[1] Matter in Motion: Transcultural Material and Symbolic Transformations
From: Julie Codell
Date: 19 June 2023

Organizers: Julie Codell and Sabine du Crest

Transcultural exchanges increasingly dominate art historical studies investigating objects through their transformational spatial and temporal travels. While matter appears ineffable and fixed, materials nonetheless embody emotions, kinesthetics, memories, histories, resonances, and skills, making interpretations of surface textures as unstable and indeterminate as are the changing contents and meanings of works that cross borders.
Whether embedded in hybrid things produced by combining cross-cultural materials or images linked through encounters or in histories of the changing valuations of an object that crosses cultures, transculturation underscores contingencies of physical matter—e.g., darkening, patinas--and of content re-interpreted and re-inscribed by another cultures’ histories, social orders and ideologies, e.g., French tapestries sent to a Chinese emperor; Ukiyo-e prints, used as packaging in Japan, enjoying aesthetic value in Europe.
Crossing borders through trade, consumption, diplomacy, collecting, exploration, colonialism, and fashion, objects can generate assimilation, appropriation or resistance. Such objects juxtapose distance and presence to highlight how the local engenders mutable physical, symbolic and affective meanings through transcultural dynamics. Studies of the geohistory of art offer methods to analyze cross-cultural perspectives that rewrite materials, contents and formats, revealing that objects have no fixed meanings but undergo continual processes of unmaking/remaking and decontextualizing/recontextualizing.

Transcultural movement occurs across and between Europe, Asia, the Americas, and Africa; panelists are encouraged to explore these many paths of objects in motion everywhere. Suggested topics are:
- Case studies of objects crossing borders, their matter revalued/devalued and their contents and significance re-signified in new localities.
- How objects’ physical and/or symbolic significance in new places or times differs from their material and cultural identities in their original sites or times.
- Whether spatial and temporal crossings affect objects’ representations in the same ways or differently.
- Forces of assimilation or appropriation or resistance, such as nationalism, social identities, markets.
- Ways cross-cultural exchanges affect binaries of centers and peripheries and the dissemination of styles.
- How instabilities of matter and materiality revise art history’s assumptions and methods.

Submission portal: https://www.cihalyon2024.fr/en/call-for-papers

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[2] The Materiality of Pious Texts: The Qur’an and Devotional Manuscripts
From: Alya Karame
Date: 20 June 2023

Panel organisers:
Alya Karame (Collège De France) alya.karamecollege-de-france.fr & Umberto Bongianino (University of Oxford) umberto.bongianinoames.ox.ac.uk

Both the Qur’an and Islamic devotional manuscripts have traditionally been studied as texts and artistic achievements, but rarely as material objects. Concerns about how to handle and dispose of Qur’anic matter – how to use the manuscript, where to place it, when to touch it – or whether it is permissible to perfume it, ingest it or sell it, were among the anxieties of the first centuries of Islam. Formative to the Qur’an’s physical manifestation as codices, scrolls or inscribed artefacts, these debates shaped its sacrality in the material realm and affected the use of Islamic devotional manuscripts in which passages of the Qur’an appear next to other pious texts, prayers or illustrations of holy places. Art history has been rarely concerned with such phenomena, or with the corporeality of sacred and pious texts in general.

This session aims to interrogate the materiality of pious texts and the roles they played in shaping artistic forms embedded in a diverse range of practices, at the time of their production or in their afterlives: Qur’anic calligraphy, calligrams, and emblematic inscriptions in books and scrolls, but also on tablets and panels of various materials, interspersed or combined with devotional texts and images presented in diagrammatic or iconified forms. By moving away from archaeological taxonomies and the study of styles and repertoires, we hope to create space for approaching pious texts through their materiality, their use, and the range of physical reactions they elicited. Meanings – whether religious, political, or aesthetic – can be found not just in how texts looked, but also in how they functioned, and it is through the lens of materiality that previously neglected ideas and behaviors can be examined.

With that in mind, we call for papers that explore the materiality of pious texts of any kind, focusing on how they were shaped, what aesthetic ideas were embedded in them, and what kind of engagement their forms triggered, be it at the time of their making, consumption, alteration, or reuse. As their meanings shifted throughout their spatial and temporal circulation, within and beyond Muslim communities, these texts projected multifaceted statements of faith and efficacy that are yet to be unpacked. Later interventions such as manipulations of their constitutive elements, amendments to their illustrations, or smudging and erasures, also reflect practices and beliefs, often echoing ideologies. In no way limited to these aspects, this session seeks papers that re-instate the role of makers, beholders and users of texts within art history. As such, it encourages cross-disciplinary research – bridging religious studies, anthropology and visual culture – to re-establish the relation between art history, material culture and religion.

Submission:

Please submit your proposal by 15 September 2023 via this link: https://livebyglevents.key4register.com/key4register/AbstractList.aspx?e=148

• Title of the proposed paper (concise and reflecting the contents of the paper).
• Paper Proposal: An abstract of 350 to 500 words, in English or French, including 4 to 6 key words and a possible short bibliography.
• CV of 500 characters with first name, last name, title, status, institution of affiliation and the link to the personal or professional page.

Funding:

Applicants are responsible to secure their own funding. Please consult this page regularly: https://www.cihalyon2024.fr/en/call-for-grants

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[3] Matters of Caring. Early Modern and/or Global Conservation Practices
From: Noémie Étienne
Date: 20 June 2023

Organizers: Guillemette Caupin, Noémie Étienne
The Metropolitan Museum Of Art - New York (United States), University Of Vienna - Vienna (Austria)

Deadline: September 15, 2023

Submission portal: https://www.cihalyon2024.fr/en/call-for-papers

For further information or contact the chairs guillemette.caupingmail.com (Guillemette Caupin) and noemie.etienneunivie.ac.at (Noémie Étienne)

Heritage conservation is a political matter that needs to be understood historically and theoretically based on a long-term and broad geographical scope. What were the ways of caring before conservation became a science in the 20th century? What were the guidance and criteria to follow? And what were the practices beyond Europe and the United States?

While the 20th century marked a period of expansion in the field of art conservation, the action of caring for cultural objects is much older. Indeed, conservation methods, commonly performed by artists or craftspeople, have been self-taught based on empirical evidence and passed on to generations since the 18th century. That century saw the rise of specialist restorers and marked the beginning of an aesthetic debate about the effects of time on cultural objects. Innovations to artists’ supplies and growing collaborations between the fields of art and science in the 19th century introduced new challenges to the conservation field. The progressive integration of science and innovative instrumental methods into the conservation field initiated a Scientific Turn to the domain over the 20th century strengthening knowledge about the materiality of artifacts. While the globalization of the art markets opened international dialogues, a (more recent) Green Turn is taken in conservation towards ecosustainability. With a slow return to natural materials respectful of the environment, the artifacts, and the practitioners, this new direction echoes ancient techniques and practices. Finally, a Postcolonial Turn is also at stake today, while ethnographic museums are currently exploring the connections between conservation and coloniality.
Early restoration practices and methods are considered the founding principles of the field in terms of maintaining and ensuring proper environmental conditions for the display of artifacts. Proof of those early methods, mostly driven by craft savoir-faire and studio recipes, are recorded in archival documentation, even though they are scarce and fragmentary. Moreover, objects and their materials carry proof of this additional history, restoration, and conservation. This multidimensional archive reflects the variety of methods and ways of caring applied under circumstances, to give answers to pressure from interests and objectives from different stakeholders and brings new evidence to the understanding of the art world organization and network including the art market.

In a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary scope, this panel aims to discuss the early history of conservation techniques and alternate ways of caring for artifacts before the 20th century on the five continents to shed light on understudied traditions. We welcome additional papers and case studies on global ways of caring from the early modern period, particularly on non-European and non-American practices to confront practices of preservation from one region to another and establish connections.

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La conservation du patrimoine est une question politique qui doit être comprise, historiquement et théoriquement, dans un contexte temporel et géographique large et diversifié. Quelles étaient les manières de prendre soin du patrimoine avant que la conservation-restauration ne devienne une science au XXe siècle ? Quelles étaient les critères déontologiques à respecter ? Et quelles étaient les pratiques au-delà de l'Europe et des Etats-Unis ?

Si le XXe siècle a marqué une période d'expansion dans le domaine de la conservation de l'art, les mesures d'entretien des objets culturels sont beaucoup plus anciennes. En effet, les méthodes de conservation-restauration, couramment pratiquées par des artistes et des artisans, étaient pratiquées de manière empirique, souvent issues d'un apprentissage autodidacte et transmises de générations en générations depuis le XVIIIe siècle. Le XVIIIe siècle voit l'essor de restaurateurs spécialisés et marque le début d'un débat esthétique sur les effets du temps sur les objets culturels. Les innovations apportées aux matériels pour artistes et les collaborations croissantes entre les disciplines de l'art et de la science au XIXe siècle, ont introduit de nouvelles problématiques dans le domaine de la conservation. L'intégration progressive de la science et des méthodes instrumentales innovantes dans l'examen du patrimoine a initié un Scientific Turn dans la discipline au cours du XXe siècle, renforçant les connaissances sur la matérialité des artefacts. Alors que la mondialisation des marchés de l'art ouvre des dialogues internationaux, la discipline amorce un Green Turn (plus récent) tourné vers l'éco-durabilité et l'éco-responsabilité. Avec un lent retour et intérêt vers les matériaux naturels respectueux de l'environnement, des artefacts et des praticiens, les techniques et pratiques anciennes s'en trouvent priviligíées. Tandis que les musées ethnographiques s'intéressent davantage aux liens entre conservation et colonialité ces dernières années, un Postcolonial Turn est palpable au sein de la discipline.
Les pratiques de restauration anciennes sont considérées comme les interventions fondatrices de la discipline favorisant la stabilité et la pérennité des oeuvres d'art. La preuve de ces premières méthodes, issues d'un savoir-faire artisanal et de recettes d'atelier, sont enregistrées dans les documents d'archives, même si celles-ci sont rares et fragmentaires. Les oeuvres elles-mêmes et leurs matériaux constitutifs portent aussi la trace de cette histoire des techniques de conservation-restauration à travers le temps. Ces documents d'archives multidimensionnelles reflètent aussi la variété des modes de restauration et de soins exécutées selon des contextes particuliers répondant à des intérêts et des objectifs des différents partis impliqués dans l'acte de restauration. Ils apportent également de nouvelles preuves dans la compréhension des interactions et de l'organisation du réseau du monde de l'art, y compris le marché de l'art.

Dans un objectif interculturel et interdisciplinaire, ce panel vise à discuter de l'histoire ancienne des techniques de conservation et des façons alternatives de prendre soin des objets d'art avant le XXe siècle sur les cinq continents et ainsi de mettre en lumière des pratiques et des coutumes peu étudiées. Nous accueillons en particulier des contributions et des études de cas portant sur les méthodes d'entretien du patrimoine au-delà des pratiques européennes et américaines afin de confronter de manière globale les pratiques de préservation du patrimoine et d'établir des liens.