CALL FOR PAPERS

CITY LIMITS: URBAN IDENTITY, SPECIALISATION AND AUTONOMY IN
SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY DUTCH ART

National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

25 April 2009

Deadline: 1 November, 2008

Seventeenth-century Dutch art has long been recognised as a distinctly
urban form of visual expression. Rapidly expanding cities and towns were
the main location for artists, patrons, and the market, while much of the
subject matter of Dutch art reflects the experiences and aspirations of
middle-class urban elites. It has become commonplace to use urban origins
as one of the key criteria in classifying Dutch art. Artists working in
close proximity in a common style and with shared iconographic interests
are grouped together under such designations as "the Leiden fijnschilders"
and "the Utrecht Caravaggisti". Others have gone further to assign labels
to entire communities and coin terms such as "the Haarlem School" or "the
Delft style". Influential surveys of Dutch art, such as Bob Haak's The
Golden Age: Dutch painters of the seventeenth century (1984), have largely
focused on major centres of production rather than discussing the exchange
of artistic ideas across broader geographical areas. Likewise, the last
two decades have seen many exhibitions that reappraised the art of a single
town or city: Enkhuizen (1990), Dordrecht (1992), Rotterdam (1994), Utrecht
(1997), Zwolle (1997), The Hague (1998), and Delft (1996 and 2001).

This symposium has three main areas of focus. Firstly, the question of
urban self-representation will be addressed. How did individual cities and
towns construct a distinct identity through images? What were the
processes and motivations involved in attaching certain modes of
representation and subject matter to particular urban centres? Secondly,
the conference intends to examine the rationale behind local tastes and
trends. Why did certain (sub)genres emerge and flourish in a given
artistic centre at a specific time, and others did not? The third theme
will be the validity of approaching seventeenth-century art through the
prism of "local schools". Are such divisions justifiable given the short
distances between the major centres of production in the Dutch Republic?
While itinerant artists are known to have adjusted their style and working
methods to local tastes, did others not deliberately follow trends from out
of town in order to distinguish themselves from their local colleagues?

Confirmed speakers:
. Professor Eric Jan Sluijter, University of Amsterdam
. Dr. Walter Liedtke, Curator of European Paintings, Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York
. Professor Wayne Franits, Syracuse University

Paper Proposal Deadline:
Abstracts between 250-500 words are sought for 25-30 minute paper
presentations. The deadline for abstracts is 1 November, 2008.
Notification of acceptance will be 1 December, 2008.
Please send your abstract electronically as a Word-document to either Dr.
John Loughman (UCD School of Art History and Cultural Policy) at
john.Loughmanucd.ie or Dr. Adriaan Waiboer (National Gallery of Ireland)
at awaiboerngi.ie.