Goldsmiths, University of London
1–3 September 2021, Online Conference
Keynote Speakers: Stefano Evangelista, Patricia Pulham, and Sam Rose
This three-day online conference, co-organized by Thomas Hughes and Will Parker, in conjunction with the Decadence Research Centre at Goldsmiths and the British Association of Decadence Studies (BADS), will explore how art writing from the Romantic period to the present registers the body, its sensations, and sensory responses. It will consider the ways in which artists, writers, and critics register traces of the visual encounter as an embodied aesthetic experience.
The conference will be held virtually via Zoom over three afternoons (1–3 September 2021).
Programme
Day 1 (Wednesday 1 September) Chair: Thomas Hughes
9.oo am Pre-recorded opening remarks from Thomas Hughes released.
Pre-recorded keynote released: Sam Rose (University of St Andrew’s), ‘When Art Writers Become Their Artists’
5–7.30 pm Live panel 1: Stillness and Movement
Harry Daniels (Balliol College, University of Oxford), ‘The Rest of John Ruskin: Bodies in Repose’
Damian Walsh (University College London), ‘Sensational Voyages: Nonhuman Aesthetics in Vernon Lee’s Travel Collections’
Q&A: 20 minutes
20-minute break
Quickfire 1: Eliza Goodpasture (University of York), ‘The Taste of a Painting: Sensory Embodiment in Vernon Lee’s Gallery Diaries’
Quickfire 2: Anna Kate Blair (University of Melbourne), ‘Deinstallation Grief: Embodied Art Writing and Mimosa Echard’s “Closed Eyelids”’
Quickfire 3: Pauline Chevalier (Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris), ‘The Mastery of Movement: Reading Bernard Berenson with Rudolf Laban’
Q&A: 20 minutes
Day 2 (Thursday 2 September) Chair: HARRY DANIELS
9.00 am Pre-recorded keynote released: Patricia Pulham (University of Surrey), ‘Writing the Body in Marble: Arthur O’Shaughnessy’s Venuses and the Ambiguities of Desire’
5–7.30 pm Live panel 2: Embodied Experience
Frankie Dytor (University of Cambridge), ‘Renaissance Bodies in Maud Cruttwell’s Fire and Frost (1913)’
Charlotte Purkis (University of Winchester), ‘Women modernists and visceral experiences of performance in public’
Q&A: 20 minutes
20-minute break
Quickfire 4: Cristina Moraru (‘George Enescu’ National University of the Arts (UNAGE), Romania), ‘Aesthetic Pleasure, Desire, Writing and Transsexual Embodiment’
Quickfire 5: Emma Merkling (The Courtauld Institute of Art), ‘Ghost-Written: Art, Spirit Transcripts, and the Limits of Embodiment c. 1900’
Quickfire 6: Małgorzata Dawidek (Slade/UCL), ‘Illness Narratives: Art Writing and Art Practice as Forms of Expressing the Ill Human Body’
Q&A: 20 minutes
7.40 pm Virtual Reception
Day 3 (Friday 3 September) Chair: Thomas Hughes
9.00 am Pre-recorded keynote released: Stefano Evangelista (Trinity College, University of Oxford), ‘Literally Clothed with Poetry: Japonisme as Art Writing’
5–6.30 pm Live keynote plenary and roundtable
Keynote plenary
Stefano Evangelista and Sam Rose
Roundtable
Stefano Evangelista, Thomas Hughes, Will Parker, Sam Rose, and Claudia Tobin
Brief closing remarks
Thomas Hughes and Will Parker
Registration
Registration has now closed.
Contact Us
Please email Will (willfrancisparker@hotmail.com) and Thomas (Thomas.Hughes@courtauld.ac.uk) with any queries about ‘Art Writing and the Body’.
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Conference Committee
Alice Condé (Goldsmiths)
Jane Desmarais (Goldsmiths)
Jessica Gossling (Goldsmiths)
Thomas Hughes (Courtauld)
Will Parker (Independent Scholar)