[1]
From: Anthony Mahler <aemahleruchicago.edu>
Date: May 23, 2014
Subject: CFP: Secrecy and Revelation / Geheimnis und Offenbarung

In book three of De occulta philosophia, Agrippa von Nettesheim advises that whoever studies the divine, should “keep silence and constantly conceal within the secret closets of your Religious breast, so holy a determination; for … to publish to the knowledge of many a speech thoroughly filled with so great majesty of the Deity is a sign of irreligious spirit.”

Agrippa articulates here a paradox in representations of divine knowledge. He posits that such knowledge should and even must be kept secret within the intimacy of one’s own heart; the attempt to communicate it can only express its falsity or absence. This may be because knowledge and experiences of the divine ontologically resist representation—they are by their very nature non-discursive; or it may be that silence is an epistemological condition for laying claim to possessing such knowledge.

We invite submissions that investigate how early modern texts, images, and other media navigate this paradox and transmit secrets of religion, society, and nature to an esoteric community. What type of epistemological community do they produce? What iconic, rhetorical, and other techniques do they employ to represent the occult? How do they reflect the contradiction between their esoteric content and their exoteric form? How do early modern institutions and media produce and transmit esoteric knowledge? We hope to assemble a panel from various disciplines spanning early modernity that puts into relief various modes of esoteric figuration and representation.

If interested, please send an abstract (150 words) with paper title, keywords, and curriculum vitae (one page) by June 6 to Daniel Kazmaier (daniel.kazmaieruni-tuebingen.de) and Anthony Mahler (aemahleruchicago.edu). Submissions may be in German or English.

Im dritten Buch von De occulta philosophia rät Agrippa von Nettesheim allen, die Gott suchen: „Wer du auch immer sein magst, der du diese Wissenschaft zu erlernen trachtest, bewahre eine so heilige Lehre mit gewissenhaftem Stillschweigen im Innersten deiner Brust und ziehe den Schleier einer unverbrüchlichen Verschwiegenheit darüber. Denn es wäre … eine irreligiöse Handlung bei einer von der göttlichen Majestät so sehr erfüllten Lehre, Viele zu Mitwissern zu machen.“

Agrippa macht hier auf ein Paradox aufmerksam, das alle Darstellungen des Göttlichen bzw. dessen Wissen durchzieht. Er fordert ein geheimes Wissen, das die Intimsphäre des eigenen Herzens niemals verlässt und brandmarkt jeglichen Versuch ein solches Wissen in großem Stile mitzuteilen. Eine Weitergabe der „heiligen Lehre“ an Viele drücke lediglich das kommunikative Scheitern aus, markiere die Abwesenheit von religiösem Wissen, ja stelle geradezu eine Profanierung dar. Denn sowohl das Wissen als auch die Erfahrung des Göttlichen entziehen sich jeglicher Repräsentation – sie sind nicht-diskursiv. Das Stillschweigen ist eine geradezu epistemologische Bedingung um Anspruch auf ein solches religiöses Wissen zu erheben.

Wir freuen uns auf Vorschläge, die danach fragen, wie Texte und Bilder in der Frühen Neuzeit dieses Paradox bespielen und göttliche, natürliche, und politische Geheimnisse einer esoterischen und das heißt begrenzten Gemeinschaft übermitteln. Welche Art von Öffentlichkeit produzieren solche Verfahren? Welche bildlichen und rhetorischen Verfahren verwenden sie, um das Okkulte darzustellen und weiter zu geben? Wie gehen sie mit dem Widerspruch zwischen esoterischem Inhalt und exoterischer Form um? Auf welche Art und Weise produzieren und vermitteln die Institutionen und Medien in der Vormoderne esoterisches Wissen und welche Bedingungen ermöglichen ein solches Wissen? Wir laden Beiträge aus der Geschichts-, Kunst- und Literaturwissenschaft sowie der Philosophie und Theologie ein, die die ganze Bandbreite der Vormoderne ausmessen, um so den unterschiedlichen Modalitäten von esoterischer Figuration und Repräsentation ein Profil zu geben.

Bitte senden Sie Ihre Beitragsvorschläge als abstract (150 Wörter) mit Titel, Schlagwörtern und Kurzvita (eine Seite) bis zum 06.06. an Daniel Kazmaier (daniel.kazmaieruni-tuebingen.de) und Anthony Mahler (aemahleruchicago.edu). Die Vortragssprachen sind Deutsch und Englisch.

[2]
From: Helen Langdon <Helenlangdonhotmail.com>
Date: May 23, 2014
Subject: CFP: Imaginative Geographies: Place and Non Place in Early Modern Landscape

Organiser: Helen Langdon, former Assistant Director, British School at Rome

Title of Session; Imaginative Geographies; Place and Non Place in Early Modern Landscape

This session is devoted to an exploration of the boundaries bewteen topographical and generic landscape in the early modern period. It will explore how representations of landscape relate to real places, and to what extent they provide a portal into an imaginative or ancient world, or are mediated by a text that is a description of place. Landscapes associated with the mythical and archaeological landscapes of Italy are an obvious theme, and might include
The Virgilian landscape of the Roman Campagna Tivoli, a 17th century 'beauty spot'
Icons of the Sublime, such as Etna, Vesuvius, the Falls at Terni, and the eremtic landscape of Camaldoli and Mount La Verna
The southern harbour scene, and the myth and reality of the Neapolitan coastline
The archaeological landscape, as seen by Athanasius Kircher and other scholars

We would also welcome subjects concentrating on Venetian, French and North European landscape.

Please send a 150 word synopsis, and a brief CV, to Helenlangdonhotmail.com. who would be pleased to answer any preliminary questions.

[3]
From: Ananda Cohen Suarez <aic42cornell.edu>
Date: May 23, 2014
Subject: CFP: Mobility and Stasis in the Global Renaissance

Mobility, Stasis, and Artistic Exchange in the Global Renaissance
Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference, Berlin, Germany, March 26-28, 2015

This session looks at the interplay of mobility and stasis in the making of early modern global artistic traditions. What are the movable and unmoving parts of early modern artistic exchanges? This session considers the relationship between “fixed” works of art and architecture (churches, palaces, public sculptures, or mural paintings, for instance) and the constellation of movable, portable visual networks from which they emerge (such as reproductive prints, textiles, ceramics, or paintings).

Current scholarship on early modern transatlantic and transpacific exchanges often center on issues of transmission, movement, fluidity, and trade. This session, however, explores how an attentiveness to the local can help to reconfigure our methodologies for examining early modern artistic exchange within colonial and imperial contexts. How might we locate cross-cultural exchange at the nexus of fixed and itinerant artworks and/or laboring bodies? We welcome proposals that address issues of mobility and stasis across a variety of geographical contexts, particularly within the Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch empires.

Please send a 150-word abstract, 300-word CV and list of keywords to Carrie Anderson at Middlebury College (carrieanderson77gmail.com) and Ananda Cohen Suarez at Cornell University (aic42cornell.edu). The deadline for submission is June 10.

[4]
From: Kira d'Alburquerque <kiradalburquerquegmail.com>
Date: May 25, 2014
Subject: CFP: Court sculptor: a particular social status?

Court sculptor: a particular social status?

This session will consider the social status of Early Modern sculptors active in European courts. It aims at concentrating on the figure of the court artist, his life conditions, his wealth and his social recognition.
Is the category of “court sculptor” a valid one? If yes, when and where does this close tie between the artist and one official patron begin to appear? How can we define the particular characteristics of “court sculptors”? Did they evolve during the Early Modern age?
Suggested topics might include but are not limited to the following questions:
- Were court sculptors strictly linked to their patron or did they have the freedom to work for other commissioners?
- What are the differences and the common features between private and official sculptors in the way they received commissions: in which cases were contracts established and what were the clauses? How were the sculptors paid? Did they receive salaries? Did sculptors active for a court enjoy more benefits (such as tax exemptions, housing or workshops) than civic artists?
- Did the manner in which sculptors promoted themselves (e.g. signatures, writing theoretical treatises, showing off their wealth and titles as signs of success, etc.) change when working for a court? Are there examples in the Early Modern period of sculptors using their workshops as spaces for self-promotion?
- Did the travels of “court sculptors” follow a specific geographic pattern? Were they travelling from one court to another? Did their patrons recommend them to other patrons?
- Was it easier to access expensive materials (e.g. bronze or marble) when working for a court rather than for civic commissioners?
- Can the analysis of sculptors’ particular characteristics modify our vision of the “court artist” traditionally regarded as a painter?

Please submit a 150-word proposal with paper title and one-page CV by June 8 to Kira d’Alburquerque, École pratique des hautes études (kiradalburquerquegmail.com) and Daniele Rivoletti, Université de Pau (daniele.rivolettigmail.com).

[5]
From: Aleksandra Lipinska <aleksandra.lipinskatu-berlin.de>
Date: May 26, 2014
Subject: CFP: ‘On travelling through the world. Immigrant and Itinerant Artists during the 16th and 17th centuries.

‘Travelling through the world produces a marvellous clarity in the judgement of men. We are all of us confined and enclosed within ourselves, and see no farther than the end of our nose. This great world is a mirror where we must see ourselves in order to know ourselves.’ (Michel de Montaigne, Essais, 1580)

Early modern artists were remarkably mobile, motivated both by political, economic and religious disruption and by their aspirations to learn and to improve themselves. Such unprecedented mobility cultivated artistic exchange and innovation, encouraging the exploration of new materials, techniques, workshop practices and motifs, while also fostering far-reaching personal and stylistic connections. Travel and migration involve ideas of the artist as a ‘work in progress’, a mutable and relational subject that contrasts markedly with a more familiar and traditional understanding of the artist as a stable figure, firmly rooted in the traditions of his native country or town. The aim of this multi-session panel is to enrich and interrogate established art-historical categories by focusing attention on the mobility of artists throughout Europe and beyond, between ca. 1500 and ca. 1700.

This panel proposal incorporates two earlier calls for papers posted by Aleksandra Lipinska (http://www.rsa.org/blogpost/1134779/187824/Distant-outposts-Migrant-artists-in-Central-and-Eastern-Europe-in-the-16th-and-17th-centuries) and Erin Downey & Marije Osnabrugge (http://www.rsa.org/blogpost/1134779/187029/Understanding-artist-migration-immigrant-and-itinerant-artists-during-the-sixteenth-and-seventeenth-centuries).

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

· theoretical models of migration and the early modern artist
· strategies of the migrant artist: distinctiveness, integration, assimilation
· artists’ relocation and ‘national’ identity
· migration and the mobility of artistic theories and practices
· artists and expatriate communities and institutions abroad – formal and informal
· collaboration and competition amongst artists in foreign centres
· barriers and opportunities in foreign centres
· immigrant and itinerant artists, merchants and trade
· artists abroad, agents and patrons
· court artists on the move

Submission: We welcome papers that address these questions generally as well as case studies concerning different regions and periods. Please send your paper title, abstract (max. 150 words), CV (max. 300), and keywords to Erin Downey (edowneytemple.edu), Marije Osnabrugge (m.g.c.osnabruggeuva.nl); Aleksandra Lipinska (aleksandra.lipinskatu-berlin.de) and Joanna Woodall (joanna.woodallcourtauld.ac.uk).

[6]
From: Tatiana Senkevitch <tsenkevitchgmail.com>
Date: May 26, 2014
Subject: CFP: Irregular Classicism

Deadline June 6

Irregular Classicism

Seventeenth-century artistic theory, as concentrated primarily around the Académie de peinture et de sculpture in France, inherited many precepts of the Renaissance system of representation. In French art-practice, however, this notion of systematicity contributed to a fluctuating visual regime, which rhetorically adhered to its rational percepts but in practice shifted values and dominants within the system. This session seeks to question the fundamentals of the established categories of art theory in the French âge classique by examining artistic practice as susceptible to influences from outside, disobedient, and often falling out of the system.

Suggested sessions topics include but are not limited to:
- the rationality of creating and breaking the rules
- royal patronage as a foil for innovation
- the dialectics of historia and decorum,
disegno and colore,
matière (subject-matter) and artistic invention (penseé)
verisimilitude and ornament
- religious passions and the ambiguity of their message
- hierarchies and shifts in the system of genres
- the non-absolutist representation in the era of Absolutism

Submissions should include paper title; abstract (150-word maximum);
keywords; and a one-page curriculum vitae (300-word maximum) sent to tsenkevitchgmail.com

Deadline June 6, 2014