The Modern Interior as Space and Image

We invite proposals for the CAA panel “The Modern Interior as Space and Image.” Please refer to the call for papers below. – Proposals are due May 4th. For further information, see: http://collegeart.org/proposals/2013callforparticipation

The Modern Interior as Space and Image

Hollis Clayson, Northwestern University; and Anca I. Lasc, University of Southern California. Email: shcnorthwestern.edu and lascusc.edu

In the nineteenth century—the Era of the Interior—decora­tion was displaced from aristocratic and religious interiors to bourgeois households. Current art-historical scholarship—still indebted to a modernist discourse seeing cultural progress as synonymous with the removal of ornament from both utilitar­ian and “fine art” objects—has yet to acknowledge the impor­tance of the decoration of the myriad interior spaces of the 1800s. By addressing the modern transatlantic interior as both image and space, this panel seeks to redefine interiors and their objects as essential components of modern art and experience.

Possible topics include modern interiors as arenas for industrial artists; bourgeois leisure and living spaces as sources for modern paintings; ideologies of privacy that arose from the new interior; the development of the profession of interior decorator; the iconography of the interior in visual culture; and the rise of col­lecting and exhibition practices inspired by the modern interior.

Best wishes,
Anca I. Lasc
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Art History
University of Southern California
lascusc.edu