[1]
From: Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius <k.murawska-muthesiusbbk.ac.uk>
Date: May 14, 2016
Subject: CFP: Historiography of Italian Caricature

Historiography of Italian caricature

A session at the RSA Chicago 2017 organised by
Sandra Cheng, New York City College of Technology, CUNY
Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius, Birkbeck, University of London

Deadline: May 27, 2016

Studies of early modern caricature are uneven and abound in paradoxes. Its subversive aims and visual conventions, as well as its kinship with modern art have challenged the most inquisitive minds of twentieth-century art history. As measured by the small number of dedicated publications and academic curricula, however, caricatura has been steadily marginalised by mainstream art history. Given the predominance of textual sources referring to caricatura over the extant visual record, its historiography constitutes a particularly neglected field.

This session compares the shifting definitions, terminologies, evaluations, as well as the approaches to studying Italian caricature from the seventeenth century onwards. We welcome papers which address the ways of theorising the new medium by the earliest Seicento authors; its highly contested status in eighteenth century aesthetics and connoisseurship in Europe; its virtual erasure in the nineteenth-century histories of caricature; and its “rediscovery” in the early decades of the twentieth century by Italian and German art historians.

Please send abstracts (100-150 words) and your short CV in an essay form
(max 200 words) by 27 May, addressing them to:
schengcitytech.cuny.edu
k.murawska-muthesiusbbk.ac.uk

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[2]
From: Caroline Fowler <covertonfowlergmail.com>
Date: May 14, 2016
Subject: CFP: Paper in the Artist's Workshop

RSA 2017
Panel: Paper in the Artist's Workshop

This panel seeks to consider paper across the early modern world and how artists utilized paper not only as a support for drawing and printmaking but also as a material that already had embedded meaning in its production. Paper defined early-modern mobility from the innovations in papermaking in the Arabic World to the import of paper in the New World for the first printing presses; from the Japanese paper used by the VOC to wrap goods to its mobilization in artistic production by artists such as Rembrandt. Frequently paper carried in it the traces of the season in which it was made, minute hairs from felt fibers, and the waste running through the watermill used to process the paper. With the invention of watermarks, paper began to carry the impression of local places and customs. Paper was also frequently made from the debris of the shipping industry: sailors’ uniforms; rigging; ropes and sails. In turn, this brown or blue paper was then utilized for the packaging and shipment of goods. Paper was a made product already stamped with an artisan’s mark and carrying with it traces of its local environmental conditions. This panel suggests that artists were well aware of the multiple qualities of paper and sought to examine and exploit these particularities of paper in the workshop.

Topics of particular interest are transregional studies of paper; theoretical studies of watermarks; paper as a device for wrapping; paper as a substance created through local environmental waste and reused by artists.

Please submit abstracts of` 150 words and a short CV to Caroline Fowler, Postdoctoral Associate in the Physical History of Art, Yale University: covertonfowlergmail.com.
Deadline: June 1.

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[3]
From: Kathryn Blair Moore <kbmooretxstate.edu>
Date: May 14, 2016
Subject: CFP: Arabesques, grotesques, and the alterity of ornament

Proposed session for the Renaissance Society of American 2017 Annual Meeting

Arabesques, grotesques, and the alterity of ornament

The associations of ornament with the primitive, exotic, female, irrational, and even criminal were first cohesively articulated in European philosophy of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The ongoing impact of assumptions about the alterity of ornament has meant that similar early modern attitudes have not prompted critical analysis, especially because they may seem inevitable and perhaps even natural. This session proposes to denaturalize the othering of ornament, and to inquire into the Renaissance origins and interrelation of two related concepts: The grotesque and arabesque. We solicit papers that explore how ornament first became a locus for anxieties about deviation, associated with the pagan, heretical and otherwise irrational mindsets of foreigners and women, as well as uncontrolled spread. We hope to address such questions as: what were the roles of manuscripts, prints, and printed books in the transmission and global dissemination of the concepts of arabesque and grotesque? How did the two concepts become visually and conceptually intertwined? To what extent did these ornamental forms come to constitute the theoretical frame for the conceptual center of early modern art: the figural and narrative? And what ultimately is owed to the Renaissance in the formation of a European discourse on the alterity of ornament?

Please send proposals with CV to the session co-chairs Kathryn Blair Moore and Todd Olson (kbmooretxstate.edu and toddolsonberkeley.edu) by May 31

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[4]
From: Irene Backus <irene.backusgmail.com>
Date: May 14, 2016
Subject: CFP: The Troublesome Ornament

Panel: THE TROUBLESOME ORNAMENT

The discourse of ornament from Vitruvius to Loos is freighted with philosophical and even moral implications. In the early modern period, ornament could be viewed as antithetical to the harmony, balance, and rationality of Burkhardian Renaissance ideals, and as a disruptor to the Vasarian narrative of the triumph of figurative mimesis and artistic imagination. Ornamental motifs compose an extraordinarily rich and imaginative aspect of pre-modern visual culture. Often associated with architecture, ornament not only serves to order lived space, as Ernst Gombrich has argued, but also the planar surface of its support. Beyond the architectural, it shapes not only the fabric but also the very definition of what modern scholarship has inherited as the "minor" or "decorative" arts. Ornament has been attacked as artifice, dismissed as surface, and celebrated as craft.

This panel seeks to examine the ornamental and decorative by challenging the art-historical precept that they lack sensible signification and asking what they are, where they overlap, and how they mean in the pre- and early-modern worlds. Although often thought to be empty of discernible meaning, ornament-for example-crosses boundaries of medium and culture perhaps more easily than any other visual motif. Ornament exists in the spaces between, whether a gilded frame or a mobile, foreign object. It resists decoding because it lies outside the view through the window of Renaissance pictorialism. But it is precisely by its liminality and its potential abstraction that ornament can serve to broaden the representation-centric narrative of western art, not only geographically, but also philosophically.

Please send: 150 word abstract and two-page CV to Irene Backus (irene.backusgmail.com) and Ashley Jones (ashley.jonesufl.edu) by Tuesday, 31 May 2016.

Permalink: http://rsa.site-ym.com/blogpost/1357869/246627/The-Troublesome-Ornament

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[5]
From: Monika Schmitter <mschmittarthist.umass.edu>
Date: May 16, 2016
Subject: CFP: The Mirror

THE MIRROR

Inventories of household goods reveal that the mirror was an increasingly common part of people’s everyday lives in early modern Europe. This session investigates the impacts and effects of the mirror--as material object, as work of art, as technological innovation. How were these framed reflective surfaces used? How did they transform identity, language, social practice, and notions of art and science? We also welcome presentations considering the mirror as metaphor or interpretive strategy.

Papers might address:
the mirror as microcosm
scientific uses of mirrors
mirrors and portraits
mirrors as works of art and in works of art
mirrors as metaphor in literature or art
mirrors and subjectivity
frames, accessories, and framing devices
self portraits
grooming and fashion

Please send a proposal (no more than 150 words) and CV by June 1st to Monika Schmitter, Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst (mschmittumass.edu); and to Elena Calvillo, Associate Professor, University of Richmond (ecalvillrichmond.edu)

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[6]
From: Suzanne Karr Schmidt <suzanne.karrschmidtgmail.com>
Date: May 16, 2016
Subject: CFP: The Luther Effect, Printmaking, and the Arts

The Luther Effect, Printmaking, and the Arts
Lucas Cranach the Elder opened his 1509 book on Saxon Elector Friedrich the Wise’s famed reliquary collection with a woodcut of the Wittenberg Schlosskirche. Eight years later, its portal is where Martin Luther is said to have nailed his 95 Theses against Catholic excesses such as the sale of indulgences, liturgical sartorial opulence, and the hoarding of the very relics the church contained. The 95 Theses soon circulated as a printed document, becoming one of the most influential letterpress broadsides ever issued, ushering in the Protestant Reformation.
In honor of this momentous 500th anniversary, we propose a Renaissance Society of America session on the ways Luther's declaration and the mode of its distribution affected artists and artisans in all media around 1517, especially those with connections to the Saxon court. Papers on printmakers and publishers are particularly welcome, as well as others comparing the paper record with extant examples of the lavish church clothing and ritual decorative arts that Luther rebelled against.

A copy of Cranach's Wittenberger Heiligthumsbuch will be on display at the Art Institute of Chicago during the conference.

Please submit an abstract of no more than 150 words and a short one-page c.v. by Wednesday, May 25, 2016, to:

Suzanne Karr Schmidt, Art Institute of Chicago, skarrschmidtartic.edu and Freyda Spira, Metropolitan Museum of Art, freyda.spirametmuseum.org

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[7]
From: Lisa Skogh <l.skoghvam.ac.uk>
Date: May 16, 2016
Subject: CFP: Cabinetization and Compartmentalization

"Cabinetization and Compartmentalization in Early Modern Art and Science"

This interdisciplinary session examines the role of cabinetizing and compartmentalizing visual and material knowledge, objects, and images in the early modern period. Through considering a wide range of media it aims to develop a theoretical and conceptual understanding of the various ways in which cabinets and cabinet-like spaces and formats, by means of boundaries, thresholds, and kinetic and haptic interaction, organize, frame, decontextualize, re-contextualize, activate, and transform their contents, and also guide, instruct, engage, and transfer knowledge to beholders.

We welcome paper proposals that engage with concepts of early modern art and science especially. Suggested paper topics include but are not limited to: cabinets, boxes, specimen drawers, furniture, real and depicted collections, perspective boxes, dioramas, stage sets, gardens, architectural spaces, polyptychs, dollhouses, maps, frames, ornament, books.
Please submit a proposal that includes 1) your name, affiliation, and paper title, 2) a brief CV (max 300 words), and 3) an abstract (max 150 words) on or before May 30 to
Nadia Baadj (n.s.baadjrug.nl) and Lisa Skogh (l.skoghvam.ac.uk)

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[8]
From: Fabio Cafagna <fbcafagnagmail.com>
Date: May 16, 2016
Subject: CFP: Color / Non-color between Theory and Practice

Color / Non-color between Theory and Practice

Organizers: Claudia Cieri Via (Sapienza – Università di Roma); Marco Ruffini (Sapienza – Università di Roma); Itay Sapir (UQÀM – Université du Québec à Montréal)

The spectrum between the colorful and the colorless has always been a central issue in art theory and practice. In different periods, concepts such as polychrome, monochrome, tonalismo, chiaroscuro, transparency, opacity etc. were attributed different meanings and functions in the visual arts, depending on contemporary aesthetic canons and social contexts.

This series of panels aims to explore the diverse interpretations of color in artworks of all media and in writings about art between the Quattrocento and the seventeenth century. Special attention will be devoted to the following topics: the materiality of color in relation to artistic experiments; the implications of color for the concept of naturalism, the ideal of liveliness, and the depiction of the flesh; the ambiguous relationship of color with different ideals of beauty; and the meaning and function of color in religious and devotional practices as well as in “high” and “low” culture. In reference to recent critical debates, concepts such as agency and spectatorship may also be explored.

To submit a paper proposal for this session, please send a Word or PDF document to the three organizers (claudia.cieriviauniroma1.it; marco.ruffiniuniroma1.it; sapir.itayuqam.ca) by May 31, 2016. Please ensure that the document includes the following information: presenter’s first, middle, and last name; academic affiliation and title (or “Independent Scholar”); e-mail address; paper title (15-word maximum); abstract (150-word maximum); short CV (300-word maximum; prose bios will not be accepted; please follow the CV guidelines and models on http://www.rsa.org/page/2017Chicago).

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[9]
From: Denis Ribouillault <denisribhotmail.com>
Date: May 16, 2016
Subject: CFP: The Colonna Palace in the Age of Lepanto

The Colonna Palace in the Age of Lepanto: Baronial Art and
Power in Rome, ca. 1550-1584.

Co-organizers: Denis Ribouillault, Université de Montreal
P. Renée Baernstein, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio
Disciplines: Art History, History
Keywords: palaces; Italy; nobility; papacy; Rome;

How did Roman barons in the great age of papal authority link urban domestic space with political power? Scholarship since Patricia Waddy’s groundbreaking 1991 book has detailed the use of physical space, including domestic interiors, to articulate and underline power relationships. Here we continue and broaden that approach to consider the Roman palace both as a subject and a platform, a vehicle or location for the articulation of baronial family politics. If Rome in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the “gran teatro del mondo,” the baronial palaces furnished some of its greatest scenes.

Using the case study of the Colonna family palace complex in the Urbs, known as the Santissimi Apostoli (or Palazzo del Vaso or della Torre) after its adjoining church and piazza, this panel (or series of panels?) will approach the question from multidisciplinary perspectives.
If, following Riegl, we posit the observer as an essential interlocutor of the painting, the palace shaped and was shaped by its occupants and visitors: family members, servants, courtiers, confessors, favor-seekers, and illustrious guests all walked the corridors, sat in the chairs, looked at the décor, slept in the beds, and tended the horses. How did their surroundings shape their experience? How did the goals and circumstances of the commissioners shape the decisions they made about room arrangements, paintings, building design, use of space?
The period 1560-1584 was particularly fraught for the Colonna family’s position in Rome and in the Spanish-Italian political landscape. After their return from disgrace and exile in 1560, under the leadership of Giovanna d’Aragona (1500-1576), formidable matriarch and widow of the disgraced Ascanio Colonna, the family worked to consolidate its financial position, regain title and control of confiscated properties including the palace at Santi Apostoli, and remake itself in a new, more docile and courtier-like version of aristocrat. Giovanna’s son Marcantonio Colonna II (“Il Grande”, 1535-1584) continued this process. Both Giovanna and Marcantonio oversaw substantial renovations and expansions of the Roman palace complex. How did their commissions operate in the context of efforts to position themselves in the new political landscape?

We invite papers on any aspect of Colonna involvement with the palace or its surrounding neighborhood. Topics might include: Architecture and decoration; social and literary life of the palace; history of the family as it relates to the palace; neighborhood and landscape; religious and cultural engagements. Papers on other Colonna commissions during this period offering comparative perspectives are also welcome.

Please submit an abstract (max. 150 words), brief CV, and keywords to Renée Baernstein at baernsprmiamioh.edu or Denis Ribouillault at denis.ribouillaultumontreal.ca by 27 May 2016. Please follow the formatting instructions of the RSA: http://www.rsa.org/page/2017Chicago#indiv.