Appel à communication : “Memorial landscapes. World images East and West”.

Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, Paysage avec ruine, ca. 1782-1785, 41,91 x 57,15 cm, Los Angeles, LACMA.

Type : Appel à communication.
Date de la manifestation : du 26 au 30 septembre 2016 et du 3 au 7 avril 2017.
Lieu : Taipei, National Taiwan Normal University et National Taiwan University, et Hamburg, Hamburg University.
Date limite : 10 mars 2016.

The 2016-2017 International Warburg Seminar, to be held in Taipei on 26-30 September 2016 and in Hamburg on 3-7 April 2017 and aimed at doctoral candidates and young academics, will be devoted to comparative views of the landscape genre. People’s perception of their surrounding landscape is subject to a variety of cultural encodings. This becomes particularly clear when international comparisons are made – between, say, Eastern and Western conceptions of landscape. Whereas in the Western world ‘landscape’ and ‘landscape painting’ are practically synonymous (‘Claude Lorrain’s landscapes’), the Chinese language, for instance, uses very different terms for the two concepts: ‘landscape’ in the sense of a vista, (j?ngsè), is thus conceptually quite separate from the traditional notion of landscape painting, (sh?nshu?), which is composed of the characters for ‘mountain’ and ‘water’. At the same time, notions of landscape are subject to constant historical change, and the landscape painting genre has performed a whole series of different tasks which may also vary from period to period. Landscapes are not only veduta-like depictions of nature, but they also provide subjective perspectives on the artist’s realm of experience; they may be outlines for ideal or world landscapes that are more or less distinct from their natural models; and they may be much else besides.

The International Warburg Seminar on Memorial landscapes: world images East and West will focus not so much on aspects of landscape that only depict natural settings as on those that address the construction of cultural links in the broadest sense, creating landscapes with a motivic, thematic, social or political charge – to paraphrase Pierre Nora, paysages de mémoire. Such landscape images encapsulate historical events and national identities, basic philosophical attitudes and political conflicts or cultural, social or environmental issues. The landscape can then become not only a form of reflection on links beyond landscape itself, but also a meta-genre that expresses how nature and landscape are perceived by a particular artist, cultural region or period.

Doctoral candidates or young post-graduate art historians from all over the world are invited to submit proposals for the seminar theme. These may include both proposals in the field of Asian and Western art history during any period from the Middle Ages to the present day, as well as – and in particular – themes that already deal with transfer between Eastern and Western notions of landscape. Participants will be expected to give a talk on their proposal. It is planned that proposals accepted for the seminar will be published. During the first week of the seminar, in autumn 2016, all the participants will present preliminary papers which will be further developed in the light of discussions in preparation for the second week of the seminar. The contributions will be jointly edited during the spring 2017 session.

All travel and accommodation expenses will be covered by the organizers. The seminar will be held in English. Applications including a detailed thematic proposal (max. two pages), a CV (resume), a list of relevant publications and a letter of recommendation from the applicant’s academic supervisor or a senior researcher must be submitted in PDF format by 10 March 2016 to Professor Shai-Shu Tzeng, National Taiwan Normal University (sstzeng@[at]ntnu.edu.tw), Professor Yih-Fen Hua, National Taiwan University (yfhua@[at]ntu.edu.tw) and Professor Uwe Fleckner, University of Hamburg (uwe.fleckner@[at]uni-hamburg.de).