The Skin of Things, A symposium on perceiving and painting material properties

In the art of painting the rendering of space has always been considered of great importance, and perspective, shading and foreshortening have been widely studied. The rendering of materials is quite another matter. It was equally deemed essential for the art of painting in the past, but it has received little scholarly or scientific attention until now. We will be organising a small symposium devoted both to the art historical aspects of the pictorial evocation of materials, and to the psychology and perception of material properties.

On the first (half) day, we will kick-off with three keynote lectures about material depiction: Perception (Roland Fleming), Computer Graphics (Adrien Bousseau) and Art History (Jeroen Stumpel). On the second full day, and third half day we will have talks and poster sessions.

Besides a selection of invited speakers, we welcome proposals for contributions about representing material from both the fields of art history and perceptual studies as well as computer graphics.
In the case of art history, we are thinking about topics such as painterly techniques, theories of still life, or the development of different styles for depicting materials. There will be an emphasis on 17th-century painting in Europe, but by no means exclusively so.

After the symposium you are invited to submit a manuscript to a special issue in Art and Perception, more info will be shared at a later moment. Note that this will entail an independent manuscript submission process. Participation in the symposium is neither necessary nor a guarantee for acceptance.

If you would like to participate, we invite you to submit a 300 word abstract (deadline = 4 september 2018). The space of our venue is limited so in case we have too many submissions we will have to make a selection.

The symposium will take place 26-28 November 2018 in the ‘Ateliergebouw’ of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. We will likely ask for a small registration fee to cover lunches and reception.

Visit https://theskinofthings.github.io for more info, including abstract submission link. We will keep that website updated.

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

Lisa Wiersma
A.L.Wiersmauu.nl