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[1]
From: Annamaria Ducci
Subject: CFP: Dire la matiere de l'oeuvre - Saying the matter of the artwork

36e Congrès du Comité International d'Histoire de l'Art / 36th CIHA World
Congress / Lyon 2024
Dire la matière de l’oeuvre - Saying the matter of the artwork
Organizers: Annamaria Ducci & Arnaud Timbert

(English text below)
Comment transposer en mots la matière de l'oeuvre, sa structure physique ?
En Occident les écrits sur l'art, notamment les ekphrastiques, se sont
concentrés sur la perception visuelle de
l'oeuvre, privilégiant son aspect extérieur et sa place dans l'espace ;
en pratique, la description a traditionnellement donné plus d'importance
à la forme de l'oeuvre, au détriment de sa matière, perpétuant ainsi
l'antinomie inhérente propre à la philosophie classique. Cependant toutes
les époques n'ont pas perçu cette dichotomie dans l'oeuvre d'art. Il
suffit de se remémorer la description (imaginaire, pourtant) du bouclier
d’Achille (Iliade, XVIII, 468- 617), pour se rendre compte de
l’importance accordée aux matériaux à côté d’un discours
éminemment iconographique, dont l’enarghéia - voire l’évidence que
Quintilien définit dans son Institutio oratoria - en résulte ainsi
renforcée. La Naturalis historia de Pline introduit ensuite une attention
proto-scientifique aux matières de l’art, tout en forgeant une
nomenclature et une sorte d’histoire culturelle des différents
matériaux. Au Moyen Âge, les objets sont décrits avec une attention
portée aux matières premières et aux matériaux, tels les tissus, les
alliages, les pigments. Cette capacité analytique dépend d’une forme de
perception qui accorde une importance majeure aux substances, ainsi
qu’aux processus savants de transformation, et qui est capable de forger
une terminologie très riche. Une ligne matérialiste de la description de
l’oeuvre d’art s’établit ainsi, qui n’est pas sans rapport avec
des phénomènes sociaux (tels l’affirmation de la figure de l’artiste,
l’organisation du travail artistique dans les ateliers, la révolution
industrielle) ou culturels, notamment la réévaluation du sens du toucher
par opposition au sens de la vue. Rappelons toutefois que les cultures non-
occidentales font également preuve d’une grande attention aux matériaux
: les descriptions d’armes, de trésors, d’ornements dans les contes
mythologiques (par ex. le Livre des Rois de Ferdowsi, les épopées du
Mahabharata et du Ramayana, ou encore des nombreux textes chinois et
japonais) en témoignent. La session vise à combler une lacune dans les
études consacrées à la description des oeuvres d'art, se proposant
d'explorer cette attitude à « dire la matière de l'oeuvre », ses
fluctuations historiques, ses difficultés rhétoriques, afin de tracer une
véritable narration matérielle de l’art. Ouverte aux échanges entre
différents domaines et méthodologies, la session cherchera à présenter
les dispositifs rhétoriques utilisés, et à cerner les contextes
historico-culturels qui ont privilégié l’expression de la matérialité
de l'oeuvre, mais aussi son aspect de technicité. La question d’une
spécificité verbale, d’un vocabulaire spécialement conçu et utilisé
pour chaque matériau, sera également posée. Une attention spécifique
sera portée au vocabulaire de l’architecture, dans ses rapports avec les
sciences (Géologie, Physique, Chimie). Les interventions portant sur des
objets (artistiques, rituels) non-occidentaux, comportant une réflexion
sur les modalités descriptives (écrites, orales) seront particulièrement
appréciées. Les communications seront de 25 minutes.
*

How can the materiality of a work of art, its physical structure, be put
into words? In Western culture, writings, particularly the ekphrastic, have
focused on the visual perception of the artwork, privileging its visible
appearance and its place in space; descriptions have traditionally given
more importance to the form of the artwork than to its matter, thus
perpetuating the antinomy of classical philosophy. However, not all
historical periods have perceived this dichotomy in the work of art. One
needs only recall the (imaginary, however) description of Achilles' shield
(Iliad, XVIII, 468-617) to realise the importance given to materials
alongside an eminently iconographic discourse, whose enarghéia - or even
evidence, as Quintilian defines it in his Institutio oratoria - is thus
reinforced. Pliny's Naturalis historia then introduces proto-scientific
attention to art matters while forging a nomenclature and a cultural
history of the different materials. In the Middle Ages, writers describe
objects focusing on raw matters and artificial materials, such as fabrics,
alloys, and pigments. This analytical capacity depends on a form of
perception that gives significant importance to substances and the
processes of transformation and can forge a rich and incisive terminology.
A materialist line for the description of the work of art thus emerges,
which is not unrelated to social phenomena (such as the social affirmation
of the artist, the organisation of artistic work in workshops, the
industrial revolution) or cultural phenomena, notably the revaluation of
the sense of touch as opposed to the sense of sight. One should remember,
however, that non- Western cultures also pay great attention to materials:
the descriptions of weapons, treasures and ornaments in mythological tales
(e.g. Ferdowsi's Book of Kings, the epics of the Mahabharata and Ramayana,
or several Chinese and Japanese texts) bear witness to this. The session
aims to fill a gap in the studies devoted to ekphrasis. It proposes to
explore the attitude to "say the matter of the artwork", its historical
fluctuations, and its rhetorical difficulties to trace a true "material
narrative of art". The session will be open to exchanges between different
fields and methodologies. It will seek to present the rhetorical devices
and identify the historical and cultural contexts that have privileged the
expression of the artwork's materiality and its aspect of technicality. The
question of verbal specificity, a vocabulary specially forged for each
material, will also be raised. Specific attention will be paid to the
vocabulary of architecture in its relationship with the sciences (Geology,
Physics, Chemistry). Papers dealing with non-Western objects (artistic,
ritual) and reflecting on their descriptive modalities (written, oral) will
be particularly appreciated. The papers will be 25 minutes long.

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

Corresponding author(s) email: annamaria.duccigmail.com /
arnaud.timbertu-picardie.fr

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[2]
From: Mattia Biffis
Subject: CFP: Matter in Motion

Sujet en anglais / Topic in english

Recent art historical scholarship has rightly emphasized that many of the
current debates on materiality are, in fact, also debates on mobility. As
outlined in different ways in the works of Christopher Heuer, Alina Payne
and Jennifer Roberts, among others, it is especially when an artwork is in
motion that its status as a material object––a three-dimensional thing
with its own weight, size and facture, and with its distinct material
component––is led to emerge. In other words, it is especially when in
motion that the material features of an object can be properly detected and
analyzed. Drawing on the previous work of such theorists as Bill Brown,
Jane Bennett, Arjun Appadurai and many others, these studies offer now new
approaches to think critically about the active relationships between
matter and space, opening new ways for articulating the meaning of the
material in a transnational perspective. Transdisciplinary by definition,
these studies also create a new ground for approaching matter and
materiality in a more empirical, one could even say more
‘materialistic,’ way.
With this in mind, this session invites papers on art and architecture that
interrogate the complex relationships between materiality, movement, and
representation, and that bring into focus the powerful, multifaceted
connections between matter and space. We are interested in contributions
that take into account the mobility of the artworks (with no chronological
constraints) and show the impact of movement on its material state. What
does movement teach us about the materiality of the object? What kind of
challenges does movement pose to the matter? How does matter respond to the
risky regimes of itinerancy? Possible topics include, but are certainly not
limited to:
–The mnemonic potential of matter; matter that retains the memory of its
movement, in the form of damages, material alterations, indexical injuries,
but also as the recognition of its origins.
–The creative potential of slow movement to the matter––geological
approaches to material research.
–The fragility of matter in relation to movement––how movement tests
the vulnerable nature of the matter, and strategies to prevent potential
damages.
–Matter as an obstacle/challenge to movement, one that can manifest
itself in the form of the conspicuous transportation of objects (such as
paintings and sculptures) or even the impossible, paradoxical mobility of
larger objects (as in the case of architecture).
–Matter as a precious and exotic proxy of distance—matter that is
perceived as endowed with an aura of particularity precisely because of its
‘coming from elsewhere.’
–Matter as a geopolitical event—matter that encapsulates in its distant
provenance the exploitation of global resources, the desire for materials
and the inequalities of their distribution.

Deadline : 15 September 2023
The CIHA conference is open to researchers from all professional
backgrounds in the broad field of art history. Proposals from young
researchers are welcome.
Submissions should be written in English or French. Papers may be presented
in either language.
Proposals must be submitted on the submission platform only:
https://www.cihalyon2024.fr/en/call-for-papers
Papers will be presented in person in Lyon at the Centre de Congrès -
Cité internationale, from 23 to 28 June 2024.
Speakers are responsible for their own registration, travel and
accommodation fees.
We invite you to get in touch with your institutions of affiliation to find
out how to finance your participation in the Congress. The organising
committee is actively seeking support for the mobility of researchers.
Please check regularly the the "Call for Grants" section of the website.

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[3]
From: Rocío Robles Tardío.
Subject: CFP: Materials in the afterlife of artworks

Organizers:
Rocío Robles Tardío (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España)
Gabriel Cabello Padial (Universidad de Granada, España)
Thierry Dufrêne (Université Paris-Nanterre, France)

36th CIHA World Congress - Lyon 2024: matter/materiality
Theme: Dematerialization/Rematerialization

[French version below]

In recent decades, the afterlife of works of art has been consolidating into an object, or even a framework, for critical studies in art history. The approaches have been very diverse. If Francis Haskell (1980) addressed changes in taste in relation to the history of collecting, Hubert Damisch (1987, 1992) interrogated how works of art reactivate/revive problems previously exposed by others, with which they form a "transformation group". Over time, the study of the survival of works of art, and of their actualizations and displacements, seems to have converged with the "iconic turn", as evidenced by the recovery of Aby Warburg's iconology and his notion of Nachleben in terms of anthropology of the image, which has been accomplished by Hans Belting (2001) or Georges Didi-Huberman (2010), among others.
However, confronting the afterlife of artworks from the point of view of materiality generates a series of new questions. The purpose of this session is to address these questions by attending to the nature, scope and concreteness in the processes of survival and displacement. The articulation of work, material and image and of materiality and digital patrimonialization, as well as to the relations between individual and collective, Western and non-Western practices that the use of specific materials conveys, emerge then to the foreground. What aspects does the initial materiality of the work induce as receptive potentialities in its posthumous life? What is the initial materiality conducive to? Or, posing the question the other way round, what is it that is preserved of the initial work after its restoration or transposition? How is the work of art "augmented" by digitization, making it acquire a new "persona" with which we interact and cohabit differently, in the sense in which Lévy-Bruhl (1927) and Denis Vidal (2012) have given to this expression when studying the effects of presence in different cultures? Plus, extending the notion of materiality to life beyond works of art: in the case of re-enactments that pivot on material survivals or transformations, how does the work metamorphose by involving materials and practices that convey different cultural codes? In what way, finally, does the restored work of art become an integral part of the "person" of the original work?
We encourage the submission of proposals on the reception and material displacement of works of art. Some of the proposed framework lines are:
— Materials and transitivity: what the materiality of the initial body/work leads or carries and what remains of it in the second body/work/virtual reality.
— Patrimonialization and transformation. The "augmented" reality of digital curation.
— Changes of scale, semantic effects and mutations in the interaction with the works.
— Re-enactments that re-signify through the exploration of materials.
— Materiality and cultural boundaries. The individual and the collective.
— Materiality and circulation of works of art.

We encourage for proposals in French/English, for a 20-minute presentation; proposals focus in case studies are very welcome.

More information about "HOW TO SUBMIT A PAPER PROPOSAL":
https://www.cihalyon2024.fr/images/pdf/Modalites_appel_a_communications_VFINALE.pdf

Please submit your proposal (350-500 words) and your CV (500 characters):
https://livebyglevents.key4register.com/key4register/AbstractList.aspx?e=148

For further information please contact the organizers of the
session:
rroblesucm.es (Rocío Robles Tardío)
gcabellougr.es (Gabriel Cabello Padial)

[Sujet de la session en français]

Au cours des dernières décennies, la “vie d´après” (Afterlife) des oeuvres d´art est devenue un sujet à part entière en histoire de l´art, constituant même un cadre de réflexion méthodologique, et les approches en ont été très diverses. Par exemple, Francis Haskell (1980) abordait les évolutions du goût par rapport au collectionnisme, Hubert Damisch (1987 et 1992) se demandait comment les oeuvres d´art réactivent/revivent des problèmes précédemment exposés par d´autres, avec lesquelles elles forment un « groupe de transformation ». Au fil du temps, l´étude de la survivance des oeuvres, de leurs mises à jour et déplacements, semble avoir convergé avec le « tournant iconique », comme en témoigne la récupération de l´iconologie d´Aby Warburg et de sa notion de Nachleben en termes d´anthropologie de l´image, réalisée, entre autres, par Hans Belting (2001) ou Georges Didi-Huberman (2010).
Cependant, aborder le sujet de la “vie d´après” (Afterlife) des oeuvres d´art du point de vue de la matérialité incite à poser de nouvelles questions. Tel est l´objectif de cette session où l’on tiendra compte de la nature, de la portée et de la spécificité des processus de survie et de déplacement. Les articulations oeuvre/matière/image et matérialité/patrimonialisation numérique, ainsi que les rapports entre pratiques individuelles et collectives, occidentales et non occidentales, que véhicule l´utilisation de matériaux spécifiques, en constituent les interrogations fondamentales. Dans cette perspective, quels aspects la matérialité initiale de l´oeuvre induit-elle comme potentialités réceptives dans sa vie posthume ? De quoi la matérialité initiale est-elle porteuse? Ou, à l´inverse, qu´est-ce qui est conservé de l´oeuvre initiale après sa restauration ou sa transposition ? Plus largement, comment l´oeuvre d´art est-elle « augmentée » par la numérisation, lui permettant d’acquérir une nouvelle « persona » avec laquelle nous interagissons et cohabitons autrement, au sens que Lévy-Bruhl (1927) et Denis Vidal (2012) ont donné à cette expression lorsqu´on étudie les effets de la présence dans différentes cultures ? Et, si l’on étend la notion de matérialité à l´afterlife des oeuvres d'art : comment, dans le cas des re-enactments fondés sur des survivances ou des transformations matérielles, l´oeuvre se métamorphose-t-elle au moyen de matériaux et de pratiques véhiculant des codes culturels différents ? Comment l´oeuvre d´art restaurée devient-elle partie intégrante de la « persona » de l´oeuvre originale ?
Nous accueillerons les propositions portant sur les axes de réflexion suivants:
— Matériaux et transitivité : ce que la matérialité du corps/oeuvre initial conduit ou porte et ce qu´il en reste dans le deuxième corps/oeuvre/réalité virtuelle.
— Patrimonialisation et transformation. La réalité « augmentée » de la conservation numérique.
— Changements d´échelle, effets sémantiques et mutations dans l´interaction avec les oeuvres.
— Re-enactments qui donnent une nouveau sens par l´exploration / emploi des matériaux.
— Matérialité et frontières culturelles. L´individuel et le collectif.
— Matérialité et circulation des oeuvres d´art.

Nous invitons à soumettre une proposition de communication en français ou anglais, pour une intervention de 20 min. Nous porterons une attention particulière aux propositions qui prennent en considération des cas d´étude.