CALL FOR PAPERS

Session 'Narrative in 19th-century art'
Session organiser: Dr Nina Lübbren
<nlubbrenyahoo.com>

This session is part of 'Conception: Reception', the
Annual Conference of the Association of Art Historians
(AAH), University of Bristol, UK, 31 March - 2 April
2005. A call for papers for all the conference
sessions will be published in the June edition of the
AAH Bulletin and at the AAH website:
http://www.gold.ac.uk/aah/

If you would like to offer a paper, please contact the
session organiser direct. Please submit an abstract
of c. 500 words, including the paper's title as well
as your name, institutional affiliation (if any) and
contact details. The deadline for submissions is 1
November 2004.

Dr Nina Lübbren, Department of Art and Design, Anglia
Polytechnic University, East Road, Cambridge CB1 1PT,
U.K.; <nlubbrenyahoo.com>

NARRATIVE IN 19TH-CENTURY ART

Narrative was central to much 19th-century art and art
reception. Artists told stories in their pictures;
viewers told their own stories in response to visual
cues; critics debated what were the best modes of
telling a story via an image; and 20th-century art
historians went on to denigrate the whole enterprise
as 'theatrical' and 'anecdotal'. This session
revisits the narrative richness of 19th-century art
and seeks to open out the debate beyond the familiar
polarities of academic vs avantgarde, literary vs
art-pour-l'art, France vs rest-of-world.

The period covered is the 'long' 19th century
(1789-1917). Aspects to be discussed might include:
the applicability of text-based narratological models
for the analyses of visual imagery, the reception of
narrative images by popular audiences, the
relationship of painting / film /illustration / comic
strips, the relationship of literature / drama
/popular literature to visual art, narrative and
sculpture, the question whether visual narratives in
this period were dependent on texts or developed their
own independent language, modernity and narration,
modernism and narration, non-narrative forms of art
and their relationship to visual narratives,
innovation and tradition in 19th-century pictorial
narratives, the development and evolution of visual
narrative throughout the century -- and, finally, how
any of these issues were addressed and debated by
contemporary 19th-century artists and commentators.

Papers are invited that debate the larger implications
of a particular issue or that focus on specific
case-studies. Contributions that go beyond the usual
suspects of France and the Commonwealth are especially
welcome.

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