May 30, 2018: Nederlans Koninklijk Instituut Rome, Auditorium, Via Omero 12, Rome
May 31 - June 1, 2018: Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, Aula Magna, Spanish Iron Horse 3, Rome

The 1st Annual International Conference of Studies in art history and design is dedicated to the "Libri e Album di Disegni 1550-1800". The terminological distinction between typological and books of drawings and sketchbooks was introduced by contemporary art history on the basis of documentary and literary evidence, five and seventeenth century. According to sources, artists and connoisseurs they used the term "book of drawings" to indicate that part of the graphic work of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects (and / or their heirs and workshops), bound in volume. Unlike album of drawings, the definition of which remains still open, the book of drawings (drawing-book in English) can be described as "a book of original drawings in a bound volume (book, codex), Consisting of one or more quires (gatherings), which are predominantly filled with drawings, irrespective of the age, intention and profession of a draftsman [...] irrelevant Whether the structure has Been consolidated before or after the drawing process, protected by a leather or binding a simple parchment or paper cover, provided That the drawings were made in quires and not on loose sheets "(Elen, 1995, p. 2).

While the books of drawings intact in their original constitution are quite rare, little known and studied (there is not yet a systematic and rational census), countless are the albums of drawings (monographic or collettanei), formed by connoisseurs, collectors and curators of XVII-XX centuries, in which converged the individual parts or individual sheets from the oldest drawings books. The widespread presence of books of drawings and sketchbooks - joints in more or less fragmentary condition and after many passages owners - in the collections and in public and private libraries around the world, asked to investigate and to analyze fully the historical development of the forms , the functions and content, and to study them under the historical lens of critical fortune and material, the taste and the art market.

Through the original contributions of some of the greatest scholars of the argument, the International Conference aims to highlight the indispensable circularity exists between the study of books of drawings created by artists, and the studio album of drawings made in the size of collecting. This is in order to advance new and unexplored avenues of research, survey and typological classification, and material grammatical, historical and theoretical-critical. To deepen the knowledge of the individual objects (books vs album) and understanding of the theoretical and operational practices (authorial and / or academic and / or atelier) of Italian design and north-European modern era. To expand the genealogy, most often vague and complex, international graphic collections from the historical reconstruction of the dispersion of the rich heritage of bound volumes of drawings, let us - inherited - by the artists of the past.

**For full program, please click on the 'External Link' below.

For Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach, art is a process of gaining deep insight into their subject. Their portraits are celebrated as some of the most unflinching and innovative in contemporary art. Marking the accession of important acquisitions, the Städel’s Department of Prints and Drawings presents key works by both artists together for the first time.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Frank Auerbach (b. 1931) and Lucian Freud (1922–2011) are among the most prominent exponents of post-war English figurative art. From 16 May to 12 August 2018, the Städel Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings will unite major works by the two artists in a single exhibition for the first time. “Frank Auerbach and Lucian Freud: Faces” will present altogether forty drawings and prints, in particular portraits that are among the most uncompromising and most innovative in contemporary art.

The two artists were close friends for nearly four decades, until Lucian Freud’s death. It was not only mutual appreciation for each other’s work that bonded them; they also shared the fate of having been born as sons of Jewish families in Berlin. Already as children, they were compelled to emigrate/flee from Nazi Germany to England. Their works are expressions of very personal vision and experience. And however different their formal approaches, Auerbach and Freud pursued surprisingly similar strategies: for weeks and sometimes years, they observed and portrayed the same people from among their circles of acquaintances. This repetition and limitation served them as means of concentration in the search for insight: into another person, into the self and into the world.

Though photogravure, by its very name, is considered a modern photomechanical process, its origins date back to the early days of illustration printing. Artists of the late 15th century discovered that the lines of a design could be scratched, engraved – and later – etched onto a polished metal plate – typically copper. The recessed lines of the plate were filled in with ink, the surface was wiped clean, and then the plate was brought into contact with dampened paper under high pressure to produce an illustration. Known as intaglio printing, since the ink-bearing part of the plate is engraved below the surface, this technique was used by artists such as Albrecht Dürer to produce highly detailed and exquisitely refined images. The development of the aquatint process in the latter years of the 18th century allowed artists to add delicate tones to their intaglio illustrations. Copper plates were first covered with a fine dusting of powdered acid-resistant resin or asphaltum, heated to form a reticulated, irregular pattern (or grain) of minute, acid-resistant islands on the copper surface, and then etched. Fine detail was added with an etching needle or a graver, and then the entire plate was inked, wiped, and printed.

The final component necessary for the invention of the modern photogravure process was the discovery in the 19th century that images from real life could be exposed and recorded onto a grained copperplate. After etching and printing, the resulting photogravure image is endowed with a continuous-tone effect so convincing that only close comparison can distinguish it from the original photograph. Moreover, the darkest shadows have a depth, saturation, and velvety quality unmatched by any other process. Though the same plate could be used over and over to produce an edition of prints, the photogravure process could never compete with other photomechanical processes such as letterpress and lithography for commercial work. It was simply too time-consuming. Thus, its use was largely confined to specialty journals, fine limited editions, and portfolios of prints.

Eventually, methods were developed to mechanize the photogravure process while still preserving the essence of its tonal superiority. Machine gravure, or rotogravure as it was sometimes called, became an important publication technology in its own right. While this exhibition is devoted primarily to the hand-printed photogravure, a number of examples of rotogravure (and a fuller explantion of its technology) are represented here, as well, including one whole section devoted to some of the most famous photo books of the 20th century. A more detailed technical explanation of photogravure and its technology, as well as the full texts of all the labels can be found in the accompanying exhibition guide booklet. But first, enjoy this exhibition for its the beauty of its images alone and discover why it has been said that a photogravure print is endowed with a luminosity unequalled by any other process.

Le Siècle d’or, un nouvel âge d’or ? Survivances d’un mythe dans les Provinces-Unies du XVIIe siècle / The Dutch Golden Age: a new aurea ætas? The revival of a myth in the seventeenth-century Republic

International Conference
free entrance

DESCRIPTION
The ambiguity of the Dutch notion of the Golden Age (gulden ou gouden eeuw), which first appears during the second part of the sixteenth century, is intriguing. It refers firstly to the golden age, as it was described by Greek and Roman authors, a mythical society that existed under the protection of Saturn, in peace and happiness and in harmony with nature. But the notion is also used by the Dutch themselves to designate the society that they were part of – or wished to be part of - , after the independence of the United Provinces from the Spanish reign. As a model of an ideal society that aimed to revive, reactivate, indeed to reinvent, the ‘aurea aetas’ functions as one of the founding myths of the emerging ‘Golden Age’. The different aspects of this myth will be explored during this international and interdisciplinary conference.

This conference is the first of a series of conferences and seminars organized in the context of the project «Un Siècle d’Or? Repenser la peinture hollandaise du XVIIe siècle», directed by Prof. Jan Blanc and funded by the Swiss Fonds national de la recherche scientifique (2017-2021).

Click on the 'External Link' below for the full conference program.

One presentation as part of the CONF: "DIGITAL HUMANITIES PER LA PRATICA ACCADEMICA E CURATORIALE | FOR ACADEMIC AND CURATORIAL PRACTICE" (Rome, May 23 - 24, 2018)

VI Giornata Internazionale di Studi Dottorali del Rome Art History Network

A cura di Angelica Federici (University of Cambridge/RAHN) e Joseph Williams (Duke University/American Academy in Rome)
Coordinata da Matteo Piccioni (Sapienza - Università di Roma/RAHN)

23 MAGGIO 2018

Biblioteca Angelica
Piazza S. Agostino 8, Roma

14.00 APERTURA DEI LAVORI
Francesca Parrilla (University of Notre Dame/RAHN)
Matteo Piccioni (Sapienza - Università di Roma/RAHN)

Introduzione
Angelica Federici (University of Cambridge/RAHN)
Joseph Williams (Duke University/American Academy in Rome)

14.20 SESSIONE I. L’investigazione storica tramite le Digital Humanities
Chair: Silvia Tita (National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts)

14.35 Jorge Jiménez (Universidad de Salamanca),
La digitalizzazione dei manoscritti medievali. Alcuni rischi e vantaggi

14.55 Alberto Faria (Universidade de Lisboa),
Between light and shade: Present and future of the Collection of Prints - University of Lisbon, Faculty of Fine-Arts

15.15 DISCUSSIONE

15.30 PAUSA CAFFÈ

16.00 SESSIONE II. La digitalizzazione degli archivi e la tutela del patrimonio culturale
Chair Valeria Vitale (University of London)

16.15 Dario Haux (Universität Luzern),
Sul paradigma della preservazione del nostro patrimonio globale con l’informatica digitale

16.35 Ji Young Park (Technische Universität Berlin),
Digital provenance research for Asian art: revealing an object’s past, reconstructing its discourse

16.55 Martina Massarente (Università degli Studi di Genova),
La piattaforma virtuale del DIRAAS (Unige): applicazione informatiche per la storia della critica d’arte e la fotografia

17.15 DISCUSSIONE

17.30 CONFERENZA
Caroline Bruzelius (Duke University)

18.15 RINFRESCO


24 MAGGIO 2018

American Academy in Rome
Via Angelo Masina 5, Roma

14.00 SALUTI
Lindsay Harris (American Academy in Rome)
Ariane Varela Braga (Universität Zürich/RAHN)

14.10 SESSIONE III. L’Interazione tra le Digital Humanities e l’oggetto storico artistico
Chair Bissera Pentcheva (Stanford University/American Academy in Rome)

14.25 Kelly E. McClinton (Indiana University),
The resting satyr: a digital exhibit in augmented

14.45 Leonardo Impett (Digital Humanities Institute, EPFL),
Notation, alienation and operationalisation in digital Art History

15.05 DISCUSSIONE

15.20 PAUSA CAFFÈ

15.50 SESSIONE IV. Le Digital Humanities nel mondo dell’editoria
Chair Allison Levy (Digital Scholarship Editor, Brown University)

16.05 Giuditta Cirnigliaro (Rutgers University),
The digital reconstruction of Leonardo’s library: revealing formal patterns in Early Modern thought

16.25 Olga Hajduk (Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences),
The power of tools. Reflection on digital art history possibilities in relation to research on Early Modern sculpture and creating art objects catalogues

16.45 Stefania de Vincentis (Università di Ferrara),
Gli archivi digitali come strumento per l’audience development. Elementi dal tavolo di lavoro su ICT e Cultural Heritage della Commissione Europea 2017

17.05 DISCUSSIONE

17.20 TAVOLA ROTONDA
Le Digital Humanities e la conservazione del
patrimonio culturale
Giacomo Massari (TorArt, Carrara)
Isabella Baldini, Giulia Marsili, Lucia Orlandi (Università di Bologna)

17.50 CONCLUSIONI
Angelica Federici (University of Cambridge/RAHN)
Joseph Williams (Duke University/American Academy in Rome)

18.00 RINFRESCO

Deeply felt emotions are at the core of the art of Maria Lassnig (1919–2014). Works she labeled «body awareness» art seek to render physical sensations and trace the nuances of her perception of her own body. Humorous and serious, driven by profound yearnings and relentlessly rigorous, the Austrian artist captured her sense of—mental, physical—self on paper, transmuting not what she saw but how she felt her own existence into images. Even as she honed her introspective attention to her body, Lassnig remained in constant touch with the outside world. Her portraits grow out of a searching study of reality, though her sensitive observations of animals and humans reach far beyond mere representation of the visible, engaging with her subjects to bring out their essence and probe their singularity.

Lassnig’s dialogue with the inner and outer worlds, with the complexities of emotion and reality, is especially vivid in her works on paper. A sheltering medium, the drawing becomes a scene of experimentation with spontaneously placed lines and fields of color. It opens up new perspectives and helps the artist chart new themes. Yet despite the intimate quality of graphic art, she tends to lay out her works on paper in monumental and pictorial compositions. Lassnig’s drawings have transcended the idea of the sketch or first draft for an autonomous creative articulation on paper. In the intensity of the draftsmanship, the vibrancy of the individual line as much as the radiance of the watercolor, her graphic art is visibly and palpably of a piece with her painting.

The Terra Foundation is honored to collaborate with the Fondation Custodia and the British Museum on the exhibition "The American Dream: Pop to the Present. Prints from the British Museum", a presentation of modern and contemporary American prints from the British Museum collection at the Fondation Custodia in Paris, taking place from June 2–September 2, 2018 .

To mark the opening of The American Dream, join us for "Art, Life & Politics: American Printmaking from the 1960s to Today," a two-day international conference organized in conjunction with the exhibit. Speakers will look at the ways printmaking has engaged with and often challenged American society and politics from the 1960s to today.

The conference is free and will be held in English.
Please RSVP by June 1 to: information@terraamericanart.eu


PROGRAMME

Monday, June 4, 2018

6:00 pm A Conversation: Jim Dine and Ruth Fine
Independent Curator & Curator Emeritus, Prints and Drawings, National Gallery of Art
(By separate invitation only)


Tuesday, June 5, 2018

10:00 am The Making of The American Dream at the British Museum
Stephen Coppel, Curator, Modern Prints and Drawings, British Museum

I. Working Collectively
Moderator: Katherine Bourguignon, Curator, Terra Foundation for American Art

10:30 am Printmaking as a Medium and a Work Procedure in the 1960s and 1970s: Was the Collaborative Nature of Printmaking More Self-Evident to New Art Practices of That Time?
Laurence Schmidlin, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne

11:15 am Coffee break

11:30 am The Bugs in the Chocolate: American Prints and Printing at the 1970 Venice Biennale
Susan Tallman, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago & Editor-in-Chief, Art in Print

12:15 am License to Feel: Richard Serra’s Prints
Richard Shiff, Professor, The University of Texas at Austin & Director, Center for the Study of Modernism

1:00 pm Break

II. Getting the Message Across
Moderator: Catherine Daunt, Hamish Parker Curator of Modern and Contemporary Graphic Art, British Museum

2:30 pm ‘A beautiful, incomplete idea’ (Around Jasper Johns’ Flags and Beyond)
Hervé Vanel, Assistant Professor, Art History, The American University of Paris

3:15 pm Printmaking in the Middle of Something: Bob Blackburn and African-American Printmaking during the Graphics Boom
Jacqueline Francis, Associate Professor and Chair, Graduate Program in Visual and Critical Studies, California College of the Arts

4:00 pm Coffee break

4:15 pm Matter(s) of Fact
Elisabeth Lebovici, Independent Art Historian & Critic

5:00 pm Discussion


Exhibition:
The American Dream: Pop to the Present. Prints from the British Museum
June 2–September 2, 2018
Fondation Custodia
121 rue de Lille, 75007 Paris

**For more information, please click on the 'External Link' below.

Introducing Manuscripts from Ethiopia and Eritrea Study Day

(From 8.40 am, tea/coffee with be served)

CONTEXT AND HISTORY
Chair: Bryan Ward-Perkins Discussants: Mai Musié (Oxford) and Yoseph Araya (Open University)
09.00 Alessandro Bausi (HLCES, Hamburg), Introduction to the Manuscript Culture of Ethiopia: Early Developments and New Discoveries
09.45 Marie-Laure Derat (CNRS, Paris) Ethiopian Authors and Scribes in the Middle Ages: Monastic and Curial Milieu

10.30–10.50: Coffee Break

ART
Chair: Judith McKenzie Discussants: Yemane Asfedai (London) and Dereje Debella (London)
10.50 Jacopo Gnisci (BAV, Vatican/HLCES, Hamburg) Illustrated Ethiopic Gospels: From Late Antiquity to the Early Solomonic Period (ca. 350-1527)
11.35 Tania Tribe (SOAS, London) Ethiopian Manuscript Painting: 16th to 18th Centuries

12.20–13.30: Lunch

CHRONICLES AND MANUSCRIPT MAKING
Chair: Elizabeth Jeffreys Discussants: Eyob Derillo (British Library) and Gianfrancesco Lusini (University of Naples “L’Orientale”)
13.30 Solomon Gebreyes Beyene (HLCES, Hamburg), Ethiopian Royal Chronicles: Production and Manuscript Tradition
14.15 Sean M. Winslow (Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz), “Bless the Makers of Parchment, Because They Laboured Much”: Craft Practices of the Ethiopian Scribe

15.00: Tea break – Bodleian visit

Convenors: Jacopo Gnisci, Foteini Spingou, Miranda Williams, Judith McKenzie, and Rahel Fronda. Any questions, please contact Jacopo Gnisci, j.gnisci@live.com

Attendance and refreshments, including lunch, are free, but please book a place by clicking the 'External Link' below or by emailing foteini.spingou@classics.ox.ac.uk by August 31, 2018.

Sponsored by the Classics Faculty, the Bodleian Library, the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research, the ERC Advanced Project Monumental Art of the Christian and Early Islamic East directed by Judith McKenzie, Maison Française d’Oxford, Beta Maṣāḥǝft: Manuscripts of Ethiopia and Eritrea, funded by The Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities through the Academy of Hamburg.

This exhibition gathers a selection of French drawings of the 19th century from the collections of the Musée de Grenoble, which has one of the most important drawing collections in France.

The acclaimed American artist Frank Stella (born 1936) is renowned for his career-long innovations in abstraction in a variety of media. In addition to his early minimalist work, from the late 1950s and 1960s, and his later efforts to disrupt the accepted norms of painting, Stella made groundbreaking achievements in the print medium, combining printmaking processes, mining new sources for imagery, and expanding the technical capacity of the press.

Frank Stella Unbound: Literature and Printmaking focuses on a revolutionary period in the artist’s printmaking career, between 1984 and 1999, when Stella executed four ambitious print series, each of which was named after a distinct literary work: the Passover song Had Gadya, a compilation of Italian folktales, the epic American novel Moby-Dick, and the illustrated The Dictionary of Imaginary Places. In the four series titled after these sources, Stella created prints of unprecedented scale and complexity, transforming his own visual language—as well as his working process in all media—and reaching a technical and expressive milestone in printmaking.

Featuring forty-one prints from these four major series alongside their literary catalysts, Frank Stella Unbound: Literature and Printmaking will be the first exhibition to focus exclusively on the vital role that world literature played in his powerful exploration of the print medium.