Journée d’étude : “Paragons and Paper Bags. Early Modern Prints from the Consumer’s Perspective”.

Type : journée d’étude.
Date de la manifestation : 09 juin 2016 .
Lieu : Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

The scholarly research on early modern printmaking has evolved from a focus on the Romantic concept of the Peintre-Graveur to studies of artists and printmakers in their specific cultural and socioeconomic context. In addition, the idea that publishers played a vital role in artistic, commercial and organisational aspects of printmaking is now widely accepted. Both art-historical and art-technical research on these matters have resulted in reference works and exhibition catalogues of high standard. In these studies, however, the position of the consumer has often been ignored or dealt with only briefly. In addition, print collections in the past have often failed to recognise the importance of contemporary adaptations, signs of usage and collecting conditions.

However, for a proper understanding of early modern culture, it is crucial to study the consumption of printed images and the socioeconomic and artistic processes behind it. Prints were a widespread and artistically diverse medium and the creative process of a print did not stop after printing. Researching the creative afterlife of prints is therefore an essential development in the study of early modern visual culture. Although the consumption and reception of early modern books has received increasing attention in the past decades, only some scholars such as Jan Van der Stock (Printing Images in Antwerp. The Introduction of Printmaking in a City: Fifteenth Century to 1585, 1998), Peter Schmidt (Gedruckte Bilder in handgeschriebenen Büchern. Zum Gebrauch von Druckgraphik im 15. Jahrhundert, 2003), Jan van der Waals (Prints in the Golden Age. From Art to Shelf Paper, 2006), Kathryn Rudy (Virtual Pilgrimages in the Convent. Imagining Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages, 2011) and Suzanne Karr Schmidt (Altered and Adorned. Using Renaissance Prints in Daily Life, 2011) have integrated the consumer’s side of the print market and the concrete use of prints in their research.

In order to stimulate this promising evolution, the Rijksmuseum is organising an international conference on early modern prints, ranging from precious artistic prints that were carefully collected to cheap printed images that were used and discarded. Paragons and Paper Bags. Early Modern Prints from the Consumer’s Perspective will take place at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam on Thursday 9 June 2016. The aim of this symposium is to further develop this new approach in order to achieve new insights on target audiences, the application and usage of prints, and special collection practices.

Programme

9:00-9:30 Registration and coffee & tea.

9:30-9:35 Opening by Taco Dibbits (Director of collections, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).

9:35-9:40 Introduction by the organisers.

Chair morning sessions: Jan Van der Stock (Illuminare – University of Leuven).

9:40-10:20 Keynote lecture.

Antony Griffiths (former Keeper of Prints and Drawings, British Museum, London), ‘The Surviving Print, the Ephemeral Print and the Print Historian’/

10:20-11:00 Session 1: Early Treasures.

Lothar Schmitt (Zentralbibliothek Zürich/ ETH Zürich), ‘Crazy Little Thing Called “Paste Print”’.

Frederike Steinhoff (Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Rome), ‘Woodblock Prints Applied to Cassoni’.

11:00-11:15 Questions & discussion.

11:15-11:45 Coffee & tea.

11:45-12:45 Session 2: Antwerp. Consumer’s Paradise.

Jeroen Luyckx (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam/ Illuminare – University of Leuven), ‘Portraits for the Common People? The Hand-Coloured Woodcuts of Hans Liefrinck (c. 1515-1573) Reconsidered’.

Petra Maclot (Independent building historian, Antwerp), ‘Papering the Parlour. The Use and Reuse of Printed Paper in 16th-Century Interiors in Antwerp’.

Karen Bowen (University of Antwerp), ‘From Connoisseurs and Devout Clerics to Common Consumers En Masse: The Demand for Prints from Antwerp at the Turn of the 17th Century’.

12:45-13:00 Questions & discussion.

13:00-14:00 Lunch.

Chair afternoon sessions: Thomas Döring (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig).

14:00-14:20 Keynote lecture.

Kathryn M. Rudy (University of St Andrews), ‘Cut, Pasted, and Cut Again: The Original Function and Later Collection of Early Prints in Western Europe‘.

14:20-15:00 Session 3: Hands On!

Naomi Lebens (The Courtauld Institute of Art/ British Museum, London), ‘Prints in Play: Games and Their Afterlives’.

Madeleine C. Viljoen (New York Public Library), ‘Inked Gems and Printed Jewels’.

15:00-15:15 Questions & discussion.

15:15-15:45 Coffee & tea.

15:45-16:45 Session 4: High and Low.

Audrey Adamczak (University of Paris – Sorbonne/ Paris Catholic University), ‘From Copperplate to Satin Fabric: Portrait Print on Silk in XVIIth-Century France’.

Joyce Zelen (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam/ Radboud University Nijmegen), ‘A Manuscript Filled with the Erotic Print Clippings of Adrian Beverland (1650-1716)’.

Fleur Roos Rosa de Carvalho (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam), ‘From the Private Print to the Popular Poster and Back: The Reception of the Graphic Arts in Fin-de-Siècle France (1890–1905)’.

16:45-17:00 Questions & discussion.

17:00-17:10 Closing remarks by the organisers.

17:10-18:00 Drinks.

For more information and registration, please visit the conference website:
https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/paragons-and-paper-bags

 

 

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