Questioning the Masterpiece Conference

The World Art journal and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts are delighted to announce a conference to mark the final weekend of the spectacular Masterpieces: Art and East Anglia exhibition. Entitled ‘Questioning the Masterpiece’, this event will bring together an international and cutting-edge set of speakers from the UK, USA, France, Turkey, Germany, Norway and Spain to tackle the concept of the masterpiece and critically consider its possible meanings in the 21st century. UEA academics are also well represented, including a paper from Professor Emeritus John Onians on Neuroarthistory and the masterpiece.

While the exhibition has focused on visual arts connected with East Anglia, our conference broadens the net to such contexts as Pre-Columbian art, the archaeology of Japan, Ottoman art and architecture, and Italian Renaissance painting. We will consider issues of skill and craftsmanship, reception and changing attitudes, structure and intention. After two days of papers and discussions, there will be a more informal study day with contributions from artists, thinking about what the idea of the masterpiece might mean for their own creative practice.

This conference represents an unmissable opportunity to hear a fantastic set of speakers discuss and debate ‘the masterpiece’ in various contexts. It will be of interest to academics (art historians, archaeologists, anthropologists), artists, and the general public.

‘Questioning the Masterpiece' will be held from 20-22 February 2014 at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts. Bookings can be made by contacting the SCVA on +44 1603 593199.
For general enquiries, please contact Jenny Reddish, conference assistant, at J.Reddishuea.ac.uk.

PROGRAMME

Thursday 20th February

10:15-10:30
Welcome and notices

10:30-11:15
Paul Greenhalgh (Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts)
Introduction: modernity, history and the function of the masterpiece

11:15-12:00
Widar Halén (National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Norway)
(Norwegian art nouveau enamelwork - title TBC)

12:00-12:45
William Kynan-Wilson (University of Cambridge)
‘Simply painters of pots’: issues of style and skill in Ottoman costume albums

12:45-13:15
End of morning discussion

13:15-14:15
Lunch

14:15-15:00
Astrid Honold (Freie Universität Berlin)
Marcel Duchamp: nothing but a masterpiece

15:00-15:45
Eva March (Pompeu Fabra University)
The assessment of a masterpiece: the case of the Virgin of the Councillors of the National Museum of Art, Catalonia

15:45-16:15
Margit Thøfner (UEA)
A masterpiece for a king?: the organ of Our Saviour’s Church in Copenhagen

16:15-16:30
Tea

16:30-17:15
John Onians (UEA)
The masterpiece: is it best understood as a social or a neural phenomenon?

Friday 21st February

10:00-10:45
Michael Kausch (University of Koblenz-Landau)
The masterpiece as a question of structure and values

10:45-11:30
Elisenda Vila Llonch (British Museum) and Miriam Doutriaux (Dumbarton Oaks)
Pre-Columbian artistic production; from curiosity to masterpieces

11:30-12:15
Pascale Dubus (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
The ‘ideal gallery’ of Gian Paolo Lomazzo in the Trattato dell’arte della pittura
(Paper to be delivered in French with interpreter)

12:15-12:45
Discussion

12:45-13:45
Lunch

13:45-14:30
Simon Kaner (Centre for Japanese Studies, UEA)
The nature of ‘the masterpiece’ in Japan: from prehistoric figurines to Living National Treasures

14:30-15:15
Ahmet Sezgin (Bahçe?ehir University)
Selimiye as a masterpiece and marker of Turks’ journey to the West

15:15-15.45
Sarah Monks (UEA)
Joseph Stannard’s Yarmouth Sands (1829): the civic role of a ‘masterpiece’

15:45-16:00
Tea

16:00-16:30
Panel discussion: artists Liz Rideal, Michael Brennand-Wood and Lee Grandjean