Visions of the Stage: Theater, art and performance in France, 1600-1800

A Clark Symposium in association with CESAR (www.cesar.org.uk)
Friday 12 and Saturday 13 September 2008

The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown,
Massachusetts.

This symposium brings together historians of literature, music, art and
culture to explore the complex and reciprocal relationships between art
and theater in Ancien Régime and Revolutionary France.
It is organized by Jeff Ravel (MIT) and Mark Ledbury (the Clark) and
supported by the Samuel. H. Kress foundation and the Florence Gould
Foundation.

Program:

Friday, September 12
9:00-9:15 am
Welcome and Introduction: Mark Ledbury, Associate Director, Research and
Academic Program, and Jeffrey S. Ravel, MIT
Morning Session: Spectacle and Illusion in the Seventeenth Century
Chair: Jeffrey S. Ravel, MIT

9:15-10:45 am

"Ces Divertissemens et inventions ingénieuses: Towards an Understanding
of the Idea of Spectacle in Early Seventeenth-Century France"
Mark Bannister, Oxford Brookes University

"The Fourth Wall and Other Old Innovations: Illusion and the Aesthetics
of the drame"
Nicholas Paige, University of California, Berkeley

11:00 am-12:30 pm

"The Theatrical Cadaver: Staging Death in the Seventeenth Century"
Kathryn A. Hoffmann, University of Hawaii

"The Unknown Artists of the Seventeenth-Century Spectacular Stage"
Jan Clarke, Durham University

12:30-2:00 pm: Lunch
Afternoon Session: Word, Image, and Action in Eighteenth-Century Theater
Chair: Shanti Singham, Williams College
2:00-3:30 pm

"Mouth Wide Shut: Visualizing Voice in French Seventeenth-Century
Theater Images"
Jeanne Bovet, Université de Montréal

"Illustrations and Stage Directions: Reading Theater between Text and
Image"
Véronique Lochert, Université de Haute-Alsace

3:30-3:45 pm: Coffee

3:45-5:15 pm

"The 'Theatrical' as Reflected in the Plastic Arts: Passions of the Soul
in Eighteenth-Century Engraving"
Sabine Chaouche, Oxford Brookes University

"François Gérard's 1787 Iphigénie and Operatic Melodrama: A View Inside
J.-L. David's Studio"
Anne L. Schroder, Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University

5:30-6:30 pm
Reception in the Clark Courtyard for all Conference attendees

Saturday, September 13

Morning Session: Eighteenth-Century Theater Images: Fans, Fairs, and the
Pornographic
Chair: Mark Ledbury, The Clark

9:00-10:30 am

"Fans as Documentary Sources: Representations of Performance in the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries"
Christian Biet, Institut Universitaire de France, Université de Paris X
(Nanterre)

"An Exceptional Iconographic Series: Hand Screens and Fan with Images of
Blaise et Babet, de Monvel (1783)"
Nathalie Rizzoni, CELLF 17e-18e, Université de Paris (Sorbonne)

10:30-10:45 am: Coffee

10:45 am-12:15 pm

"Images of Theatrical Rivalry: Form and Function of the Fair Theater's
Engraved Frontispieces"
Françoise Rubellin, Université de Nantes

"Naughty Readers Envision Bawdy Theater: Illustrations in the 1782
Théâtre gaillard"
Daniel Smith, Northwestern University

12:15-2:00 pm: Lunch
Afternoon Session: Rococo, Gender, and Genre
Chair: Richard Rand, The Clark

2:00-4:15 pm

"Watteau, the King, and the Staging of Spectacle"
Georgia Cowart, Case Western Reserve University

"Female Artistry and the Staging of Rococo Spectacle"
Sarah Cohen, University at Albany, State University of New York

4:15-4:30 pm: Coffee

4:30 pm: Conference Response and Roundtable
Response: Erika Naginski, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University
Roundtable convened by Mark Ledbury and Jeffrey S. Ravel

This program is accurate at the time of posting, and will be updated
with any changes as they are received.
At 8:00 pm, Mark Kroll will present "Portraits in Music," a harpsichord
concert featuring music by Couperin and other French composers of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At the Brooks Rogers Concert Hall
on Williams campus. Free and open to all attendees of the Symposium.
Click here for more information.

Funding for the Symposium has been provided by the Samuel H. Kress
foundation and the Florence Gould Foundation.

$25 for adults, $15 for students, and free for Williams students and
faculty.
Register online or fill out and return the registration form.

Full program and registration details at

http://www.clarkart.edu/make_a_visit/event_detail.cfm?ID=9703&nav=3