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[1]
From: Jodi Cranston <cranstonbu.edu>
Date: May 10, 2014
Subject: CFP: Early Modern Visual Arts and Poetics

Deadline: May 20, 2014

Early Modern Visual Arts and Poetics

Historians of early modern art often lament the dearth of writing—of
documents, commentary, personal responses, etc.—that could provide
insight into the earlier life of the artwork; even though, as we know
well, the early modern period first announced its arrival through
texts and also drew enormous inspiration from earlier poetry and
writings on poetics. These poetic texts often supplied the subjects,
competitive exemplars, generic modes, and/or the affective structures
of these artworks. Artists, for example, attempted to “re-create” the
vivid scenes furnished by the ancient exercise of ekphrasis and to
find bodily expression for rhetorical figures, such as antithesis.
Not just instances of illustration, these artworks often operate as
visual translations of poetic situations; as figurations of emotional
conditions, modes of address, and boundaries of the inexpressible.

This panel welcomes papers that address historical considerations of
poetics and the visual arts—such as the visualization of poetic tropes
in early modern art, the impact of early modern artworks on
contemporary poetic theory, the role of poetics in shaping viewer
reception—as well as critical and theoretical reflections on the
(mis)alignment of the two fields.

Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words to Christian
Kleinbub (kleinbub.1osu.edu) and Jodi Cranston (Cranstonbu.edu)
before May 20th.

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[2]
From: Lisa Andersen/ Heather Muckart <boredomandbanalitygmail.com>
Date: May 10, 2014
Subject: CFP: Boredom and Banality

Deadline: Jun 3, 2014

The banal—that which is seen to lack any originality—is often
considered both an undesirable and uncritical quality in an artwork.
This negative interpretation can be partially attributed to the
avant-garde preference for the ‘new’ and a modern valuation of art
based in the art market. Likewise, the experience of boredom in
viewing an artwork—where a lack of interest dominates the viewing
experience—is seen as the mark of artistic failure. Boredom, however,
can act as the impetus to both art’s production and its contemplation.
Similarly, it is the repetitious nature of the banal that often
connects a work to a larger artistic oeuvre or tradition. Upon close
analysis, the concepts of boredom and banality betray a complex, often
complimentary relationship to notions such as attentiveness, affect,
imagination, and meaning.

From a reconsideration of Dutch realism to the exploration of
Renaissance and Rococo ornament, recent theoretical interventions have
begun to reevaluate boredom and banality as potentially resituating or
broadening our understanding of the role and experience of art. We
invite proposals for papers that consider art and its production and
experience in the early modern period in relationship to the terms of
boredom and banality, and the related concepts of the copy,
repetition, melancholy, and the commonplace.

Please send your paper title, abstract (150-word maximum), keywords,
and a brief CV (300-word maximum) to Heather Muckart and Lisa Andersen
at boredomandbanalitygmail.com by June 3, 2014.

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[3]
From: Andreas Henning <andreas.henningskd.museum>
Date: May 10, 2014
Subject: CFP: Quadri laterali

Deadline: Jun 1, 2014

Quadri laterali – Considering the Lateral Walls of the Chapel

From the late 15th century in Italy, the chapel is often a
three-dimensional space opening from the nave of a church. If the
central, axial altarpiece has been the natural focus of visitors and
scholars, the decoration of chapel's side walls have received scant
attention. Notable exceptions, like Caravaggio’s lateral paintings
for the Cerasi and Contarelli Chapels or the decorations of the scuole
in Venice, suggest that there is much to be learned from considering
this category. How do artists deal with site-specific issues such as
lighting conditions and oblique sightlines; what can thinking
laterally, instead of axially, tell us about how a chapel was
commissioned, conceived, designed, executed, coordinated; what is the
“hierarchy” of parts in the ensemble of a chapel; what factors
determine whether fresco or canvas; what happens when components by
different artists.

Organized by Gail Feigenbaum, Getty Research Institute, and Andreas
Henning, State Art Colllections Dresden. Abstracts for studies on
chapels and oratories in all regions of Italy, and especially
1550-1650 would be most welcome. Please contact Gail Feigenbaum
(gfeigenbaumgetty.edu) or Andreas Henning
(andreas.henningskd.museum) for more information and to submit an
abstract.

Deadline: June 1, 2014. Please send an abstract (150-word maximum) and
brief curriculum vitae (300-word maximum). Participants are
responsible for their own travel and accommodation and must be members
of the RSA at the time of the conference. For more information about
the RSA conference, please consult http://www.rsa.org/?page=2015Berlin.

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[4]
From: Christina M. Anderson <cm.andersonusa.net>
Date: May 10, 2014
Subject: CFP: Early Modern Collections and the Trade in 'Collectibles'

Deadline: Jun 2, 2014

This panel will explore the trade in objects that became part of early
modern collections. Papers can address anything from ‘exotica’ like
feathers from South America and ‘curiosities’ such as branches of
coral to the cabinets of Philipp Hainhofer, whose contents were
designed according to specific themes. Further ‘collectibles’ may
include paintings, antiquities, precious stones or animals, among
other things.

We welcome papers that explore the ways in which these items were
sourced, commissioned, transported, marketed, priced, paid for and/or
delivered. In focusing on the activities that brought objects into a
collection, this panel aims to investigate, among other things, the
ways in which taste was formed and information was circulated; whether
‘collectibles’ were handled like any other commodity or whether their
trade required specialist knowledge; and the relative influence and
importance of the ‘suppliers’ to the culture of collecting. Looking
at the background to the formation of early modern collections, this
panel also seeks to understand the role of collecting in the
relationships between individuals of different social classes, and the
ways in which collecting was embedded in other early modern activities
such as travel, diplomacy and the trade in commodities.

Interested participants should send proposals, of no more than 150
words, and a short CV, no longer than one side of an A4 sheet of
paper, to the organisers, Christina Anderson, University of Oxford
(cm.andersonusa.net) and Michael Wenzel, Herzog August Bibliothek
(mwenzelhab.de ) by 2 June the latest.

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[5]
From: Kelly D Cook <kdc25umd.edu>
Date: May 10, 2014
Subject: CFP: L'Ornement et ses contraires à la Renaissance française

Registration deadline: Jun 1, 2014

L'Ornement et ses contraires à la Renaissance française
[English version below]

Sous François Ier, l'ornement en France subit une réexamination
intensive au sein des cercles royaux et humanistes, et devient un
aspect central de la culture visuelle et des stratégies rhétoriques
des milieux intellectuels. Cette session examinera les fondations
intellectuelles, et les usages sociaux, culturels et politiques de
l'ornement, mais voudra aussi analyser les antithèses de l'ornement
afin d'explorer les controverses qui entourent son utilisation, ses
limites distinctes, et ses manques conceptuels. Des contributions sont
sollicitées depuis des disciplines diverses, y compris la littérature,
l'histoire de l'art, l'histoire des sciences et intellectuelle. Les
communications peuvent porter sur l'ornatus et le rôle du corps,
l'ornement comme gaspillage, les expérimentations formelles avec
l'ornement (au sens de la proportion et des dimensions), les vides et
la vacance, l'excès, la vanité et l'abondance.

Cette session aura lieu dans le cadre du colloque annuel de la
Renaissance Society of America, à Berlin, du 26 au 28 mars 2015. Les
communications seront donc en anglais, ainsi que les propositions de
contribution.

Les propositions de contribution doivent être adressées à Kelly D.
Cook (kdc25umd.edu) et Pauline Goul (pg323cornell.edu) avant le 5
juin 2014.

Under Francois I, ornament in France underwent an intensive
reexamination within royal and humanist circles, becoming an important
aspect of visual culture and rhetorical strategies within intellectual
circles. This session examines the intellectual foundations, and the
social, culture and political uses of ornament but also aims to
examine ornament's antithesis in order to explore controversies
surrounding its usage, its definable limits and its conceptual gaps.
Papers are solicited from diverse fields including literature, art
history, history of science and intellectual history. Themes that may
be broached include ornatus and the role of the body, waste in/of
ornament, formal experimentation with ornament, including scalar and
dimensional aspects, vacancy and voids, excess, vanity, and abundance.

Please send abstracts (150 words) and CVs to Kelly D. Cook
(kdc25umd.edu) and Pauline Goul (pg323cornell.edu) by June 5th.

_
[6]
From: Michael Grillo <grillomaine.edu>
Date: May 10, 2014
Subject: ANN: As Part of the Viewer's World: Renaissance Images as
Indices to Phenomenological Experience

Deadline: May 31, 2014

As Part of the Viewer’s World: Renaissance Images as Indices to
Phenomenological Experience

Of the three three semeiotic typologies identified by Charles Saunders
Peirce, History of Art has focussed primarily on two: the mimetic,
which links sign to subject through optical verisimilitude, and the
symbol, which marks meaning through cultural conventions. In The Art
of Describing, published forty years ago, Svetlana Alpers considered
how we might see images instead as a form of mapping, in an approach
that recalls Peirce’s third typology, the indexical, which affords
meaning by considering how images might direct attention to the
personally experienced world in a variety of ways.

As Part of the Viewer’s World seeks to explore how Renaissance
audiences constructed meaning in images that specifically referenced
their immediate environment. These pointers to the world of the
viewer could take place through mimetic representations, as in the
background setting of the Piazza della Signoria in Ghilandaio’s
Confirmation of the Franciscan Rule, or though subtle metonymy, such
as the plaid blanket and fan in Pietro Lorenzetti’s Birth of the
Virgin that signal the world of Siena, or by more abstracted aesthetic
means, as in the presence of Classical Rome in Mantegna’s S. Zeno
Altarpiece. Each of these images engages its viewers through the
mediation of the world that they know phenomenologically in personal
experience.

Papers should focus on how aspects of Renaissance images work as
indices, pointing viewers to their habitual experiences in their
physical world, whether in daily life or ritualistic practice.
Explorations of pictorial indexicality should open up new ways of
understanding what images afforded Renaissance audiences, in manners
complementary to those of iconic manifestation and pictorial
representation.

Please send a 150 word prospectus, keywords, and a short 300 word c.v.
to Michael Grillo, University of Maine, at
Michael.Grilloumit.maine.edu buy 31 May, 2014.

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[7]
From: Fabian Jonietz <fabian.jonietzkhi.fi.it>
Date: May 10, 2014
Subject: CFP: From Avant-garde to Retrograde? Florentine Art around 1600

Deadline: May 30, 2014

From Avant-garde to Retrograde? Florentine Art around 1600

After emphasizing the innovative potential and impact of Florentine
art over the course of the fifteenth and the beginning of the
sixteenth centuries, traditional art historical narratives turn away
from Florence in order to focus upon the emergence of the Baroque
style in Rome and Bologna at the end of the sixteenth century. This
session invites papers that address the often overlooked decades
between Vasari's death in 1574 and the recurrence of the plague in
1630. Our objective is to examine the status of Florentine art at the
turn of the seventeenth century from various vantage points in order
to gain a more precise image of the period. As a result, we welcome
analyses of particular artists, works, patrons, or workshops, as well
as papers that address historiographical questions and the history of
style. Some themes to be considered include the relationship of
artists of this period to previous generations of Florentine artists,
the effect of large workshops (Vasari's, Allori's) on individual
styles, the introduction of new iconography and/or the retention of
traditional iconography, local preferences for particular media (i.e.,
fresco), the role patronage (ducal, ecclesiastical, and individual)
played in promoting or suppressing innovation, and the ramifications
of church reform for art. Preference will be given to papers that
explore themes relevant to the status of Florentine art of this period
through close readings of particular monuments, individuals, and
concepts.

Please submit abstract (150 words maximum), keywords, and short CV
(300 words maximum) to both organizers by May 30. Authors will be
notified of acceptance by June 3. Fabian Jonietz (Kunsthistorisches
Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut) fabian.jonietzkhi.fi.it;
Douglas Dow (Kansas State University) ddowksu.edu.