Negotiating Boundaries - The Plural Fields of Art History

Speakers:

Robert Bagley, Styles, Periods and the Life Cycle of the Goblin, (Princeton University)
Alice Donohue, History and the Historian of Ancient Art, (Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania)

Laura Camille Agoston (Trinity University, San Antonio )
Priyanka Basu (St Norbert College, Wisconsin)
Colleen Becker (Columbia University)
Laura Breen (University of Westminster)
Lesley Brubaker (University of Birmingham)
Antoinette Friedenthal (Independent Scholar)
Jannis Galanopoulos and Georgia Metaxa (University of Crete)
Jack Hartnell (The Courtauld Institute of Art, London)
Sandy Heslop and Joanne Clarke (Sainsbury Institute for Art, East Anglia)
Stefan Muthesius (University of East Anglia)
Meredith Nelson-Berry (Brad Graduate Centre, New York)
Heike Neumeister (Birmingham City University)
Amalia Papaioannou (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University)

The formation of art history as a discipline was underpinned by the claim to a special area of expertise which, in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, was accompanied by the development of particular concepts and methods, from the formal and spatial analysis of Wölfflin, Riegl or Schmarsow to the iconology of Panofsky. Linked to the emergence of the concept of autonomous art, the establishment of the discipline was achieved by means of certain exclusions; a rigid line of demarcation was drawn between art history and archaeology, aesthetic judgments were deemed irrelevant and, in a mirroring of Kantian thought, the decorative and applied arts became the objects of a separate, less prestigious, domain of inquiry.

For all the recent talk of interdisciplinarity, these exclusions still shape the terrain of scholarship, producing numerous incongruities. Art historians still seldom discuss the applied arts, while in the Anglophone world architectural history remains a separate subject (with its own professional and discursive institutions). Prehistoric art and the art of the classical worlds are still topics mostly of interest for archaeologists rather than art historians, while the division between fine art and the applied arts has produced a caesura between the ‘traditional’ and the ‘modern’ in the historiography of, for example, the art of the Islamic world or China.

This conference is not concerned with calling for a renewed embrace of interdisciplinary thinking, but rather with considering the implications of the status quo. Why are certain art historical topics still the domain of researchers in other disciplines? What are the consequences?

Programme

Monday 1st July

10.00–11.15 Registration

11.15-11.30 Introduction

11.30- 12.45 KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Robert Bagley (Princeton), Styles, Periods and the
Life Cycle of the Goblin

12.45-13.40 LUNCH

PANEL 1

13.40-14.20 Priyanka Basu (St Norbert College, Wisconsin), Ornament and Art
History’s Boundaries, circa 1900

14.20-15.00 Sandy Heslop and Joanne Clarke (Sainsbury Institute for Art,
East Anglia), Basketry, Pottery and the Origins of Decoration: the Fate of
Gottfried Semper’s Bekleidungstheorie

15.00-15.40 Laura Breen (University of Westminster), Redefining Ceramics
Through Exhibitionary Practice

15.40-16.00 TEA

PANEL 2

16.00-16.40 Antoinette Friedenthal (Independent Scholar, Berlin), John
Smith, his Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch,
Flemish, and French Painters (1829-1842) and “the stigma of picture dealer”

16.40-17.20 Amalia Papaioannou (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University), How
Interdisciplinary Thinking (or lack thereof) Shaped the Evolution of.
Periodstyle in Art History: the case of the “goût à la grecque”

17.20-18.00 Stefan Muthesius (University of East Anglia), Towards
Authenticity: The rise of the antique applied art object in the later 19th
century.

Tuesday 2nd July

9.30 – 10.45 KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Alice Donohue (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania), History
and the Historian of Ancient Art

PANEL 3

11.10- 11.50 Meredith Nelson-Berry (Bard Graduate Centre, New York),
Reconstructing Context: Unexcavated Archaeological Objects in Early Medieval
Art and Suggested Approaches

11.50-12.30 Colleen Becker (Columbia University), The Turn Towards
“Cultural Studies”: The Case of Aby Warburg

12.30-13.10 Jannis Galanopoulos and Georgia Metaxa (Athens School of Fine
Art and University of Crete), Winckelmann, Archaeology and Art History in
Greece; So close, and yet so far Apart

13.10-14.00 LUNCH

PANEL 4

14.00-14.40 Leslie Brubaker (University of Birmingham), Inventing Byzantine
Iconoclasm

14.40-15.20 Heike Neumeister (Birmingham City University), On Art,
Anthropology and Making Modernist art History in Berlin 1913-1933

15.20 TEA

15.50-16.30 Jack Hartnell (The Courtauld Institute of Art, London), Osmosis
or Forensics? Art History and the Bleeding Boundaries of Medicine

16.30-17.10 Laura Camille Agoston (Trinity University, San Antonio),
Ephemeral Bodies, Rediscovered Texts and the Narratives of Art History

17.10 Matthew Rampley (University of Birmingham),
Concluding Thoughts

The Full Programme can be found at: http://arthistoriography.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/negotiating-boundaries-schedule.pdf.

Fee:
Daily rate: £30 Full conference: £50
Students and unwaged: £10 daily rate

Contact: m.rampleybham.ac.uk