Call for papers
Text Versus a Piece of Art

Conference organised by:
Department of Art History,
Department of Slavic Studies and
Faculty of the History of Arts
at the Lviv National Academy of Arts,

Waldemar Ceran Research Centre
for the History and Culture of
the Mediterranean Area
and South-East Europe
CERANEUM
at the University of Lodz

The aim of the Conference is to exchange interdisciplinary views within
the scope of the suggested topic. Despite numerous attempts to describe
the topic, we have decided to take the challenge once again. We are
intrigued by a question to what extent unity, closeness of meaning of
textum/τέχνη, characteristic of the ancient culture, is significant for
describing art and text at the begining of the 21st century.

We are curious whether relationships between an image and text,
remaining in the centre of attention for a long time, are universal or,
being on the boundaries, peripheries, in areas between cultures, they
achieve different specificity and intensiveness. That is where the idea
of the conference situated on the peripheries of the West came from.
Closeness of the orthodoxy is an incentive to raise a range of detailed
problems resulting from disparate approach to an image and text in the
Orthodox Church (e.g. Imiaslavie). Even further area, which is of equal
interest to us, is otherness of approach to this problem developed by
the cultures of the New World of America. Only in comparison with such
perspectives, still exotic to some, we are able to discern the outlines
of Western identity.

History of art, understood broadly as visual arts (paintings,
sculptures, graphic and architectural pieces), literary arts (lyric,
narrative and dramaturgical pieces) as well as multimedial ones (video
installations, films, computer games, etc) has often involved a
theoretical thought, different forms of recording, and, above all,
various forms of word presence. The problem is perceived in both a
historical dimension and a modern one. While in the past a relationship
between text and a piece of art was shaped according to regulations and
treatises, the last century introduced a manifesto as a new form of
language, which dominated almost all avant-garde trends in the 20th
century. Letters, words and the whole inscriptions or scores happen to
be an equivalent component of iconographic/dramatic
depictions/performances, lending them numerous additional semantic
references. In such an extensive research field, we want to analyse
relationships between text and art. We suggest dividing sessions
thematically into three basic groups of problems: text and a manifesto,
ecphrasis and hypotyposis, a letter and an inscription. What we find
interesting within each of them is both theoretical discussions and
analyses devoted to particular pieces.

A treatise and a manifesto
"Producing" a piece of art was often associated with particular
technical, aesthetical or ideological regulations. Treatises defining a
process of creation functioned from the antiquity to the 19th century,
when they were replaced by templates. Pauperisation of art resulted in
appearance of yet another form of communication with a viewer/buyer,
raising artistic acts to the rank of uniqueness/dissimilarity.
Manifestos provided creative act with unique power, which at the same
time had educational value, explaining ideas contained in a piece of
art.

Ecphrasis and hypotyposis
Ecphrasis (gr. ékphrasis) or "precise description" was originally
regarded only as a rhetorical figure; over time it developed into a
separate literary trend. The term refers to a description of pieces of
art in literary works (religious texts, prose, poetry, drama). It
infrequently plays a role of a psychological, rhetorical or ontological
element in a literary piece. We are particularly interested in ecphrases
concerning particular pieces of art, but also in evocative hypotyposes
(gr. hypotyposis "sketch, outline"), creating almost tangible paintings,
which (although nonexisting) may be placed in the context of research
into visual depictions within the field of both history of literature
and history of art. A separate category, created above mentioned terms,
is undoubtedly "recording of a theatre performance" existing in both
film and literary forms, like scores, shooting scripts, created at
various stages of shaping a theatre or film piece.

A letter and an inscription
Single letters, whole words, longer inscriptions are elements of visual
arts. Dialogues explaining depictions have accompanied scenes from the
times of ancient Egypt until modern cartoon or city murals, like single
letters which appear as elements of composition, playing an important
formal, symbolic and semantic role. What seems interesting is both
objects in which inscriptions are treated ornamentally, those in which
text is an equivalent component of a picture and those in which
illustrations serve as an addition to the text. Particular attention
should be paid to the text introduced as a picture/object into a theatre
or film piece; meticulous attention should be also paid to titles of art
pieces.
We would like to invite art historians, art critics, literature
historians and theoreticians, culture anthropologists, culture experts,
theatre experts, film experts and other people undertaking research into
abovementioned field to take part in the discussion.

Paper proposals (a title and an abstract 250-300 words) should be sent
by March 22, 2015 to: conference2015lodzgmail.com

Conference fee:
full payment 250 PLN/ or 60 EUR
reduced payment 150 PLN/ or 35 EUR

Conference languages are: Polish, Ukrainian and Congress Languages
Coordinators: Dominika Łarionow PhD, Julia Sowińska-Heim PhD