The Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies, Trinity College Dublin Presents:
East-West Dialogue In Art History and Visual Culture --------------------------------------------------------
Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. An International Symposium at Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin in association with the Chester Beatty Library, Ireland.
Thursday, 13th November 2014 Principal Funding Body: The Irish Research Council New Foundations Scheme
Detail: A Young Emir Studying, 1878 by Osman Hamdi Bey (1842-1910). Oil on canvas, 45.5 x 90 cm, Louvre Abu Dhabi (Opening 2015). Reproduction courtesy of TCA Abu Dhabi. © Louvre Abu Dhabi. Photo: Agence Photo F.
Keynote: M. Shafik Gabr Chairman and Managing Director of the ARTOC Group for Investment & Development, Mr. Gabr is a renowned leader in international business, one of the world's premier collectors of Orientalist art, and an accomplished philanthropist.
Invited Panellists:
Professor Doris Behrens-Abouseif, S.O.A.S., University of London, England. Dr. Luke Gartlan, University of St. Andrews, Scotland. Professor Zeynep İnankur, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Istanbul, Turkey. Professor Reina Lewis, University of the Arts London, England. Professor Mary Roberts, University of Sydney, Australia. Dr. Kirsten Scheid, American University of Beirut, Lebanon. Professor Barbara Wright, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.
Details on Official Website: www.visualculture.eu Event organised by: Dr. Mary Healy & Dr. Catherine Lawless, Centre for Gender and Women's Studies, TCD. With support from the Irish Research Council, Chester Beatty Library, Trinity Long Room Hub, Department of History of Art and Architecture, TCD and The Shelbourne Dublin, A Renaissance Hotel, Ireland. Contact: mary.healy@tcd.ie
‘A new modernity is emerging, reconfigured to an age of globalisation understood in its economic, political and cultural aspects: an Altermodern culture.’ -- Altermodern Manifesto (Bourriaud 2009). Applying a 21st-century Altermodern approach to art history and visual culture, this one day symposium at Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin in association with the Chester Beatty Library aims to bring together international scholars working in the fields of European, North African and Middle Eastern art history. Considering a wide scope of 19th and early 20th-century artistic travel, the symposium aims to discuss visual cross-cultural dialogue between these geographical regions. Key areas of focus will include: historic artistic travel and cross-cultural representation; art as a mode of dialogue (cultural, gendered, religious, etc.) between the ‘Orient’ and ‘Occident’; Eastern artistic influences on Western art practices and vice versa; location of unique modernisms; women artists and gender theory; colonial histories and the impact of postcolonial thought on art interpretation. By considering European, North African and Middle Eastern artists and art objects together in one symposium, we will attempt to further galvanise scholars, students and members of the public to explore wider interpretations of art history and visual culture which reach beyond a singular perspective to positions of plurality where global voices are considered.
Programme 09:15-09:45
Registration: Neill/Hoey Lecture Theatre, Trinity Long Room Hub.
09:45-10:00 Open and Welcome. Neill/Hoey Lecture Theatre, Trinity Long Room Hub. Professor Jürgen Barkhoff, Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin.
Dr Catherine Lawless, Director, Centre for Gender and Women's Studies, Trinity College Dublin (TCD). Dr Mary Healy, Research Fellow, CGWS, TCD. 10:00-12:30
Panel 1. Art Objects and Artists from Europe: Travel, Representation, Dialogue. Neill/Hoey Lecture Theatre, Trinity Long Room Hub.
Chair: Dr. Peter Cherry, Trinity College Dublin. 10:00
Objects in Dialogue: Transcultural Exchanges of Islamic Art, 1865-1876 Professor Mary Roberts, University of Sydney, Australia.
10:30
Visualising Mecca: Photography's Networks and the Limits of Orientalism Dr. Luke Gartlan, University of St. Andrews, Scotland.
11:00
Visual and Literary Pleasures in East-West dialogue: Reconsidering the Female and Orientalist Gaze Professor Reina Lewis, University of the Arts London, England.
11:30
The Concept of Alterity in Nineteenth-Century French Orientalism, with Particular Reference to the Work of Eugène Fromentin and Gustave Guillaumet in Algeria Professor Barbara Wright, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.
12:00
Discussion.
12:30-14:00:
Break for Lunch. See list of recommended venues for lunch at: www.visualculture.eu
14:00-16:00
Panel 2. Art Objects and Artists from North Africa and the Middle East: Travel, Representation, Dialogue. Neill/Hoey Lecture Theatre, Trinity Long Room Hub. Chair: Ms. Fionnuala Croke, Director of the Chester Beatty Library, Ireland.
14:00
Orientalisms and Revivals Professor Doris Behrens-Abouseif, S.O.A.S., University of London, England.
14:30
Osman Hamdi Bey: An Ottoman Orientalist Professor Zeynep İnankur, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Istanbul, Turkey.
15:00
When Is It Western and When Isn't It: The Role of Lebanese Art In (Western) Art History Dr. Kirsten Scheid, American University of Beirut, Lebanon.
15:30
Discussion.
16:00-17:00: Venue change to the Chester Beatty Library. See map at: www.visualculture.eu 17:00-18:15: Keynote Lecture, Lecture Theatre, Chester Beatty Library. Please show your ticket on arrival. Chair: Professor Anthony McElligott, University of Limerick, Ireland.
East-West: The Art of Dialogue
Mr. M. Shafik Gabr Chairman of the ARTOC Group for Investment & Development, Mr. Gabr is a renowned leader in international business, one of the world's premier collectors of Orientalist art, and an accomplished philanthropist.
18:15-18:30: Closing remarks. Professor Anthony McElligott, University of Limerick, Ireland 2
Keynote Speaker: M. Shafik Gabr
M. Shafik Gabr, Chairman and Managing Director of the ARTOC Group for Investment & Development, is a renowned leader in international business, one of the world's premier collectors of Orientalist art, and an accomplished philanthropist. ARTOC Group for Investment Development celebrated 42 years of successful investment activities in November 2013 and is a multi-disciplined investment holding company with subsidiaries operating in the fields of industry, automotive, airport terminals, consumer products, energy, publishing, real estate and construction. Mr. Gabr is the Chairman and a founding member of Egypt's International Economic Forum, member of the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum and serves on Yale University President's Council on International Activities. Mr. Gabr is also a Global Leadership Council Member at the Brookings Institution, a member of the Jackson Institute Council and also serves on the Advisory Boards of MIT's Center for International Studies, The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Zurich Financial Services, one of the world's leading insurance companies and also Stanhope Capital, LLP. Mr. Gabr was previously the Chairman of COMESA (Common Market for East and South Africa) Business Council and a member of the Executive Board of the International Chamber of Commerce (Paris). Furthermore, Mr. Gabr was a founder of the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt in 1982, serving as its first Egyptian President from 1995 until 1997. Mr. Gabr ranks among Arabian Business and The Middle East magazines 2012 ‘Most Influential Arabs’ and ‘Our Top 50 Arabs’. In 2009 Mr. Gabr was presented with the Foreign Policy Association's (FPA) award for Corporate Responsibility. In 2014 Mr. Gabr was awarded The Meridian Global Citizen Award. Through the Shafik Gabr Social Development Foundation, Mr. Gabr is helping to improve elementary-school education throughout his native Egypt, introducing students to arts and culture and promoting sports and physical fitness for youth. In the area of higher education, Mr Gabr is the biggest Egyptian supporter of the American University in Cairo. The Foundation also developed a free medical-care system by providing ‘Medical Caravans’, for residents of underprivileged areas of Greater Cairo. The Foundation is constructing and launching its first Medical and Social Development Center in Mokattam, Cairo in 2014 offering free medical and health services. In 2012 Mr. Gabr established in the US the Shafik Gabr Foundation which supports educational and medical initiatives plus launched in November 2012 the East-West: The Art of Dialogue initiative (see www.eastwestdialogue.org) promoting exchanges between the US and Egypt with the purpose of cultural dialogue and bridge building. Mr. Gabr holds a BA in Economics and Management from the American University in Cairo and an MA in Economics from the University of London. June 2014 3
Keynote Title & Abstract East-West: The Art of Dialogue M. Shafik Gabr
We live in a world experiencing an increased propensity of challenges, conflict and destabilization with a high cost to human beings and humanity. As the world moves forward in a framework of constant change and at a higher speed there is a widening gulf of understanding between East and West. This widening gulf can have dire consequences and significant costs that go beyond our present considerations—especially for future generations. Whilst we are in constant contact via smart phones, e-mail, twitter and various forms of social media we are really living in an anti-social society that is seeding the earth with ingredients of misunderstanding, misperception and fear of the other. Our world today is consumed by the abbreviated text, the sound bite and photo op. We live in a world where a meeting is a Skype and a conversation is limited to a predetermined number of characters. Whilst we touch our screens more than we touch our friends and loved ones, in reality, we have lost touch. No wonder the world we live in is one that is both vulnerable and experiencing increased anguish especially between East and West. As a private citizen and an entrepreneur focused on bridge building and understanding the other, I have been privileged to develop a passion for art—especially art that links East and West. Orientalism has many dimensions and it has inspired me to initiate via my Foundation to launch the ‘East-West: The Art of Dialogue’. This initiative focuses on bringing together young emerging leaders from the East and West, facilitating firsthand knowledge via which both develop and implement collaborative projects. The results of this initiative born in 2012 can be seen on www.eastwestdialogue.org The academic world has a lot to offer and much to impact on the issue of East and West finding common ground and having positive collaboration. A focus on art and culture supported by academic leaders can reinforce private initiatives, social understanding and enhance political leadership to effectively deal with today’s increasing challenges. M. Shafik Gabr Cairo, November 2014
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Invited Panellists DORIS BEHRENS-ABOUSEIF Professor Emerita. From 2000-2014: Professor of Islamic Art and Archaeology (Nasser D Khalili chair) at School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, England. Before joining SOAS in 2000, Doris Behrens-Abouseif taught Islamic Art at the American University in Cairo and at the Universities of Freiburg and Munich in Germany. She has been visiting professor in several universities: Bamberg, Berlin (Freie Universität), Harvard University, American University in Cairo and the University of Virginia. She is a Member of the Academia Europaea. Her list of publications, 11 books and 70 articles, covers a wide range of subjects from the early period to the 19th century: Islamic architecture, urbanism and the decorative arts of Islam, with focus on Egypt and Syria, Islamic cultural history and concepts of aesthetics. Among her books: Egypt's Adjustment to Ottoman Rule (Leiden/New York/KÜln, 1994); Beauty in Arabic Culture (Princeton, 1999); Cairo of the Mamluks (London/Cairo, 2007); The Minarets of Cairo (London/Cairo, 2010); Practicing Diplomacy in the Mamluk Sultanate: Gifts and Material Culture in the Medieval Islamic World (London, 2014). She co-edited with Stephen Vernoit Islamic Art in the Nineteenth Century - Tradition, Innovation, Eclecticism (Leiden/Boston, 2006).
Paper Title and Abstract: Orientalisms and Revivals 19th century Egypt is one of the most intensively documented cases in the study of East-West interactions. Napoleon's expedition (1798-1801), which opened up Egypt to all aspects of European exploration and curiosities on both institutional and individual levels, followed short afterward by the rule of Muhammad Ali Pasha (1805-49), who pursued radical reforms to modernize Egypt and the establishment of a British protectorate in 1882 contributed to make Egypt a particularly fertile ground for East-West interaction on multiple levels. While importing scientific and technologic knowledge from the West Egypt was revealing its history and culture to European curiosity and scholarship. Surveying and revival went hand in hand. The European nostalgic historicism of that time was applied to Egypt and other countries with great cultural traditions such as India, Iran, Turkey and North Africa. Concepts of cultural and artistic heritage and national styles were introduced. Although revivalism and the preservation of heritage were practiced in the Muslim world already before European hegemony, they were not motivated by art historical concerns or artistic concepts. In absence of a discipline of Islamic art history Egyptian artists and artisans depended on the inspirations and material provided by orientalists. Although this new understanding of the Islamic visual arts involved misunderstanding as well, it contributed to create a new artistic sensitivity. My paper will discuss 19th century two distinct examples of artistic revival inspired by Western sources in architecture and the decorative arts. The first case is the design of a NeoMamluk mosque by Pascal Coste and its impact on later Egyptian architecture. The second case is about the impact of Orientalism on the decorative arts.
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Luke Gartlan Lecturer in the School of Art History, University of St. Andrews, Scotland Luke Gartlan teaches courses on the history of photography and cross-cultural visual culture at the University of St. Andrews. He is editor of the peer-reviewed journal History of Photography and co-editor, with Ali Behdad, of Photography's Orientalism: New Essays on Colonial Representation (Getty 2013). He has held research fellowships at the University of Vienna, Nihon University in Tokyo, and the Australian National University, and has contributed to exhibition catalogues for the National Gallery of Victoria and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. He has published in numerous journals, including Early Popular Visual Culture, The La Trobe Journal, History of Photography, and Visual Resources, and contributed to several essay volumes, including, most recently, Transculturation in British Art, ed. Julie F. Codell (Ashgate, 2013).
Paper Title and Abstract: Visualising Mecca: Photography's Networks and the Limits of Orientalism In 1888, the Dutch scholar Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje published the two-volume study Mekka, which included a 'Bilder-Atlas' of forty pages of photographic plates of pilgrims and officials. As one of the first Western scholars to undertake the pilgrimage to Mecca, Snouck Hurgronje has received notable attention as an Orientalist scholar, official and amateur photographer, and has been credited with many of the photographs that comprise the 'BilderAtlas'. Yet, the diversity of subjects, styles, props, and visual features apparent in this volume suggests that the portfolio includes the work of numerous unknown photographers working in diverse contexts in or en route to Mecca. The unity of the portfolio is therefore not based on the premise of a single producer/author, but the subjects' religious commemoration of their pilgrimage or their bureaucratic role in its organisation. Snouck Hurgronje, therefore, appears to have collected most of these photographs on his own pilgrimage to Mecca for projected use in his future study. However, this remapping of these portrait photographs of officials, merchants, and pilgrims from throughout the Islamic world does not erase their initial function within transcultural economies of exchange and interaction associated with the Hajj. This paper argues that this portfolio - irrespective of its compiler's intentions - reveals the role of photography within religious networks of transcultural movement and exchange specific to the globalising Islamic world of the late nineteenth century. It therefore questions the limits of photography's role in orientalist disciplines of knowledge and power by pointing to its still little-known histories of integration within local traditional practices and long-held networks.
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ZEYNEP İNANKUR Professor of Art History, Art History Department, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Istanbul, Turkey. Zeynep İnankur is the author of 19. Yüzyıl Avrupasında Heykel ve Resim Sanatı (Kabalcı Yayınevi, 1997 Painting and Sculpture in 19th Century European Art); ‘The Official Painters of the Ottoman Court’, Art Turc, 10e Congres Internationale d'art Turc, Fondation Max van Berchem, 1999) and ‘Orientalisti ltaliani’ (ltalian Orientalists), Gli Italiani di istanbul: Figure, Comunita e stituzioni dalle Riforme alia Repubblica 1839-1923 (Edizioni della Fondazione 3iovanni Agnelli, 2007). İnankur whose area of interest is 19th-century European and Ottoman art and Orientalist painting, is the co-author with Semra Germaner of Orientalism and Turkey (Turkish Cultural foundation, Istanbul, 1989) and Constantinople and the Orientalists (Isbank Cultural Publications, Istanbul, 2002). She is the co-editor with Reina Lewis and Mary Roberts of The Poetics and Politics of Place Ottoman Istanbul and British Orientalism (University of Washington Press, 2011). She is the co-curator of Dream and Reality: Modern and Contemporary Women artists from Turkey an exhibition organized by Istanbul Modern Museum. She is a member of the advisory boards at MSGSÜ Painting and Sculpture Museum, Istanbul Modern Museum and Pera Museum and also member of the International Congress of Turkish Art.
Paper Title and Abstract: Osman Hamdi Bey: An Ottoman Orientalist In this paper the life and works of Osman Hamdi Bey will be examined. Director of the Archeological Museum and founder of the Imperial School of Fine Arts School in Istanbul, Osman Hamdi was the only Orientalist artist who was native to the East. Although he adopted European ways in his personal life, in his paintings he elevated the Ottoman tradition and culture. Osman Hamdi received his artistic training in Paris during a time when Orientalism was at its peak. He was greatly influenced by his teacher Gustave Boulanger as well as by Jean-Léon Gérôme. Realizing that he could be successful in the Orientalist art scene with his Ottoman background, he executed such themes on his return to Istanbul. Many of these paintings were never exhibited in Turkey and were intended solely for a European audience. By depicting the Ottoman world through the eyes of a real native, Osman Hamdi presented viewers with an impression of reality, one of the most sought-after elements in Orientalist paintings. One of his recurrent themes was Ottoman women in a harem-like domestic environment or outside the home. He later moved on to depict a series of scenes inside and outside religious buildings and dominated by male figures. In many of these paintings Osman Hamdi uses the same objects associated with Ottoman and Islamic cultures, be it china tiles, religious books, carpets and oil lamps in different settings. He even altered the function of a religious building for the sake of its decorative quality. Thus although they gave an impression of a genuine Oriental atmosphere, these paintings are on the whole are examples of a constructed reality.
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Reina Lewis Artscom Centenary Professor of Cultural Studies, London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, England. Reina Lewis’ new book Muslim Fashion: Commerce, Commentary, Community will be published by Duke University Press in 2015. She is also author of Rethinking Orientalism: Women, Travel and the Ottoman Harem (2004), and Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity and Representation (1996). She is editor of Modest Fashion: Styling Bodies, Mediating Faith (2013), and with Nancy Micklewright, of Gender, Modernity and Liberty: Middle Eastern and Western Women's Writings: A Critical Reader (2006), with Sara Mills, of Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader (2003), and, with Peter Horne, of Outlooks: Lesbian and Gay Visual Cultures (1996). Reina Lewis is also editor with Elizabeth Wilson of the book series Dress Cultures, and with Teresa Heffernan of the book series Cultures in Dialogue.
Paper Title and Abstract: Visual and Literary Pleasures in East-West dialogue: Reconsidering the Female and Orientalist Gaze This paper addresses a gap in my own consideration of gender and Orientalism, in which the lesbian associations of the harem have often been the sub rather than the main text of my work. Covering and questioning the place of homoeroticism in cultural production by western women writers and artists and by Ottoman women between the 1860s and 1930s, this presentation engages with questions of sexual and gender identities and histories of sexuality in the context of competing imperialisms and multiple Orientalist cultures. Tracking how the transcultural movement of bodies, ideas, and cultural commodities reframed in each location the practices and understandings of gender and sexual subjecthoods for residents and visitors, the paper explores the diverse visual pleasures made possible for viewers then and now in the writings and visuals of authors Selma Ekrem, Demetra Vaka Brown and artist Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann.
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MARY ROBERTS John Schaeffer Associate Professor of British Art, Department of the History of Art and Film Studies, University of Sydney, Australia. Mary Roberts is the author of Intimate Outsiders. The Harem in Ottoman and Orientalist Art and Travel Literature (Duke, 2007) and has co-edited four books: The Poetics and Politics of Place. Ottoman Istanbul and British Orientalism (Pera Museum and University of Washington Press, 2011) Edges of Empire. Orientalism and Visual Culture (Blackwells, 2005), Orientalism's Interlocutors. Painting, Architecture, Photography (Duke, 2002) and Refracting Vision. Essays on the Writings of Michael Fried (Power Publications, 2000). She has received grants from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the Australian Research Council and has been awarded residential fellowships at the Yale Center for British Art (2008), the Getty Research Institute (2008-9), the Clark Art Institute and Oakley Center for the Humanities (2009-10) and was a visiting scholar at the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities at Northwestern University (2011-12). She is currently The William C.Seitz Senior Fellow at CASVA, National Gallery of Art in Washington. Mary Roberts's book, Istanbul Exchanges: Ottomans, Orientalists and nineteenth-century Visual Culture, will be published by University of California Press in March 2015. Paper Title and Abstract: Objects in dialogue: Transcultural exchanges of Islamic Art, 1865-1876 This paper analyses the modern practice of collecting and displaying Islamic art in ateliers and collector's houses in nineteenth-century Istanbul, Paris and Krakow in order to understand its role in transcultural dialogue. Court painter to Sultan Abdülaziz, Stanisław Chlebowski, was a key figure within such collector-dealer networks. He amassed an extensive and very fine collection of Persian and Ottoman carpets, weapons, mosque lamps and other treasures in Istanbul between 1865 and 1876. These objects were displayed in his atelier in the Ottoman capital, sent to his family in Krakow or sold to Albert Goupil and Jean-Léon Gérôme in Paris (through these channels they entered prominent private and public collections). This art was an important resource for Chlebowski's paintings, for consolidating his professional reputation and developing networks of patronage. The Polish Orientalist also sent Islamic art to his family in Krakow to create a cosmopolitan domestic interior. This paper maps the different types of exchanges of Islamic art between artists, dealers, collectors and within intimate family circles. Tracking these exchanges reveals the changing significance - the ‘life’ - of these objects as they moved across time and space from mosques and bazaars to artists' studios, exhibition halls and public collections.
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Kirsten Scheid Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Media Studies at American University of Beirut, Lebanon. Kirsten Scheid earned her BA in Art History from Columbia University and her PhD in Anthropology from Princeton University. She has been working in the happy disjuncture between the fields ever since. Her research and teaching interests are the Modern and Contemporary Arab Art, particularly in Lebanon and Palestine, Aesthetics and Affect as alternative sources for ethnography and political study, the History of the Anthropology of Art, Art Historiography and Theory, Civilizing Discourses and Cosmopolitanism, Activism, Gender and Elites. She has conducted field and archival research since 1992 in Lebanon and Palestine. In 2009, Kirsten was a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, with its research program, ‘Europe in the Middle East, the Middle East in Europe.’ Her research has been supported by the Palestinian American Research Center, the Barakat Trust, the Issam Fares Institute and the Wenner-Gren. She has published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Museum Anthropology, and ARTMargins, and she is currently completing a monograph titled, No Art Here?: Modern Art and the Fantasmic Formation of Lebanon. Kirsten has also exhibited work from her research at The New Museum (in New York) and contributed extensively to the art community, by curating, writing in art journals and popular media, and by founding both a cultural resource center in Beirut and an Arabic children’s books line.
Paper Title and Abstract: When Is It Western and When Isn't It: The Role of Lebanese Art in (Western) Art History Is it possible to integrate art history and rethink the discipline in a more globalized manner? The experience of professional artists working in Beirut from the colonial period to the present suggests it is. While the production of a localizing historiographical literature on ‘Lebanese art’ demonstrates the limits of the replication of a Greco-Renaissance canon, recent documentation of artists' strategies of affiliation, universalization, and social critique in borrowed art reveals the gains of using art history's traditional toolkit to study its traditional blindspots. The very labels – ‘western,’ ‘non-western,’ ‘marginal,’ ‘metropolitan,’ etc. - make a fruitful field of study when approached as aesthetic, material, and sensual productions in concrete yet circulating objects. The question is not how ‘non-western’ this art world is but when and why it is and then is not. ‘Local’ becomes a set of potential interactions rather than a place that can be accessed through pre-set techniques. Moreover, following a century of the circulation of ‘Lebanese art’ shows how art history's sensitivity to affect and aesthetics can be capitalized upon without universalizing its premises.
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Barbara Wright Professor Emerita of French Literature at Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, Ireland. Having taught previously at the Universities of Manchester and Exeter, Barbara Wright is a member of both the Royal Irish Academy and the Academia Europaea, and is an Officer in the French National Order of Merit. She specializes in nineteenth-century French studies, with particular reference to the interconnection between literature and painting, and has published books and articles on the works of Baudelaire, Fromentin, Gustave Moreau and Edgar Quinet. In relation to Eugène Fromentin, she brought out his complete correspondence (1995), an English-language biography (2000) and a revised and enlarged edition of her monograph with James Thompson (2008). Her edition of Le Désert de Suez: Cinq mois dans l’Isthme, on the first phase of the construction of the Suez Canal, by the painter-writer Narcisse Berchère, was published in 2010 and her edition of the manuscript essays by Albert Aubert, Du Spiritualisme et de quelques-unes de ses conséquences, pertaining to intellectual life in the July Monarchy, was published in 2014. She has been commissioned to write the incipit of the catalogue of the Gustave Guillaumet exhibition scheduled for 2017 in La Rochelle, Limoges Pau and Roubaix (La Piscine).
Paper Title and Abstract: The Concept of Alterity in Nineteenth-Century French Orientalism, with particular reference to the work of Eugène Fromentin and Gustave Guillaumet in Algeria The creation of the Orient as the ‘Other’ is central to the definition of Orientalism by the Occident, from Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 to the establishment of French colonial policy in the Third Republic. Yet this ‘Other’ took on different forms, as the nineteenth century progressed. For Delacroix and his contemporaries, the Orient was an exotic extension of the Classical and Biblical world––‘Living Antiquity’. Gradually, the ‘Other’ came to be seen in terms of anthropological difference, in ways that would inform how the Orient was ‘written’ and would later ‘write back.’ This paper seeks to focus on the turning point in this development of the concept of ‘alterity,’ with particular reference to the work of Eugène Fromentin (1820-1876) and Gustave Guillaumet (1840-1887). It will concentrate on two main topics: the portrayal of women and the portrayal of the desert. It will further concentrate on form, in the sense that both of these artists gave a verbal and a visual representation of the Orient. It is hoped that a comparative analysis of these techniques will highlight new resonances in the treatment of ‘alterity’ in nineteenth-century French Orientalism.
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Invited Chairs Peter Cherry Lecturer in the History of Art, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Trinity College Dublin. Dr. Peter Cherry teaches undergraduate courses on the painting and sculpture of the Italian Renaissance, painting and sculpture in seventeenth-century Europe and on art and religion in the Hispanic world. He is particularly interested in the history of still-life and genre painting in Spain and Italy, and he has been involved in a number of exhibitions in this area. His current research interests generally focus on the visual art of seventeenth-century Spain and include the production, market and functions of different types of visual art; the techniques of art; art and patronage in Seville; Velázquez and his circle; and, more recently, the relationship between art and plague.
Fionnuala Croke Director of the Chester Beatty Library, Ireland. Fionnuala Croke became Director of the Chester Beatty Library in March 2011. Since joining the CBL she has worked on developing a new strategy for the Library, and on engaging with new audiences both domestically and overseas through exhibitions and multicultural programmes. Fionnuala has published on a wide range of art-related subjects and has organised and curated numerous exhibitions, most recently ‘Chester Beatty’s A to Z: from Amulet to Zodiac’ (on view at the CBL until 1 February 2015). She received a BA with honours in History of Art & Archaeology from University College Dublin (UCD), a research MA from UCD and an International Executive MBA from the Smurfit Business School. She also attended the Getty Museum Leadership Institute in Los Angeles. Prior to her appointment to the CBL, she was Keeper & Head of Collections at the National Gallery of Ireland. She is an Adjunct Professor in UCD in the School of Art History & Cultural Policy; she is Chair of the Asia-Europe Museum Network (ASEMUS); and a member of the steering committee of the International Exhibitions Group (IEO).
Anthony McElligott Professor of History and Head of the Department of History, University of Limerick, Ireland. Professor Anthony McElligott, FRHistS, is founding professor of history at the University of Limerick and currently head of department. He has published widely on the political, social and cultural history of Germany in the early twentieth century. His most recent book is ‘Rethinking The Weimar Republic: Authority and Authoritarianism 1916-1936, published by Bloomsbury 2014. He is currently working on a study of the Holocaust in the Eastern Aegean.
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Irish Research Council The mission of the Irish Research Council is to enable and sustain a vibrant research community in Ireland. The council supports excellent researchers in all disciplines from Arts to Zoology. An agency of the Department of Education and Skills, the Council primarily funds early stage career researchers: namely, postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Diverse career opportunities are enabled through a suite of programmes which partner with employers. The other key area of activity for the Council is the funding of research projects with a societal focus; the Council has established partnerships across government and civic society. The Council represents Ireland in particular dimensions of Horizon 2020 and, by providing supports for H2020 applicants, enhances opportunities for the Irish research community. See: www.research.ie
Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies, Trinity College Dublin The Centre for Women's Studies was established in Trinity College in July, 1988. In 1999, in order to reflect the increasing diversity of its interests in areas such as sexualities and masculinities, the Centre expanded its title and remit to become the Centre for Gender and Women's Studies. In 2005, the Centre became a full member of the School of Histories and Humanities. Since its inception, the Centre has developed and sustained an M.Phil programme and a doctoral programme of the highest quality, has undertaken significant research activities and engaged in both innovative and traditional community outreach. Members of the Centre are recognised both nationally and internationally for their expertise on gender issues. See: www.tcd.ie/cgws Trinity Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin Trinity Long Room Hub is the Arts and Humanities Research Institute of Trinity College Dublin. It is one of five flagship research institutes of the University. The Trinity Long Room Hub is dedicated to promoting and facilitating innovative research across its nine Arts and Humanities member Schools of Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, Ireland. See: www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub Chester Beatty Library, Dublin A designated National Cultural Institution of Ireland, the Chester Beatty Library’s rich collections from countries across Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and Europe open a window on the artistic treasures of the great cultures and religions of the world. Manuscripts, miniature paintings, prints, drawings, rare books and decorative arts complete this amazing collection. Currently, in addition to the permanent galleries, the Library has a temporary exhibition entitled: 'Chester Beatty's A to Z: from Amulet to Zodiac' (11 July 2014 – 1 February 2015). This exhibition features works from the Library’s collections that are seldom on display and explores the threads that link cultures across the Western and Islamic worlds. See: www.cbl.ie
Department of History of Art & Architecture, Trinity College Dublin Founded in 1966 under the direction of Anne Crookshank, The History of Art Department soon acquired a reputation that it has proudly maintained to this day. Thanks to its location in the heart of Dublin, Trinity is the ideal place in which to study the history of art, with the National Gallery, the National Museum, the Royal Hibernian Academy, the Douglas Hyde Gallery, the Science Gallery and the Chester Beatty Library all situated close by, offering students a unique opportunity to study major works of art at first hand.. The department has an international reputation for research in several fields of art history. Members of staff have been at the forefront of research into Irish art and architecture, a point recognised with the establishment in 2003 of the Irish Art Research Centre (TRIARC). The department has also made important contributions to research on British, French and Spanish art. The teaching programme focuses on Western art from the early middle ages to the twentieth century. Courses are also taught on non-western art as well, taking advantage of the major collections at the Chester Beatty Library and at the National Museum of Ireland. See: www.tcd.ie/History_of_Art
Programme and Website Designed by Mary Healy