Between the Body and the Body Politic: Reframing Francisco de Zurbarán’s Hercules cycle (original) (raw)
Related papers
Canons and Repertoires: Constructing the Visual Arts in the Hispanic World (with Stefano Cracolici)
Zurbarán Centre for Spanish and Latin American Art, Durham University, 2019
The visual arts in Spain have long been haunted by the spectres of six giants: El Greco, Ribera, Velázquez, Murillo, Goya and Picasso. Still today, these canonical figures tower over all others and continue to shape the story of Spanish art, which has been traditionally told in monographic form. Although the strength of the Spanish canon has informed different disciplines (literature, aesthetics, performing arts), given the recent ‘material turn’, the prosopographical dimension of the visual arts in Spain poses a disciplinary challenge. Similarly, following the ‘global turn’, the visual arts of Iberia pose a geographical challenge, intersecting with the Mediterranean, Arabic, Latin American, British and continental European worlds. The notions of ‘Spain’ and ‘Spanish art’, therefore, are necessarily nebulous and problematic, raising a host of questions: To what extent does Spanish art exist before the establishment of Spain as a nation state? To what extent is the art of the Habsburg and Bourbon empires a Spanish art outside Spain? What is the role of Spain in the wider canon of European art? Who has exploited the visual arts of the Hispanic world, geographically, politically and intellectually? These questions ultimately point to a tension between canons and repertoires; between centres and peripheries; and between consolidating the ‘core’ and expanding the ‘remit’ of the so-called Spanish school. This conference will explode the disciplinary, material and geographical limits of Spanish art, inaugurating the Zurbarán Centre as a critical and innovative research institution for the study of Spanish and Latin American art in the twenty-first century. Papers may challenge the canonical construction of Spanish art, which can be traced back to writings from Palomino’s Lives of the Eminent Spanish Painters and Sculptors (1724) to Stirling Maxwell’s Annals of the Artists of Spain (1848), to more recent publications by scholars in the field. Papers may also probe the chronological, geographical and material boundaries of the ‘El Greco to Goya’ survey, interrogating the ways in which academics, curators, scholars and teachers narrate this material through various platforms, including publications, museum displays, exhibitions, lectures, gallery talks and academic courses. Speakers will address the various ‘terrains’ of Spanish art, from geographical constructions of Iberia as Europe’s frontier or edge, to exchange with all that lies beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
2022
TRANSGRESSION AND LIMINALITY IN IBERIAN AND LATIN AMERICAN ART: EMERGING RESEARCHERS SYMPOSIUM: On 7 and 8 July Durham University's Zurbarán Centre will host its second student-led symposium showcasing innovative doctoral research in Iberian and Latin American art and visual culture. The theme of this year's symposium is transgression and liminality, with presentations exploring a wide variety of periods and geographies. The 19 papers, drawn from 14 academic institutions, range from the bounding of traditional artistic movements to the confronting of the borders of mind and body, of religion, and of societal norms. The presentations will address important questions relating to art and politics, the circulation of art and artefacts, visual traditions across different media and periods, identity issues, cultural heritage, and modernity. The symposium also features an invited keynote address by Dr Laura Fernández-González from the University of Lincoln.
Perils of Pygmalion: Spanish processional sculpture as art history's "abject"
Why have some of the most virtuoso works of Spanish figure sculpture remained unassimilable into the art historical canon, even today, when seemingly no subject is too debased to hold merit? This paper explores the “perilous” nature of the processional religious sculpture of southern Spain, with its vividly rendered wounds and actual clothing and hair, and suggests that the clues to its exclusion may lie in its evocation of primary psychic processes of individuation -- not least through its use of dolls. Applying Julie Kristeva’s notion of “the abject,” Georges Bataille’s theoretization of the prohibition on violence at the heart of the taboo, and Freud’s formulation of “the uncanny,” I propose that Andalusian processional sculpture’s evocation of the erotic and morbid -- primary masochism and sadism -- represent precisely what art history had to reject as “abject” in its own coming into being as an Enlightenment Age discipline.
Introduction for Special Issue "Rethinking Contemporary Latin American Art"
Arts, 2024
This brief essay introduces the open access issue of the journal Arts dedicated to "Rethinking Contemporary Latin American Art," co-edited by Lesley A. Wolff and Gabriela Germana Roquez. Access the special issue in its entirety here: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/arts/special\_issues/Rethinking\_Contemporary\_Latin\_American\_Art
19&20 - v. X, n. 1, jan.-jun. 2015: Dossier "Unfolding Art History in Latin America," part I
19&20, 2015
Table of contents: "Introduction" by Maria Berbara, Roberto Conduru and Vera Beatriz Siqueira | 1. "The pre-Hispanic tradition in Ricardo Rojas’ Americanist proposal: an analysis of El Silabario de la Decoración americana (The Syllabary of American Decoration)" by María Alba Bovisio | 2. "Katú Kama-rãh: friendship, image and text according to Algot Lange" by Raphael Fonseca | 3. "The construction of a discourse based on the drawings in the archaeological albums of Manuel Martínez Gracida (Oaxaca, 1910) and Liborio Zerda (Bogota, ca. 1895)" by Carolina Vanegas Carrasco and Hiram Villalobos Audiffred | 4. "The poetic ethnography of Correia Dias: a tour of indigenous traditions from Dias’ mythical pool" by Amanda Reis Tavares Pereira | 5. "The modernist experience in travels: some possibilities" by Renata Oliveira Caetano | 6. "Under the Designs of Gods: Il Guarany and Atzimba" by Jaime Aldaraca Ferrao | 7. "Sculpture and indianism(s) in 19th century Brazil" by Alberto Martín Chillón | 8. "New World Portraits" by Jacqueline Medeiros | 9. "Figari, Goeldi, Africanity - contexts" by Roberto Conduru | 10. "The others. Oriental, Afro-American and Indigenous presence in the representation of women in the Argentine illustrated periodical press of the early 20th century" by Julia Ariza | 11. "Lola Mora’s Fuente de las Nereidas (Fountain of the Nereids): a new look at an old controversy" by Georgina G. Gluzman | 12. "Modern experimentation with images in gaucho literary publications: Luis Perez’ and Hilario Ascasubi’s newspapers" por Juan Albin
In conjunction with LACMA’s exhibition "Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800," UCLA’s Center for 17th– & 18th–Century Studies, the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, and LACMA are co-organizing a major international scholars’ day. The event will enable scholars to present new research in this rapidly growing and vibrant field. Echoing the overall premise of the exhibition and accompanying catalogue, presenters will take a close or “slow look” at individual art works and the stories they tell from an artistic, historic, and material perspective. The presentations will also address various frameworks for viewing this material as part of an evolving artistic canon, as well as the valorization and commercial effects of this increasingly important field of research and collecting. Con motivo de la exposición del LACMA "Archivo del mundo: arte e imaginación en Hispanoamérica, 1500–1800", el Center for 17th– & 18th– Century Studies y la William Andrews Clark Memorial Library de UCLA, junto con el LACMA, coorganizan un importante coloquio académico internacional. El evento brindará la oportunidad a varios especialistas de presentar sus nuevas investigaciones sobre esta área de estudio cada vez más relevante. Haciéndose eco del concepto general de la exposición y el catálogo, los participantes ofrecerán una “mirada lenta” o detenida de objetos individuales y analizarán las historias que emanan desde un punto de vista artístico, histórico y material. Las presentaciones también abordarán varios marcos conceptuales para analizar este material como parte de un canon artístico en vías de transformación, así como la valoración y efectos comerciales que está teniendo este campo de investigación y coleccionismo cada vez más destacado.