Séminaire Exogenèses du 5 décembre 2013 : “Objets montés”

Par Sabine du Crest

 

La prise en compte des montures reçues en Europe par les objets extra-européens est déterminante pour la connaissance de leur statut puisque cette forme d’usage est très révélateur de la réception et de la perception de tels objets en Europe. L’analyse en termes d’appropriation ou d’accaparement ou bien d’autonomie ne suffisant pas à expliciter les objets ainsi conçus, on s’interrogera sur ce que la monture fait à l’objet extra-européen et, en contre-partie, sur ce que l’objet extra-européen fait à la monture. Ainsi pourra être apportée, à partir de quelques cas paradigmatiques, une contribution à une définition à la fois plus précise et plus ouverte du concept d’objets-frontières.

 

Suggestions bibliographiques :

D. Lunsingh Scheurleer, Chinesisches und japanisches Porzellan in europäischen Fassungen, Brauschweig, 1980.

A. Lugli, -A. Lugli, Naturalia et mirabilia. Les cabinets de curiosités en Europe, A. Biro, 1998

P. Kjellberg, Objets montés du Moyen-Âge à nos jours, Paris, Éditions de l’Amateur, 2000

Encounters. The meeting of Asia and Europe 1500-1800, Catalogue de l’exposition de Londres, A. Jackson-A. Jaffer, éds., Victoria and Albert Museum, 2004

Cannibalismes disciplinaires. Quand l’histoire de l’art et l’anthropologie se rencontrent, Th. Dufrêne-A. Ch. Taylor éds., Paris, Inha-MQB, 2009.

 

Séminaire Exogenèses du jeudi 5 décembre 2013. EHESS, 105 bd Raspail 75006 Paris (salle 8).

Exposition : “La licorne et le bézoard. Une histoire des cabinets de curiosités” (Poitiers)

Musée Sainte-Croix, Poitiers

Du 18 octobre 2013 au 16 mars 2014

image_large C’est à une découverte de leur histoire qu’invite cette exposition. Chaque salle reconstitue ou donne à voir un type de cabinet. À l’évocation du studiolo d’Urbino, avec son exceptionnel décor de marqueterie lié aux différentes formes du savoir, succède une salle octogonale où s’accumulent quantité d’objets, animaux naturalisés et squelettes, monnaies et statuettes, pierres de foudre, coraux… formant une sorte d’« abrégé du monde ». Les figures des principaux amateurs de curiosités sont rassemblées dans la galerie suivante, témoignage d’un réel engouement européen. Dans le cabinet princier, conçu en écho à celui du château d’Ambras en Autriche, les objets les plus précieux côtoient armes de prestige et meubles de cabinet. Un jardin factice sert de cadre à l’évocation de l’apothicaire Contant, installé à Poitiers, et à sa collection ouverte sur l’Atlantique et les objets amérindiens. La maquette du premier cabinet de Chevalier, à Amsterdam, est entourée des descriptions qu’il a lui-même publiées de sa collection de médailles, d’œuvres d’art, de nombreux objets issus du commerce international d’alors. La collection de Ruysch, médecin anatomiste de la fin du XVIIe siècle, révèle sa double fascination pour l’histoire naturelle et pour le corps humain et ses pathologies, au travers de vanités tridimensionnelles. Continuer la lecture

Sanjay Subrahmanyam : “Histoire globale de la première modernité”

Leçon inaugurale

Le 28 novembre 2013, à 18h (Amphithéâtre Marguerite de Navarre – Marcelin Berthelot)

Cette année, le cours de Sanjay Subrahmanyam au collège de France est intitulé “Pensez le monde au XVIIe siècle : une histoire imparfaite“.

Première séance : le 2 décembre 2013. Retrouvez toutes les séances de Sanjay Subrahmanyam au collège de France : http://www.college-de-france.fr/site/sanjay-subrahmanyam/seminar-2013-2014.htm

 

Séminaire Exogenèses du 21 novembre 2013 : “The People of Calicut. Objects, Texts and Images in the Age of Proto-Ethnography”

Par Christian Feest

 

Séminaire Exogenèses du jeudi 21 novembre 2013. EHESS, salle 8, 105 bd Raspail 75006 Paris.

 

Prof. Christian FeestSome early sixteenth-century works by artists from southern Germany (Albrecht Dürer, Hans Burgkmair, Albrecht Altdorfer, Jörg Breu) representing the « people of Calicut » (which was then supposed to be accessible from Europe both in an eastward and westward direction) are explored in terms of their combination of images from South Asia and artifacts from Brazil. This is placed in the context of the methodologies developed during this period for collecting and processing data in the form of texts, images, and collections of material objects, which are considered to have been the antecedents of modern ethnography and anthropology.

From Reverbed to Seashore. Art on the Move in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean

Call for paper
Deadline: Jan 10, 2014

A Harvard University Research Seminar organized as part of the Getty Foundation’s Connecting Art Histories initiative
led by Alina Payne, Harvard University

This research seminar zeroes in on rivers as the cultural infrastructure of the Mediterranean world in the early modern period, as carriers of people, things, and ideas tying geographies and cultures together. The king of such rivers was undoubtedly the Danube, running a parallel course to the Mediterranean and cutting across Europe from West to East.
Flowing into the Black Sea, it entered the system of communicating vessels of the Mediterranean—the old Roman mare nostrum itself, the Sea of Marmara, the Black Sea, and, the last ripple that separates and unites three continents, the Sea of Azov.

But the Danube was not alone in swelling the Mediterranean world with the cultures along its shores. The Sava, the Adige, the Neretva, the Pruth, the Dniester and Dnieper, and the Don (which flows into the Sea of Azov) etc. connect the “traditional” Mediterranean cultures—the Italian, the Ottoman, the Greek/Byzantine, the French and Spanish—with the world of the Balkans and beyond. Starting from this perspective, this seminar seeks to develop a framework for understanding how the Balkans and its northern neighbors mediated between East and West, as well as the region’s contribution to the larger Mediterranean cultural melting pot in the early modern period.

The premises underlying this seminar are twofold:

1) that the contours of the Mediterranean Renaissance need to be re-drawn to include a larger territory that reflects this connectedness; and

2) that the eastern frontier of Europe extending from the Mediterranean deep into the interior played a pivotal role in negotiating the dialogue between western Europe, Central Asia and Ottoman Turkey.  On the cusp between cultures and religions, Balkan principalities, kingdoms, and fiefdoms came to embody hybridity, to act as a form of buffer or cultural
“switching” system that assimilated, translated, and linked the cultures of near and Central Asia with those of Western Europe. Taking a trans-regional approach, this project aims to reconstruct the fluid ties that linked territories in a period in which hegemonies were short-lived and unstable, and in which contact nebulas generated artistic nebulas that challenge traditional historical categories of regional identities, East/West and center/periphery.

The seminar will run from spring of 2014 to summer of 2015 and will be guided by a distinguished group of scholars. Participants are invited to propose their own projects related to these themes on which they will work during this period. We seek contributions on building types (eg. carvanserais/ hans), infrastructure (bridges, fortifications and roads), domestic architecture (villas/palaces), religious and domed structures, etc., building practices, materials and artisans, on Kleinarchitektur
and portable architectural objects. Proposals are also invited from participants working on spolia, on “minor” arts—cloth/silks,
goldsmithry, sculpture, leather, gems and books—as well as on collecting and treasuries, that is, on artworks and luxury items that allowed ornamental forms and formal ideas to circulate and created a taste for a hybrid aesthetic, as well as on historiography.

The countries under consideration here are: Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Ukraine.

The seminar involves three stages:

1) a two-week “mobile” workshop traveling along the Dalmatian coast and using this region as case study of the issues, historiography and methodologies that this project seeks to foreground (May/June 2014);

2) a two and a half week stay at Harvard University (2 day workshop focusing on interim presentation of participants’ findings and 2 week library access in January/February 2015);

3) a final conference (presentation of developed individual projects) and short trip to key sites on the Black Sea. On-going
participation in the seminar will be based on the quality of scholarly contribution and on the level of engagement with the group.

Applicants should be post-doctoral scholars working in the Eastern European countries on which the project focuses (maximum 10 years from a doctoral degree; doctoral degree must be in hand at time of application). Travel expenses are covered. The seminar language is English: participants will need to demonstrate a strong command of the language to enable wide-ranging discussion with the other members of the seminar. Facility with languages of the region is an asset.

Applications must include: CV, personal statement, description of proposed project (500 words + one page bibliography), one published writing sample and three letters of reference are due no later than January 10, 2014.
Finalists will be interviewed; participants will be notified by early February.

Please send applications to the attention of Elizabeth Kassler-Taub, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University, ekassler@fas.harvard.edu.

This project is supported by a Connecting Art Histories grant from the Getty Foundation.

“La peinture sous verre chinoise. Une rencontre entre la Chine et l’Occident”

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Conférence de Thierry Audric, au musée de la Compagnie des Indes, musée d’art et d’histoire de la Ville de Lorient:

“La peinture sous verre chinoise. Une rencontre entre la Chine et l’Occident”, le mardi 12 novembre 2013, 18h30 (Espace Courbet)

 

Conseiller culturel et scientifique auprès des Ambassades de France notamment en Asie (Corée, Indonésie, Chine, Inde), Thierry Audric découvre la peinture sous verre et devient collectionneur. Il entame des recherches sur la peinture sous verre chinoise et devient chercheur associé au Vitrocentre de Romont (Suisse), Centre suisse de recherche sur le vitrail et les arts du verre, affilié à l’Université de Fribourg (Suisse).

La peinture sous verre : un art de rencontre entre l’Orient et l’Occident

La peinture sous verre chinoise naît au 18e siècle à Canton, le grand port par où transite l’ensemble du commerce de la Chine avec l’Occident. Les résidents à Canton des Compagnies des Indes orientales jouent un rôle majeur dans le développement de cet art, se faisant tirer le portrait sous verre, apportant miroirs et verres plats en Chine et les renvoyant peints par les artistes chinois, les faisant ainsi apprécier en Occident.

Un art à la mode dès le 18e siècle

Aristocratie et grande bourgeoisie européennes, chinoises, mais également indiennes, commandent en Chine portraits, scènes champêtres et marines en peinture sous verre jusqu’au milieu du 19e siècle. Cette peinture dont la mode s’est déplacée de l’Europe vers les États-Unis au début du 19e siècle, devient après les guerres de l’opium (1840-1860) un art populaire chinois, actif jusqu’à nos jours.

Retrouvez toute l’actualité du musée sur le site : http://musee.lorient.fr

« Constructions of the Exotic in Europe and North America, 18th–21st Centuries »

Call for Papers

Deadline: December 30, 2013

 

Material Culture Review solicits articles for a special issue on the theme of constructing the exotic. We are looking for articles that examine the question of how a person, an object or a work of art comes to be seen as exotic. How is “foreignness” constructed? How is one culture appropriated and domesticated by another?

The goal here is not to show the constructed nature of the concept of the exotic. Rather, papers should emphasize the processes by which something is made exotic, including the stories that surround an object, the ways in which an object is exhibited, and how the representation of an object affects whether or not it is perceived as foreign. We invite papers that examine exoticization and domestication in relation to territory and place, agency and identity – papers that examine not only what is exoticized but also who does the exoticizing and how they do it. We are particularly interested in analyses of the exotic in Europe and North America that are grounded in social and political contexts.

Proposed Research Topics:

1. Representation

The first topic has to do with representations that blur the border between documentation and fiction, realism and exoticism. How do certain items construct certain identities? For example, how do Indian clothing, Chinese dishes and tobacco accessories contribute to the identity of those who wear or use them? How are these objects used in the art world, in the theatre, or in people’s homes? How do 18th-century engravings used to illustrate stories of voyages, as well as more “scientific” representations (photographs, museums, etc.) produced at the beginning of the 19th century, construct the exotic? Papers on this topic will look at what actually makes something appear exotic, what increases or decreases the “foreign” quality in the eyes of the maker and consumer.

2. Display

The second topic pays attention to the material culture, words and gestures surrounding objects – to displays that make them look exotic or – on the contrary – domestic. Here, it is important to examine how the objects are displayed in their place of purchase, in people’s homes and in museums. How are they exhibited? What physical context (furniture, frames, light) is used to present them? What words are used to describe them? Do these things qualify the objects as exotic or, rather, do they underemphasize their “foreign” quality?

3. Materiality

Once the things are acquired, how are they repaired, reformed or recomposed? What kind of material transformations do these imported, re-territorialized objects undergo? It may be through a process of hybridization with other artifacts, or through a process of integration: a fragment inserted into a piece of furniture can alter the entire object. Exoticism is reinforced, for example, in the bronze or silver rings on an Asian vase. We encourage papers that study the processes of fragmentation or expansion, and the use of specific materials (precious and tropical wood, stone, metal, etc.) in the creation of “exotic” objects.

Articles should be 20-30 double-spaced pages, including endnotes.

In addition, we encourage the submission of research reports (10-20 pages, including endnotes), exhibition reviews (10-15 pages, including endnotes), research notes (5-10 pages), and book reviews (notes and comments less than 5 pages) on this theme.

Please submit manuscripts by December 15, 2013 to Noémie Etienne at ne477@nyu.edu.