Tag Archives: Portugal

INSCRIBING COLONIALISM IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURY PORTUGAL, 26 MARCH 2019, QMUL

The next meeting of the Maius Workshop will take place tomorrow,26 March, 4:30–5:30pm, in room Law G3 at QMUL (335 Mile End Rd, London E1 4FQ). Click here for a map of the Campus.

Jessica Barker, Lecturer in Medieval History at the Courtauld Institute of Art, will lead a seminar entitled Inscribing Colonialism in Fifteenth-Century Portugal. The session will consider inscriptions, readability and visibility in funerary monuments, and their intersections with early Portuguese explorations in West Africa.

Maius is a friendly platform for informal dialogue and collaborative research. Our sessions are open to all, and research in early stages of development is especially welcome. We look forward to seeing you at this event, and please feel free to email us with ideas and suggestions for future meetings.

Image: Detail of inscription on the north side of the monument to João I and Philippa of Lancaster, 1426–34. Founder’s Chapel, monastery of Santa Maria da Vitória, Batalha. Photo: Jessica Barker.

CFP: Arts and Models of Democracy in post-authoritarian Iberian Peninsula, University of Huddersfield, 28–29 November 2019

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Mural for the commemoration of the Carnation Revolution made by Caos, Add Fuel, Draw and MAR at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa in 2014

The process of democratisation in Portugal and Spain originated from a similar socio-political context. Besides having an almost identical geographical context, two long authoritarian and military dictatorships shaped the two counties on the basis of a nationalist and deeply catholic identity. From the point of view of popular culture, both dictatorships promoted a disengaged culture, based on songs, football matches, bullfights and the stereotypes of Iberian folklore. In the early 1970s, the illiteracy rate and cultural practices indexes in both countries were still among the highest in Europe. Despite these similar starting conditions, the Portuguese transition to democracy was very different from that of Spain; whereas Portugal created a rupture with the previous institutional context through a military coup, in Spain the post-Franco democratisation was founded on negotiated reform. These two processes of transition to democracy in Portugal and Spain, although dissimilar from each other, led to new ways of both high and popular cultural expressions. As a result, the decade following the two dictatorships was characterised by significant and euphoric experiments in the fields of literature, visual and plastic arts, cinema and music. Scholars have paid scant attention to the ways in which artists thought and put into practice the very notion of democracy in these years. Democracy is a highly contested category, one that has been imagined in many different ways, and any particular realisation of which carries costs as well as benefits. According to the historian of democracy Pierre Rosanvallon (2008), the rise of a democracy entails both a promise and a problem for a society.

This two-day conference aims to innovatively question how artistic practices and institutions formed ways of imagining democracy and by what means arts and culture participate in the wider social struggle to define freedom and equality for the post-Estado Novo and post-Francoist period: how did artistic practices instantiate ideas of democracy in this context? Inversely, how did such democratic values inform artistic practice? How did Portuguese and Spanish artists and intellectuals negotiate between creative autonomy and social responsibility? And more broadly, what is the role of culture in a democracy? The core purpose of the conference is to bring scholars together from different subject areas and exploring any artistic practice (literature, visual and plastic arts, cinema and music). PhD students, early careers and senior researchers are invited to submit an abstract to engage in an interdisciplinary and comparative debate on how the field of culture framed different ideas of democracy in the Iberian post-authoritarian transitions during the 1970s and early 1980s.

Papers will be 30-minutes in length with 15 minutes of discussion time, to enable the fullest exchange. Please submit proposals (300 words) and a short bio to I.ContrerasZubillaga(at)hud.ac.uk and g.quaggio(at)sheffield.ac.uk by the deadline Friday 31 May 2019. The programme will be announced in early July.

Click here for more information.

Edilia and François-Auguste de Montêquin Fellowship, Society of Architectural Historians, deadline 30 September, 2018

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Cathedral of Santa María la Menor, Santo Domingo

This award provides support for travel related to research on Spanish, Portuguese, or Ibero-American architecture.

The awards consist of a $2,000 stipend for a junior scholar and a $6,000 award for a senior scholar. The awardees will be notified in December and will be recognized at the SAH 72nd Annual International Conference in Providence, Rhode Island (April 24–28, 2019). The awards will be announced in the May 2019 issue of the SAH Newsletter.

This fellowship is intended to support the research of junior scholars (usually scholars engaged in doctoral dissertation research) annually, and senior scholars (scholars who have completed their PhD or equivalent terminal degree) every other year in even-numbered years (2020, 2022, 2024, etc.). The research to be supported must focus on Spanish, Portuguese, or Ibero-American architecture, including colonial architecture produced by the Spaniards in the Philippines and what is today the United States. The applicant must be a current member of SAH.

Following completion of travel and research supported by the fellowship, each de Montêquin Fellowship awardee must submit a written report summarizing their research and explaining what travel was undertaken and how funds were spent. The report will be submitted to the SAH office no later than three months following the completion of work related to the fellowship. Awardees are required to upload images to SAHARA (a minimum of 50 for junior scholars and a minimum of 150 for senior scholars).

You will need two recommendations to apply for this fellowship, a description of the research project on Iberian or Ibero-American architecture to be funded (500 words maximum), a current curriculum vitae (5 pages max), and a statement of purpose.

Applications for the 2019 Edilia and François-Auguste de Montêquin Fellowship will open at 3 pm CDT on August 1, 2018, and close on September 30, 2018.

Click here for more information and to complete the application form.

New Publication: Almudena Pérez de Tudela Gabaldón, ‘Los inventarios de Doña Juana de Austria, Princesa de Portugal (1535–1573)

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9788491590941
Almudena Pérez de Tudela Gabaldón
Los inventarios de Doña Juana de Austria, Princesa de Portugal (1535–1573)
2018
Universidad de Jaén
ISBN: 978-84-9159-094-1
35

La princesa Juana de Austria fue una de las coleccionistas y mecenas más importantes en la España de la segunda mitad del siglo XVI. Sin embargo, su figura ha quedado eclipsada por la de su hermano, el rey Felipe II. Al trasladarse la corte a Madrid ocupará unas habitaciones en el palacio al lado de las de las reinas e infantas, para las que constituirá un referente. Durante muchas celebraciones religiosas residiría en sus cuartos del monasterio de las Descalzas Reales, fundado por ella. Para su estudio resulta fundamental el inventario de bienes que se redacta cuando fallece en 1573 que se publica por primera vez de manera sistemática. También se contextualiza con otros destacados documentos como la herencia materna, su ajuar de 1553 o su almoneda parcial, entre otros. Este corpus documental constituye el punto de partida para reconstruir su prácticamente perdida colección.

Overshadowed by her brother, King Philip II, Princess Joanna of Austria was one of the most important private collector and patrons in Spain in the second half of the sixteenth century. When the court moved to Madrird, she occupied rooms in the palace alongside the Queen and the Infantas and came to be an important influence on them. She founded the convent of the Descalzas Reales and would stay there in her rooms for many of the feast days and festivals. This inventory, carried out when she died in 1573, is essential to the study of the convent of the Descalzas Reales and is published here systematically for the first time. In addition, it contextualises her inventory with other notable documents such as, for example, her inheritance from her mother, her dowry of 1553 or the partial auction of her estate. This body of documentary information is the starting point for reconstructing her almost completely lost collection.

ARTES Coll & Cortés Travel Scholarship report: Sylvia Alvares-Correa (PhD Candidate, University of Oxford)

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By Sylvia Alvares-Correa

Joos van Cleve (attr.)
The Annunciation
1512-1520
Oil on oak panel
Museu de Arte Sacra do Funchal, inv. MASF35

Detail of figure 1

The generous award funds provided by ARTES Coll&Cortes allowed me to travel to Lisbon to investigate the transmission of Flemish art, designs, and techniques to Portugal in the late medieval period, on which my PhD research is based. The trip fortuitously overlapped with the exhibition ‘The Islands of White Gold, Art Commissions in Madeira: 15^th and 16^th Centuries’ at the Museu Nacional De Arte Antiga as well as the ‘Medieval Europe in Motion—The Middle Ages, A Global Context?’ conference hosted at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Both introduced me to works of art and research with which I had not been familiar and underlined the complexity and ambiguity involved in defining artistic transmission.

Workshop or Circle of Quentin Metsys
Triptych of the Descent from the Cross
Oil on oak panel
Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Inv. 1285 Pint

The fluid movement of artists and designs between north and south during this period means that just because something looks Flemish doesn’t necessarily mean it is; unfortunately, ‘style’ is often the determinant factor in classifying the origin of artworks in museums as well as in literature. Production methods can help elucidate if not by who at least where an artwork was made. To this end, the research trip sponsored by ARTES Coll & Cortes allowed me to collect data on the different joinery methods used in 15^th and 16^th century panel painting. Specifically, I sought out works joined by perpendicular dowels. Internal dowels, the predominate joinery method found in the north, in some cases dictated by guild regulations, are less likely to disrupt the surface of the painting; perpendicular dowels, however, tend to protrude slightly to the surface over time and can often be discerned with the naked eye. Current research proposes that the latter joinery method was predominant exclusively in Portugal (though famously employed by Hugo van der Goes as well).

Detail of figure 2

My preliminary investigations, however, yielded evidence that perpendicular dowels were utilized not only Portuguese panel paintings, but also in panels believed to be imported from Flanders. While it is too early to draw conclusions, the diversity of joinery methods observed suggest that either perpendicular dowels were not as uncommon to northern production as has been supposed or that certain works in Portuguese collections which have been classified as ‘Flemish’ were perhaps produced locally. I’m looking forward to delving in further!

Call For Papers: Fashion, Costume, and Consumer Culture in Iberia and Latin America: A Session in Honor of Gridley McKim-Smith, CAA conference, 21-24 February 2018, Los Angeles

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María Cristina de Borbon, Queen of Spain, Vicente López Portaña ©Museo Nacional del Prado

For the next annual conference of the College Art Association (CAA), scheduled for 21-24 February 2018 in Los Angeles, the American Society for Hispanic Art Historical Studies is organizing a panel in memory of the Hispanist Gridley McKim-Smith (1943-2013). The chairs, Mey-Yen Moriuchi and Mark Castro, invite paper proposals by August 14.

Fashion, Costume, and Consumer Culture in Iberia and Latin America: A Session in Honor of Gridley McKim-Smith

“Material splendor—rare and exquisite fabrics, dazzling displays of wealth and sartorial beauty—is a compelling value in Hispanic-American clothing” (McKim-Smith, Lexikon of the Hispanic Baroque 2013, 111). Gridley McKim-Smith (1943–2013) argued that the “profound materiality and sensuality of costume is crucial in Spain’s American possessions, where only stuffs recognized as prestigious can insulate the wearer from public disgrace and where the most sumptuous silks or alpacas, sometimes interwoven with precious metals, can make the wearer both admired and desired.” (114) In honor of the late McKim-Smith’s research interests and scholarship this session will consider representations of dress and fashion in Iberia and Latin America. In the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking worlds, depictions of costumes in paintings, sculptures, prints, and other visual media, as well as the creation of textiles and garments, demonstrate the power of dress in the construction of social, racial, gender, and cultural identities. The existence of extensive global trade networks facilitated the exchange and synthesis of artistic practices and craftsmanship permitting unique garments and objects which revealed the wearer’s style, aesthetic preferences, and social status. We seek papers from broad geographical and chronological periods, from Pre-Columbian to Modern, that consider the role of fashion, costume, and consumer culture in the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking worlds. How do clothes mediate identity, ideology, social rank, and subjectivity? What is the relationship between consumer culture and conspicuous consumption in Iberia and Latin America? How did dimensions of lived experience—psychological, performative, and political—survive in articles of dress?

Chairs: Mey-Yen Moriuchi, La Salle University, moriuchi@lasalle.edu; Mark Castro, Philadelphia Museum of Art, mcastro@philamuseum.org

The deadline for submissions is Monday, August 14. Click here for CAA’s proposal guidelines, which indicate that speakers on the panel must be members of CAA. Decisions on the proposals will be sent by Monday, August 28. If you have questions, please reach out to the chairs.

VIA Arts Prize, 2017 Edition

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VIA Arts Prize: deadline 16th October 2017

The Embassies of Latin American countries, Spain and Portugal, in collaboration with Itaú Unibanco and supported by People’s Palace Projects (Queen Mary University of London), are delighted to launch the 2017 edition of the VIA Arts Prize.

In an unparalleled exchange between the UK and Latin cultures, this dedicated visual arts competition invites all UK-based artists to enter into a creative dialogue with Ibero-American art and artists. Following the pre-selection process conducted by the curatorial committee, up to 30 artworks will then go on display for three weeks at the Embassy of Brazil. A special jury will judge the final selection.

Please find full information at the contest website. Submissions for the competition, which may include paintings, drawings, sculpture, photography and prints, are now invited from artists living and working in the UK. Participants must be aged 16 or over.

We encourage you to participate in this contest and there are several ways in which you can get involved:

· Applying if you have an artistic vein;

· Sharing this opportunity;

· Attending the finalists’ exhibition in November to vote for your favourite.

The prizes are: 1st Prize £5,000 and a solo exhibition at the Embassy of Brazil; 2nd Prize £2,000.

The exhibition will be at the Embassy of Brazil in London from the 3rd – 23rd November 2017.

For further information please contact:

Andrzej Stuart-Thompson (English)
Ana Elizabeth González (Spanish)
Marcio Junji Sono (Portuguese)

info@viaartsprize.org

Tel. +44 (0)20 7747 4576

OR +44 (0)20 7747 4567