[1] Provincialising Impressionism

From: Samuel Raybone
Date: Jul 2, 2020

Session Convener:
Samuel Raybone (sar69aber.ac.uk)

Nineteenth-century art history is finally becoming as global as the 19th century itself. Yet, the future of Impressionism in this globalising field is far from certain. Quintessentially French, Impressionism was central to the Eurocentric meta-narratives of 20th-century art history. If the impetus to provincialise Europe means decentring its historicist meta-narratives, are we not obliged therefore to decentre Impressionism?

This session invites papers that rise to this postcolonial challenge and attempt to write what Dipesh Chakrabarty might call ‘a history that does not yet exist’, a provincializing history of Impressionism. To provincialize Impressionism is to attend to Impressionism’s ‘other histories’ as sites of ‘plenitude’ and ‘creativity’, and to rethink the history of Impressionism as one of conjunction with its ‘others’.

Certainly, attention is now being paid to the influence of Impressionism around the world. From Australia to Argentina, Turkey to the USA, and Canada to the Caribbean, we now recognise many Impressionisms. Further, recent scholarship has unveiled the French Impressionists’ myriad global connections and the globality of the modernity they painted, problematising the epithet ‘French’ Impressionism. Yet, a pitfall common to both this former paradigm of ‘influence’ and this latter practice of ‘provincialising’ is a continued implication of ‘original’ and ‘centre’: the disguise rather than deconstruction of European hegemony.

Responding to the potential and pitfalls of provincialising Impressionism, papers might explore such other histories as the distinct meanings assumed by Impressionist artworks upon their dissemination into diverse, global collections, as well as the strategic and creative appropriation of Impressionism’s tenets in local or hyper-local contexts.

To submit a paper proposal, please fill out the proposal form (https://bit.ly/3eVYWZu) and send to sar69aber.ac.uk by 19 October 2020. Please provide a title and abstract (250 words max), your name, and your institutional affiliation.

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[2] Surrealism in 1960s and 1970s Latin America

From: Paulina Caro Troncoso
Date: Jul 2, 2020

Session Convenor:
Paulina Caro Troncoso, University of Edinburgh, paulina.carotroncosoed.ac.uk

‘But what is the story of all of the Americas if not the chronicle of the marvelous and the real?’, wrote Cuban author Alejo Carpentier in the preface of The Kingdom of This World ([New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux], 2017: [page: xx]). This rhetorical question firmly resonates when studying Surrealism in Latin America. Scholars have given significant attention to the idea of the marvellous in visual arts and literature to define the inventions and reinventions of Surrealism in the New World. However, we could also rethink the marvellous in relation to the utopian impulse and discourses that have shaped the history of Latin America, especially during the second half of the 20th century.

This session will explore Surrealist manifestations from the 1960s and 1970s, a period in the history of Latin America characterised by its socialist utopias. During these decades, multiple cultural exchanges between Latin American and European artists took place, revealing a great interest in Latin American revolutionary processes. How did the utopian discourses and interactions between artists inform Surrealist practice in Latin America and other contexts during this period? Do these encounters reveal a new understanding of the political and revolutionary scope of Surrealism in Latin America and Europe?

This session invites papers examining Surrealist practices in visual arts and literature engaged with ideas and discourses that configured the revolutionary impulse of this period in Latin America.

Submit a paper:
Please email your paper proposals to Paulina Caro Troncoso (paulina.carotroncosoed.ac.uk) by 19 October 2020. You need to provide a title, abstract (250 words max.), your name, and institutional affiliation (if any).

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[3] Exiled and Female

From: Carmen Gaitan Salinas
Date: Jul 2, 2020

Session Convenors:
Carmen Gaitán Salinas, University of Pennsylvania/New York University, carmengssas.upenn.edu / cgs393nyu.edu

Mari Paz Balibrea, Birkbeck, University of London, m.balibreabbk.ac.uk

In the contemporary world, a great number of people have had to flee their homelands, heading to other countries, for political reasons. Dissidences caused by wars and authoritarian governments have jeopardised people’s lives, requiring them to find new homes in exile. Almost every sector of society that has confronted the ruling powers has been exposed to this situation. While both male and female artists have fled, the experience of women has traditionally been ignored by historiography, and art histories have not been an exception. Women too have had to live in exile as a consequence of the World Wars, the Spanish Civil War, Latin American coups d’état or the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China. Their identities have been transformed through the experience of exile, sometimes to reinforce, other times to problematise their previous assumptions about their national identity.

For many years, how these transformations have been represented in their artistic works has barely been studied. Cultural, Gender, and Exile and Diaspora studies have in recent years played a central role in helping us to recover those lives and value the artistic work those women produced. Following on the footsteps of these approaches, this panel aims to bring together an interdisciplinary group of speakers to examine the concept of identity as represented in the visual artistic work of exiled women. Papers focusing on the contemporary period and on any part of the world will be welcome. Topics might include, but are not limited to, political commitment, affect, the public and private spheres, women collectives, authorship, sexuality and trauma.

Abstract max. 250 words. Deadline November 2, 2020.

Link to the session information: https://eu-admin.eventscloud.com/website/2065/exiled-and-female/
More information: https://eu.eventscloud.com/website/2065/sessions-2021/

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[4] Pre-Modern Women as Artists, Patrons and Collectors

From: Dr Jamie Edwards
Date: Jul 2, 2020

Session Convenor:
Jamie Edwards, j.l.edwardsexeter.ac.uk

The study of women in pre-modern times is a well-established field that has generated important scholarship. But, as ongoing research shows, there is no shortage of new material yet to be analysed, or existing evidence that can be nuanced in the light of new methodological approaches. And whilst recent monographic exhibitions attest to the enduring appeal of ‘female artists’ in the ‘genius’ tradition (e.g. Anguissola, Gentileschi), new and ongoing work in the field points to different ways that women’s interaction with visual and material culture can be approached. The application of new digital and mapping technologies, meanwhile, is enabling scholars to propose alternative, non-linear narratives of pre-modern women’s lives.

We therefore invite proposals for papers exploring the role of women as artists, patrons and collectors in the medieval and early modern periods, broadly defined (c.400–1700). We encourage submissions that disrupt chronological and geographical conceptions of this period, or commonplace ideas surrounding ‘medieval’ or ‘early modern’ women. Papers considering non-Western subjects and materials, or which draw on new methodologies including digital ones, are also particularly welcome.

Papers may consider ruling and elite women, religious or secular ones, as well as laywomen. Possible topics include:

- women as ‘makers’
- women as patrons/collectors of paintings, sculptures, works on paper, or visual and material culture more broadly conceived
- women and patronage of architecture or other large-scale ensembles
- women and books (libraries, translators, writers)
- women’s networks
- gender and identity
- inventories and women inheritors/benefactors
- women in commerce (dealers, proprietors)
- applying digital/mapping technologies to pre-modern sources
- methodological and theoretical papers interrogating issues surrounding the study of pre-modern women.

Please email your paper proposal to the session convenor using the Paper Proposal Form (https://bit.ly/3eVYWZu). Deadline: October 19, 2020

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[5] Challenging Legacies in Postcolonial and Postsocialist Notions of Place

From: Karen von Veh
Date: Jul 3, 2020

Session Convenors:
Karen von Veh, University of Johannesburg, South Africa, karenvuj.ac.za
Landi Raubenheimer, University of Johannesburg, South Africa, landiruj.ac.za

Political oppression has been experienced in many parts of the world, notably through colonialism in Africa, India and South America, as well as socialist oppression in Central and Eastern Europe. In the aftermath of regime changes in many of these geographies, there is a shared move towards art practices articulating postcolonial or postsocialist identities. Such identities are in turn often related to notions of place, in culturally informed notions of place existing in the social imaginary, representational discourse or in lived interactions with places. Using comparable strategies, and often working with intersecting concerns across geographies, artists who work with notions of place might actively counter or interrogate historic understandings of the contexts they engage with. Such artistic practices could also be seen as an attempt to create an ‘authentic’ expression of national belonging, responding to the problematic residue of cultural objects, images and ideologies perpetuated (or retained) in a postcolonial/postsocialist milieu.

For this session, we seek papers that specifically engage with notions of place, landscape or site, and that critically respond to the visual legacies inherited from oppressive regimes. The focus may be on postcolonial or postsocialist contexts but might also include responses to countries where both contexts co-exist (such as Angola and Mozambique). Approaches might include interrogations of archives/public monuments; engagements with landscape traditions; strategies for negotiating historic trauma associated with place; or any revisionist approach to renditions of place that aims to undermine colonial/socialist ideology.

Please email your paper proposal to both session convenors using the Paper Proposal Form (https://bit.ly/3eVYWZu). Deadline: October 19, 2020