Mark Ledbury | The University of Sydney (original) (raw)
Publications and Papers by Mark Ledbury
Journal of Art Historiography, 2020
A look at the complex history of the "Conversations" between James Northcote and William Hazlitt ... more A look at the complex history of the "Conversations" between James Northcote and William Hazlitt as they evolved - and at the radical histories buried beneath much obfuscation and controversy in the course of their publication. Published in the Journal as part of a special section on 'Modern Lives – Modern Legends: artist anecdotes since the eighteenth century' edited by the wonderful Hans Hones and Anna Frasca-Rath
see https://arthistoriography.wordpress.com/
A short piece for which I went back to archival work done more than twenty years ago but never pu... more A short piece for which I went back to archival work done more than twenty years ago but never published...(!) and back to Sedaine, whom I'm happily revisiting for more than one project at the moment.
This fairly recent contribution to a collective volume on Art Theory in Ancien Régime France reex... more This fairly recent contribution to a collective volume on Art Theory in Ancien Régime France reexamines the relationship between our understanding of Academic theory and the birth of art criticism.
This is the word text of the introduction to my book, James Northcote, History Painting and the F... more This is the word text of the introduction to my book, James Northcote, History Painting and the Fables, Published by Yale in association with the Yale Center for British Art, in 2014.
http://yalebooks.co.uk/display.asp?K=9780300208139
based on my thesis: about relations between Sedaine and Jacques-Louis David.
A discussion of the theatrical webs of the Saint-Aubin family - part of the effort to give new sc... more A discussion of the theatrical webs of the Saint-Aubin family - part of the effort to give new scholarly context to the "livre de culs' in waddesdon.
Websites by Mark Ledbury
I am the Director of the Power Institute, and we have designed a new website to publicize our act... more I am the Director of the Power Institute, and we have designed a new website to publicize our activities and sell publications relating to the visual arts - both new and back-catalogue. The site reflects the many activities and events that the Power Institute presents
Ambitious Alignments brings together early career scholars from across Australia and Southeast As... more Ambitious Alignments brings together early career scholars from across Australia and Southeast Asia to chart the complex trajectories of individual artists, groups, ideas and artworks that shaped the art worlds of late twentieth-century Southeast Asia. The project focuses on the years between 1945 and 1990 – a period characterised by decolonisation, independence, struggles for democracy and the geo-political conflicts and tensions of the so-called Cold War era.
Ambitious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art is funded through the Getty Foundation’s Connecting Art Histories initiative, and developed by The Power Institute Foundation for Art & Visual Culture at the University of Sydney in cooperation with regional partners, National Gallery Singapore and The Institute of Technology, Bandung.
Papers by Mark Ledbury
Intellect Books, Jul 15, 2019
Tout tableau est un fragment. Mais qui, du cadre ou du mur, construit le lieu de la peinture ? Qu... more Tout tableau est un fragment. Mais qui, du cadre ou du mur, construit le lieu de la peinture ? Que s’est-il passe lorsque cette enigme occidentale fut confrontee a l’epoque moderne a une autre representation du monde ? Si l’Europe des Lumieres est souvent caracterisee par les chinoiseries et l’ornement rocaille, c’est un nouveau regard sur l’Extreme-Orient qui est analyse ici, celui qui lie l’histoire du tableau a une idee de l’espace transmise par les decors des objets venus d’Asie. Dans quelle mesure la presence reelle ou fantasmee de l’Orient a-t-elle modifie le rapport de la peinture au support qui la donne a voir ? Tel est l’objet de ce livre qui presente le changement de paradigme dans la construction du gout suscite par les notions orientales de paysage, de lointain et de vide, pour que le sort de la peinture se transforme. D’ou vient la place particuliere qu’elle acquiert au xviiie siecle ? De quelle facon fut bouleversee son exposition pour qu’elle devienne le tableau que nous connaissons aujourd’hui ?
xixe Des mythes lacustres au fantasme des montagnes, entretiens, états de la recherche, informati... more xixe Des mythes lacustres au fantasme des montagnes, entretiens, états de la recherche, informations, ou pourquoi l’histoire de l’art suisse est devenue intéressante… xxe Débat sur le « gothique de la Renaissance », perspective sur la sculpture française, actualité des expositions de Primatice à Boucher et des recherches sur la peinture en Hollande, sur les plans de Paris… Tabula gratulatoria Alain Aubry (Club français du Livre), Marc Blondeau et Étienne Bréton (Blondeau et associés), Maurizio Canesso (Galerie Canesso), Michel Descours (Librairie Michel Descours), Bertrand Gauthier et Bertrand Talabardon, Nicolas Joly (Sotheby’s), Fabrizio Lemme, Hubert Prouté (Galerie Paul Prouté), Giovanni Sarti (Galerie G. Sarti), Éric Turquin (Éric Turquin S.A.) et Marco Voen
Fictions of Art History, 2017
The Burlington Magazine, 2000
AMONG the manuscripts in the Bibliotheque Municipale, Besanc,on, is a collection assembled by Fra... more AMONG the manuscripts in the Bibliotheque Municipale, Besanc,on, is a collection assembled by Franc, ois-XavierJoseph Droz, a promi-nent man of letters native to that city who donated his collection of autograph manuscripts to the library. t It includes letters by Haydn, ...
Journal of Art Historiography, 2020
James Northcote was as reputed for his liberality of anecdote as for his parsimony in hospitality... more James Northcote was as reputed for his liberality of anecdote as for his parsimony in hospitality. His conversations and recollections, bristling with detail, of his time in Reynolds' orbit and after, have entertained and misled in equal measure, but in his encounters late in his life with William Hazlitt, now remembered through their restaging in Hazlitt's Conversations of James Northcote RA in 1830, he found both a match and an irritant, a sensitive ear and an aggressive sparring partner. This paper explores the encounters between these two very different men, the anecdotes and lore they produced and the rifts that eventually came to divide the aging artist and the brilliant but troubled critic. My contention will be that while Northcote owed Hazlitt much, and enjoyed his company greatly, he found himself the victim of his own penchant for anecdote and fable, while Hazlitt brilliantly understood the political and cultural undercurrents that swirled beneath Northcote's ...
Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century Norwich, 2005
This essay considers how, in art history, interdisciplinarity is both an accepted fact of life in... more This essay considers how, in art history, interdisciplinarity is both an accepted fact of life in both teaching and research, and yet still remains a politically sensitive concept. It argues that the fault-line in the discipline lies not so much in the acceptance or non-acceptance of an interdisciplinary model, but in the kind of model that is acceptable. Political tensions still haunt art history, and the essay explores some of the reasons why this might be so. In discussion of particular examples of old and new kinds of study of the eighteenth-century, the essay points to fertile approaches that have opened up our understandings of eighteenth-century art, and gives examples of the danger of slipping into a unidisciplinary mode. It concludes with a discussion of the work that still remains to be done to exploit the potential of interdisciplinary approaches to eighteenth-century art and visual culture, and argues that our persistent belief in, and reward of, an individualised model ...
Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century Norwich, 2005
This essay explores the ever more important place that art criticism as a genre has assumed in ou... more This essay explores the ever more important place that art criticism as a genre has assumed in our exploration of eighteenth-century culture and politics. After discussing the reasons why the genre has attracted so much critical attention, the essay explores the tensions that still beset our understanding of the genre. The final section of the essay examines in detail sections of one example of anonymous journal-based Salon criticism to tease out the tensions and contradictions inherent in the genre itself and to demonstrate that our own hesitations about how to understand art criticism might in fact arise from those very tensions.
Michel-Jean Sedaine (1719-1797), 2019
Journal of Art Historiography, 2020
A look at the complex history of the "Conversations" between James Northcote and William Hazlitt ... more A look at the complex history of the "Conversations" between James Northcote and William Hazlitt as they evolved - and at the radical histories buried beneath much obfuscation and controversy in the course of their publication. Published in the Journal as part of a special section on 'Modern Lives – Modern Legends: artist anecdotes since the eighteenth century' edited by the wonderful Hans Hones and Anna Frasca-Rath
see https://arthistoriography.wordpress.com/
A short piece for which I went back to archival work done more than twenty years ago but never pu... more A short piece for which I went back to archival work done more than twenty years ago but never published...(!) and back to Sedaine, whom I'm happily revisiting for more than one project at the moment.
This fairly recent contribution to a collective volume on Art Theory in Ancien Régime France reex... more This fairly recent contribution to a collective volume on Art Theory in Ancien Régime France reexamines the relationship between our understanding of Academic theory and the birth of art criticism.
This is the word text of the introduction to my book, James Northcote, History Painting and the F... more This is the word text of the introduction to my book, James Northcote, History Painting and the Fables, Published by Yale in association with the Yale Center for British Art, in 2014.
http://yalebooks.co.uk/display.asp?K=9780300208139
based on my thesis: about relations between Sedaine and Jacques-Louis David.
A discussion of the theatrical webs of the Saint-Aubin family - part of the effort to give new sc... more A discussion of the theatrical webs of the Saint-Aubin family - part of the effort to give new scholarly context to the "livre de culs' in waddesdon.
I am the Director of the Power Institute, and we have designed a new website to publicize our act... more I am the Director of the Power Institute, and we have designed a new website to publicize our activities and sell publications relating to the visual arts - both new and back-catalogue. The site reflects the many activities and events that the Power Institute presents
Ambitious Alignments brings together early career scholars from across Australia and Southeast As... more Ambitious Alignments brings together early career scholars from across Australia and Southeast Asia to chart the complex trajectories of individual artists, groups, ideas and artworks that shaped the art worlds of late twentieth-century Southeast Asia. The project focuses on the years between 1945 and 1990 – a period characterised by decolonisation, independence, struggles for democracy and the geo-political conflicts and tensions of the so-called Cold War era.
Ambitious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art is funded through the Getty Foundation’s Connecting Art Histories initiative, and developed by The Power Institute Foundation for Art & Visual Culture at the University of Sydney in cooperation with regional partners, National Gallery Singapore and The Institute of Technology, Bandung.
Intellect Books, Jul 15, 2019
Tout tableau est un fragment. Mais qui, du cadre ou du mur, construit le lieu de la peinture ? Qu... more Tout tableau est un fragment. Mais qui, du cadre ou du mur, construit le lieu de la peinture ? Que s’est-il passe lorsque cette enigme occidentale fut confrontee a l’epoque moderne a une autre representation du monde ? Si l’Europe des Lumieres est souvent caracterisee par les chinoiseries et l’ornement rocaille, c’est un nouveau regard sur l’Extreme-Orient qui est analyse ici, celui qui lie l’histoire du tableau a une idee de l’espace transmise par les decors des objets venus d’Asie. Dans quelle mesure la presence reelle ou fantasmee de l’Orient a-t-elle modifie le rapport de la peinture au support qui la donne a voir ? Tel est l’objet de ce livre qui presente le changement de paradigme dans la construction du gout suscite par les notions orientales de paysage, de lointain et de vide, pour que le sort de la peinture se transforme. D’ou vient la place particuliere qu’elle acquiert au xviiie siecle ? De quelle facon fut bouleversee son exposition pour qu’elle devienne le tableau que nous connaissons aujourd’hui ?
xixe Des mythes lacustres au fantasme des montagnes, entretiens, états de la recherche, informati... more xixe Des mythes lacustres au fantasme des montagnes, entretiens, états de la recherche, informations, ou pourquoi l’histoire de l’art suisse est devenue intéressante… xxe Débat sur le « gothique de la Renaissance », perspective sur la sculpture française, actualité des expositions de Primatice à Boucher et des recherches sur la peinture en Hollande, sur les plans de Paris… Tabula gratulatoria Alain Aubry (Club français du Livre), Marc Blondeau et Étienne Bréton (Blondeau et associés), Maurizio Canesso (Galerie Canesso), Michel Descours (Librairie Michel Descours), Bertrand Gauthier et Bertrand Talabardon, Nicolas Joly (Sotheby’s), Fabrizio Lemme, Hubert Prouté (Galerie Paul Prouté), Giovanni Sarti (Galerie G. Sarti), Éric Turquin (Éric Turquin S.A.) et Marco Voen
Fictions of Art History, 2017
The Burlington Magazine, 2000
AMONG the manuscripts in the Bibliotheque Municipale, Besanc,on, is a collection assembled by Fra... more AMONG the manuscripts in the Bibliotheque Municipale, Besanc,on, is a collection assembled by Franc, ois-XavierJoseph Droz, a promi-nent man of letters native to that city who donated his collection of autograph manuscripts to the library. t It includes letters by Haydn, ...
Journal of Art Historiography, 2020
James Northcote was as reputed for his liberality of anecdote as for his parsimony in hospitality... more James Northcote was as reputed for his liberality of anecdote as for his parsimony in hospitality. His conversations and recollections, bristling with detail, of his time in Reynolds' orbit and after, have entertained and misled in equal measure, but in his encounters late in his life with William Hazlitt, now remembered through their restaging in Hazlitt's Conversations of James Northcote RA in 1830, he found both a match and an irritant, a sensitive ear and an aggressive sparring partner. This paper explores the encounters between these two very different men, the anecdotes and lore they produced and the rifts that eventually came to divide the aging artist and the brilliant but troubled critic. My contention will be that while Northcote owed Hazlitt much, and enjoyed his company greatly, he found himself the victim of his own penchant for anecdote and fable, while Hazlitt brilliantly understood the political and cultural undercurrents that swirled beneath Northcote's ...
Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century Norwich, 2005
This essay considers how, in art history, interdisciplinarity is both an accepted fact of life in... more This essay considers how, in art history, interdisciplinarity is both an accepted fact of life in both teaching and research, and yet still remains a politically sensitive concept. It argues that the fault-line in the discipline lies not so much in the acceptance or non-acceptance of an interdisciplinary model, but in the kind of model that is acceptable. Political tensions still haunt art history, and the essay explores some of the reasons why this might be so. In discussion of particular examples of old and new kinds of study of the eighteenth-century, the essay points to fertile approaches that have opened up our understandings of eighteenth-century art, and gives examples of the danger of slipping into a unidisciplinary mode. It concludes with a discussion of the work that still remains to be done to exploit the potential of interdisciplinary approaches to eighteenth-century art and visual culture, and argues that our persistent belief in, and reward of, an individualised model ...
Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century Norwich, 2005
This essay explores the ever more important place that art criticism as a genre has assumed in ou... more This essay explores the ever more important place that art criticism as a genre has assumed in our exploration of eighteenth-century culture and politics. After discussing the reasons why the genre has attracted so much critical attention, the essay explores the tensions that still beset our understanding of the genre. The final section of the essay examines in detail sections of one example of anonymous journal-based Salon criticism to tease out the tensions and contradictions inherent in the genre itself and to demonstrate that our own hesitations about how to understand art criticism might in fact arise from those very tensions.
Michel-Jean Sedaine (1719-1797), 2019
Fictions of Art History, the most recent addition to the Clark Studies in the Visual Arts series,... more Fictions of Art History, the most recent addition to the Clark Studies in the Visual Arts series, addresses art history's complex relationships with fiction, poetry, and creative writing. Inspired by a 2010 conference, the volume examines art historians' viewing practices and modes of writing. How, the contributors ask, are we to unravel the supposed facts of history from the fictions constructed in works of art? How do art historians employ or resist devices of fiction, and what are the effects of those choices on the reader? In styles by turns witty, elliptical, and plain-speaking, the essays in Fictions of Art History are fascinating and provocative critical interventions in art history.
With essays by Valerie Bajou, Philippe Bordes, Thomas Crow, Michael Fried, Tom Gretton, Darcy Gri... more With essays by Valerie Bajou, Philippe Bordes, Thomas Crow, Michael Fried, Tom Gretton, Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Stephane Guegan, Daniel Harkett, Godehard Janzing, Dorothy Johnson, Mehdi Korchane, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Issa Lampe, Mark Ledbury, Simon Lee, Heather McPherson, David O'Brien, Satish Padiyar, Todd Porterfield, Susan L. Siegfried, and Helen Weston Jacques-Louis David (1748--1825), the most celebrated painter of his era, was appointed court painter to Napoleon in 1804 and exiled to Brussels in 1816. This important book----based on the proceedings of an international symposium----explores David's grand projects of the Empire period and the often mysterious works produced in his last years as a political exile. David after David features twenty-one essays by leading art historians that discuss these later works----which include innovative portraits as well as paintings and drawings that address the opposing themes of the antique and modern----in the aesthetic, politica...
This research was supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council’... more This research was supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Projects funding scheme (Performing Transdisciplinarity DP170102666).
Exploring genre painting within the broad cultural context of Enlightenment France, this book dea... more Exploring genre painting within the broad cultural context of Enlightenment France, this book deals with aspects of art, gender and politics in the decades preceding the French Revolution, to argue that the paintings bear the intellectual imprint of turbulent times. The book presents over 75 genre paintings and prints that depict the interactions of "ordinary" people - non-historical, non-mythic figures - within the family and in romantic encounters. It shows how genre painters tended to infuse their depictions of intimacy with moral and ideological significance. Their imagery coincided with fundamental debates over gender roles and relationships, the family, child-rearing, and illicit versus conjugal love, topics that were crucial to such writers and social commentators as Rosseau, Diderot and Laclos. The five essays included in this volume discuss such matters as: art criticism and the presence of women in cultural life; the family and the ideology of sentimentalism; the...