Present
Announcement conference
“Woven paintings”?
Designing, Producing, and Displaying Flemish and French Tapestry, 1650–1770
University of California, Berkeley | 21–23 November 2013
Prof. Dr. Koenraad Brosens | University of Leuven (Rubens Chair UCal Berkeley, fall 2013)
Prof. Dr. Katlijne Van der Stighelen | University of Leuven
Prof. Dr. Elizabeth Honig | UCal Berkeley
With the generous support of
De Wit-Royal Manufacturers of Tapestry (Mechelen, Belgium)
Co-sponsors
Flanders House New York
University of Leuven, History of Art Department
Flemish Research Foundation (FWO-Vlaanderen), Brussels
UC Berkeley (Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities)
Université Michel de Montaigne Bordeaux 3, EA 538
Flemish and European tapestry played a pivotal role in the art, liturgy, and propaganda of the courts and churches of late medieval, renaissance and baroque Europe. Yet by the late nineteenth century, when art history was developing as a discipline, tapestry was ranked among the lesser, so-called decorative arts. As a result the medium was virtually written out of the history of art, at best relegated to a very marginal status. Tapestry scholarship proper, spearheaded by Flemish art historian Guy Delmarcel (University of Leuven), only began to mature in the 1970s and 1980s, reaching a zenith in the highly acclaimed Tapestry in the Renaissance and Tapestry in the Baroque exhibitions organized by Thomas P. Campbell at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 2002 and 2007.
The Berkeley conference will be the very first on Flemish and French tapestry organized at a US university; indeed, it will be the very first conference anywhere on 18th-century tapestry. It will bring together the great founding figures in the field and fresh new voices, scholars from museums and from the academy. The aim is to blur traditional borders between the fine and the decorative arts (1) by analysing the painterly qualities of 18th-century tapestry, and (2) by exploring the uses and importance of 18th-century tapestries in contemporary collections and interiors vis-à-vis painting.
The proceedings will be published in the Studies in Western Tapestry series (Brepols Publishers, Turnhout, Belgium).
Participants
K. Alen (University of Leuven)
P.-F. Bertrand (Université de Bordaux)
C. Bremer-David (Getty, Los Angeles)
K. Brosens (University of Leuven)
M. Chapman (San Francisco Museums of Art)
E. Cleland (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
G. Delmarcel (University of Leuven)
J. Emerson (Seattle Art Museum)
E. Honig (University of California-Berkeley)
F. Knothe (University of Hong Kong)
Y. Maes (De Wit-Royal Manufacturers of Tapestry)
E. Pradier (Université de Bordeaux)
K. Schmitz-von Ledebur (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)
A. Slegten (University of Leuven)
K. Van der Stighelen (University of Leuven)
J. Vittet (Mobilier national, Paris)
H. Vlieghe (University of Leuven)
H. Wyld (National Trust, London)
Soon expected: Embracing Brussels
L. Kelchtermans, K. Van der Stighelen en K. Brosens (eds.)
It would appear that ‘Flemish Baroque’ has come to be regarded as synonymous with ‘Antwerp Baroque’. The aim of this symposium on art and art production in Brussels in the period 1600−1800 is to reconsider the art-historical position of Brussels as a major hub of activity and place of residence for courtiers and artists alike. Attention will focus on matters as diverse as literature, music, housing, and the guild system, besides which aspects of the art trade, style differentiation and case studies relating to individual artists will be discussed. In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the Habsburg Court was viewed as the supreme creative centre, where systems of symbols were forged and propagated that were designed to display both the artist’s craftsmanship and the ruler’s piety.
Order proceedings published in the series Museums at the Crossroads (Brepols Publishers).
Proceedings of C'était au temps où Bruxelles bruxellait: art & art production in Brussels, 1600-1800
