by Caroline Campbell (National Gallery) and Peter Mack (Warburg Institute).

Programme

9.00
Viewing of Colour Exhibition at the National Gallery

10.00
Leave National Gallery

10.20
Registration and coffee at the Warburg Institute (Common Room)

10.45
Introduction and Welcome

Chair: Peter Mack (Warburg Institute)

Paul Smith (Warwick)
Coloured Shadows: constancy, contrast, and conceptual confusion

12.00
Hannah Smithson (Pembroke College, Oxford)
All the colours of the rainbow: A bridge between medieval and modern colour science

12.50
Lunch (Common Room)

Chair: Caroline Campbell (National Gallery)

1.50
Jim Harris (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)
Colour and Sculpture: Painting in Three dimensions

2.40
David Brafmann (Getty Centre)
Tincture and Tenebrism: Alchemical Rainbows in the Neapolitan Baroque

3.30
Tea (Classroom 2)

Chair: Paul Hills (Courtauld Institute)

4.00
Ulrike Kern (Frankfurt)
Cartesian Optics in Dutch Art: A Problem of Light and Pigment

4.50
Ashok Roy (National Gallery)
Colour Change in Old Master Paintings: Where does light come in?

5.40
Concluding Discussion and Reception (Common Room)

6.30
Conference Ends

Fees and Registration
The fees for this conference are £30.00 standard price (and £15.50 concessionary rate for full-time students/retired) which includes entrance to the National Gallery, lunch and refreshments. We provide a range of meat/fish and vegetarian rolls/sandwiches for lunch. If you have other dietary requirements please email warburg(at)sas.ac.uk at least ten days before the conference so that we can try to cater for your needs.

Registering and paying for a conference/course. Please note that in order to attend the conference and guided tour you must register and pay online in advance. Registration for this conference closes at 12.00 pm on 22 June. Instructions about entrance to the National Gallery will be emailed to you by 24 June.

CLICK ON LINK BELOW TO REGISTER ONLINE
http://store.london.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=5&catid=38&prodid=687

For further information, see here.

CFP: The Afterlife of Cicero (London, 7-8 May 2015)

Call for Papers:
The Afterlife of Cicero
London, The Warburg Institute, 7-8 May 2015
Deadline: 11 July 2014

The Warburg Institute, the Institute of Classical Studies and the Department of Greek and Latin at University College London will be hosting an international conference on the afterlife of Cicero in London on 7–8 May 2015, organised by Peter Mack, Gesine Manuwald, John North and Maria Wyke.

We invite 40-minute papers about the impact of Cicero’s writings and personality on intellectual and cultural history, on the visual arts, philosophy, politics, rhetoric and literature. Since so much of Cicero’s writings is extant, they cover a wide variety of genres and topics, and we are also able to get a glimpse of his personality from his letters, Cicero has had an enormous influence on western culture. By examining a diverse series of significant case studies, the conference aims to make a contribution to assessing Cicero’s impact more fully. Papers dealing with any period between late antiquity and 1900 will be especially welcome. Aspects of particular interest include Cicero’s role for early Christian writers, in the middle Ages, in the Ciceronian debate, for the American founding fathers and the French revolution, for the development of modern democracies and political rhetoric and in (early-)modern literature.

The conference will take place in the Warburg Institute; the proceedings will be jointly published by the two Institutes as Supplements to the Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. We shall ask the authors for publishable versions of the papers three months after the conference. If you have a suggestion for a paper that you would like us to consider, please submit a title, an abstract (of up to 300 words) and a brief CV (up to one page) by 11 July 2014 to Jane Ferguson, The Warburg Institute, Woburn Square, London WC1H 0AB or warburg(at)sas.ac.uk.

For further information, see also the Warburg Institute Website.

CFP: Foldable Pictures. Implications of Mediality (Zürich, 21-22 November 2014)

Call for Papers:
Foldable Pictures. Implications of Mediality
Conference, University of Zürich, 21-22 November 2014
Deadline: 4 July 2014

Book pages, diptychs, and triptychs were popular formats for the presentation of images in the medieval and early modern periods. In addition to their ubiquity, these objects also share one essential material feature: the supports that carry the images are movable. The most obvious consequence of the mobile presentation is the consecutive progression of different views.

Only in recent years did scholars begin to consider the processes of transformation that the opening and closing of pictured surfaces generate, for example the strategies of layering or folding images and the production of tacit knowledge caused by such formats. Using foldable pictures leads to a metaphorical coding of entire object classes (being understood as the body or the tablets of the heart), but also to a semantization of specific object areas (the dichotomy of inside and outside as, for example, “secular” versus “sacred”, or “accessible” versus “secret”). Furthermore, also structural features such as borders or thresholds, hinges, and cleavages play a decisive role in these processes. Thanks to the viewer’s memory, images “hidden” beneath other images begin to “gleam through” and become virtually present nonetheless. Movability also creates multiple lines of vision or additional moments of contact between represented persons.

It appears that artists have paid much more attention to these issues as has been hitherto recognized. It may also be noted that this is not a phenomenon restricted to artistic problems. In religious images, such effects were harnessed to draw attention to other functions, such as
didactic or mnemonic purposes.

This conference will explore the range of recently observed phenomena, and discuss their implications for the concept of the image in medieval and early modern period. This may lead to a critical revision of the finestra aperta paradigm as well as to a redefinition of the relationship between images and their contexts, especially in the case of the religious sphere. From a religious point of view, the action of opening and closing increases the aura of a work of art and also has implications for the practical use and control of images in the religious cult. Especially a consideration of the virtual presence of encased images bears potential to shed new light on neglected functions of images or the workings of memory versus visuality. Considering these and other aspects of foldable pictures, will have an impact on our understanding of the overall tension between presence and absence and the anagogic qualities of images.

Organizers:
David Ganz (University of Zürich)
Marius Rimmele (NCCR Mediality, University of Zürich)

Please submit your proposal of no more than 300 words and a CV to
david.ganz@uzh.ch and marius.rimmele@uzh.ch by July 4, 2014.

Event: Puerta Vilchez lecture at the V&A (London, 19 June 2014)

Puerta Vilchez lecture at the V&A:
Evening Lecture and Reception

José Miguel Puerta Vílchez
Qurtuba/Córdoba: Monumentality and artistic sensibility in al-Andalus
Thursday 19 June 2014, 7pm
Seminar Room Three, Learning Centre, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The patronage of the Umayyad caliphs of al-Andalus (Muslim-ruled Spain) created one of the highpoints of classical Islam. The splendour of their court culture outshone the rest of Europe in the 10th century. Exceptional objects and buildings survive as bearers of a deep artisanal wisdom, profoundly significant on a conceptual and iconographic level. This lecture will focus on the high level of aesthetic self-awareness in the contemporary Arabic sources and among the masters, patrons and craftsmen of these works of art.

José Miguel Puerta Vílchez is Professor of the Theory and History of Islamic Art and Architecture at the University of Granada. The lecture will be introduced by Eduardo López Busquets, Director General of Casa Árabe. Please note this lecture will be in Spanish with simultaneous translation.

Admission is free but booking is required. To reserve a place please email
asia.events@vam.ac.uk.

Doors open at 18.30 and the lecture is followed by a reception.

Please enter the Museum by the Secretariat Gate. You will be escorted through the building to the Seminar Room.

Wheelchair access: please contact 020 7942 2324 in advance
Enquiries: 020 7942 2324

This lecture is organised in collaboration with Casa Árabe.