Artl@s. Artistic circulations in /towards/from Northern Europe (2020-2021)

  Seminar  Artl@s Seminar, Paris – 2020–2021 : « Artistic circulations in /towards/from Northern Europe »

On Mondays, every 2 weeks, 2-4 PM, Seminar Room of the Institut d’Histoire moderne et contemporaine (IIHMC). -45 rue d’Ulm, Paris, Stair D, last floor.

All the sessions will also take place online. Please register here, to get access to the meeting links and passwords.

Coordination: Léa Saint-Raymond (ENS-PSL), in collaboration with Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel (Unige) and Catherine Dossin (Purdue University)

Within the framework of the Artl@s project, founded in 2009 by Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel, this annual seminar aims at analyzing the logics of artistic and visual globalization. After exploring the Arab world, the Southern Biennials and Asia, it will study artistic circulations in, from and to Northern Europe in the contemporary era, thanks to the invitation of specialists – researchers and curators. The seminar will take place on Mondays, every two weeks, and will alternate between two types of sessions: guest sessions and the “Artl@s Lab”, which will allow students to familiarize themselves with digital cartography in art history, and with BasArt – a digital database of catalogs of living art exhibitions and fairs since the end of the 19th century, with a cartographic and statistical interface. The seminars are part of a more general activity of international colloquia and publications, notably via the Artl@s-Bulletin (a multilingual, peer-reviewed journal).

The seminar can be validated within the framework of the PSL “Transnational History” and “Digital Humanities” masters programs (ENC-ENS). Integrated in the models of the ATP Masters in Transnational History, it allows for the DENS to validate “collective research experience” type validations.

September 28, 2020: Memories of Defeat: the circulation of monuments in and beyond Europe (Nicholas Parkinson, Mads Øvlisen Postdoctoral Fellow, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen)

This presentation addresses the challenge that nationalist memory politics has posed to European and American societies in modern history through a study of the global influence of Antonin Mercié’s Gloria Victis (c. 1873) on the practice of erecting monuments to defeat. Originally created as a monument to the loss of the Franco-Prussian War, Gloria Victis widely inspired the visual language of commemorating defeat at the turn-of-the-twentieth century, influencing monuments dedicated to events including Denmark’s Second Schleswig War, the US Civil War, the First Serbian Uprising, and the Second Boer War. Today, the symbolism of Gloria Victis has reemerged as a powerful symbol in Eastern Europe’s post-Soviet memory wars, especially within the propaganda of the populist Right. In 2006, future-PM Viktor Orbán of Hungary’s right-wing Fidesz party officiated the unveiling of Csömör’s monument to the international victims of Communism, Gloria Victis. This presentation therefore aims to trace the history of “Gloria Victis” symbols in public spaces as a means of better understanding the problem of nationalist pseudo-histories and Lost Cause narratives in public discourse today.

Nicholas Parkinson is a Novo Nordisk Mads Øvlisen Postdoctoral Fellow at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, Denmark, whose research examines the influence of politics and institutions on shaping art historical knowledge. His upcoming article “‘The Rayonnement of our Ideals’: French, German, and Nordic Painting in fin-de-siècle France,” will appear in the multi-author publication Mapping Impressionist Painting in Transnational Contexts (Emily Burns & Alice Price, eds) in 2021.

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October 12, 2020: Artl@s Lab

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October 26, 2020: Sublime North. Peder Balke and the Romantic Image of the North (Dr. Knut Ljøgodt, Nordic Institute of Art)

The North –Ultima Thule– has for centuries been regarded as remote and mysterious place of danger. In for example old maps, it is depicted as surrounded by monsters and other horrors. The proto-Romantics and Romantics of the 18thand 19thcentury seem to have had a particular fascination for the North, sparkled by the cultivation of the sublime in nature as an aesthetic ideal.

The Norwegian painter Peder Balke was one of the first artists who ventured to the Northernmost parts of Scandinavia. In 1832 he set out on a journey that took him above the Arctic circle, all the way to the North Cape. The image of the desolate, Arctic nature came to haunt the artist for the rest of his life. Balke later studied with his fellow Norwegian, Johan Christian Dahl, in Dresden, where he also was impressed by the paintings of the German Romantic Caspar David Friedrich. A stay in Paris in the 1840s lead to an important commission from Louis-Philippe, King of the French.

Balke’s ideas of the Northern nature was formed by European Romanticism, but eventually he developed his own, highly experimental manner of depicting this landscape

Biography : Dr Knut Ljøgodt is a Norwegian art historian and the director of Nordic Institute of Art. He studied art history at the University of Oslo, Courtauld Institute of Art, London and Istituto di Norvegia in Roma. Dr Ljøgodt has been a curator in the National Gallery, Oslo, director of Northern Norway Art Museum, Tromsø, as well as founding director of Kunsthall Svalbard in Spitzbergen in the Arctic.

Knut Ljøgodt is a scholar on Scandinavian and European 19thcentury art, including Nordic Romantic landscape painting. He has published extensively within this field, and has curated and co-curated a number of exhibitions, including Peder Balke(National Gallery, London 2014), Histories: Three Generations of Sámi Artists(Queen’s Gallery, Royal Palace, Oslo 2018), andEdward Burne-Jones: The Pre-Raphaelites and the North(Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm 2019 and KODE Art Museums and Composer Homers, Bergen 2020). Ljøgodt’s latest publication is Peder Balke: Sublime North (Skira, Milan 2020), and he is presently working on the catalogue raisonné of this artist.

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November 9, 2020: Savoir bien bâtir : les réseaux franco-suédois dans le milieu de la construction (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècle). (Linnéa R. Tilly, ENSA Paris la Villette )

Cette communication vise à discuter des sources et des méthodes permettant aux chercheurs d’essayer de saisir des échanges et rencontres contribuant à des inventions, des conceptions, des créations, des rédactions, des collections etc. La volonté est d’interpréter des motivations et des liens, en incluant différentes strates d’acteurs dans les milieux de la construction franco-suédois à l’époque moderne, afin de faire abstraction (ou au moins modérer) l’idée du génie œuvrant seul. Avec « l’export-import » de modèles il faut également comprendre l’export-import de « savoirs-faires ». Notre étude retient surtout les architectes-ingénieurs-maçons-charpentiers, mais les personnages connus ne circulent rarement seuls. Dans la plupart de cas ils sont accompagnés par une tribu de personnes, souvent anonymes même si leurs fonctions sont parfois précisées. Aussi nous verrons que les contacts et les liens « non-professionnels » avec, par exemple, des artistes, des diplomates et des femmes ne doivent pas être négligés. L’écriture des échanges franco-suédois à l’époque moderne en histoire de l’architecture a longtemps été dominée par le nom de la famille Tessin. Ceci est dû à la collection de dessins portant le nom de cette famille et aussi à la correspondance extraordinairement riche entre Nicodème Tessin le jeune et Daniel Cronström pendant presque trente ans (1690-1719). Toutefois ces échanges commencent bien plus tôt et perdurent dans le temps. Depuis le moyen âge des artisans qualifiés travaillent pour la royauté et les grandes familles suédoises. Certains de ces familles sont itinérantes d’autres émigrent avec l’espoir d’une vie meilleure. Lors de nos recherches nous avons exploré et « rencontré » des personnages contemporains, antérieurs et postérieurs aux Tessin, et nous avons commencé à noter des noms « à étudier plus tard ». Loin d’être exhaustive cette liste chronologique sur plus de deux siècles (les dernières décennies du XVIe siècle jusqu’au début du XIXe) démontre l’importance de l’entourage des personnages centraux, parfois anonymes et/ou pour la plupart méconnus. Se révèle un réseau très important et large en compétences.

Linnéa Rollenhagen Tillyest une historienne d’architecture franco-suédoise, maître de conférences associé en Histoire et Cultures Architecturales à l’école nationale supérieure d’architecture Paris La Villette. Ses travaux récents portent sur l’importance des réseaux professionnels et amicaux européen, notamment franco-suédois, dans les milieux des métiers de la construction (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles).

Main publications

Carl Johan Cronstedt, arkitekt och organisatör, éd. Balkong, Stockholm, 2017, 256 p.  [Biographie sur l’architecte C.J. Cronstedt (1709-1777), son œuvre, sa collection et sa bibliothèque d’architecture, ouvrage en suédois.]

« Le premier livre sur les techniques de la construction en suédois : compilation ou création ? », dans Le livre et les techniques avant le XXe siècle. A l’échelle du monde, Paris 2017, p. 233-241.

« Le premier recueil d’architecture illustré suédois, Carl Wijnblad : une vision modeste et ambitieuse », dans R. Carvais, V. Nègre, J.-B. Cluzel, J. Hernu-Bélaud, Traduire l’architecture. Texte et image un passage vers la création, Paris, Picard, 2015, p. 221-231.

« Quelques observations d’un apprenti suédois chez Jacques Germain Soufflot à Paris (1771 et 1773) », dans C. Ollagnier, D. Rabreau, Jacques-Germain Soufflot ou l’architecture régénérée, Picard, Paris 2015, p. 89-99.

« Le CNAM : terrain de recherches énergétiques »avec Mathieu Fernandez, dans les Cahiers d’histoire du CNAM, no 2 2014, p. 117- 151.

« Paris à Stockholm. Des échanges franco-suédois de la fin du XVIIesiècle au milieu du XVIIesiècle » avec Linda Hinners et Anne-Sophie Michel, Bulletin de la société de l’histoire de Paris et l’île de France,139eannée (2012) 2014, p. 59-78.

Notices sur des femmes architectes en Suède et en Norvège, dans Le dictionnaire universel des créatrices, (chapitre architectes, sous la direction d’Anne-Marie Châtelet), éditions des Femmes, 2013.

« French Bridge Drawings in the Cronstedt Collection », Art Bulletin of NationalmuseumStockholm, vol. 19, 2012, p. 137-144.

« La maison ordinaire (1650-1790), conception et exploitation », Bulletin de la société de l’histoire de Paris et l’île de France, 138e année, 2011, p. 27-54.

« Ur Carl Johan Cronstedts bibliotek. Fyra kopior av Antoine Desgodets opublicerade lektioner », Konsthistorisktidskrift/Journal of Art History,vol. 80, 4/2011, p. 207-218. [Article concernant la bibliothèque de C.J. Cronstedt et les copies inédites des cours de Desgodets qu’elle renferme].

« Les quais de Toulouse, déroulement d’un chantier public dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle »,dans Robert Carvais, André Guillerme, Valérie Nègre, Joël Sakarovitch (eds), Edifice et artifice, éd. Picard, 2010, p. 896-905.

« Carl-Johan Cronstedt in Paris (1732-1735): Education, Purchases and Contacts», Art Bulletin of NationalmuseumStockholm, vol. 15, 2008, p. 101-108.

« Vauban et l’architecture : Maximes pour bien bâtir », avec Victoria Sanger et deux notices concernant des textes de Pierre Le Muet et de Vauban, Vauban, bâtisseur du Roi Soleil, catalogue d’exposition, Palais Chaillot, Paris, 2007, p. 250-253 et p. 293.

« L’édification des quais de Toulouse au XVIIIe siècle, références architecturales nationales ? », dans L’Art du Sud, Paris, 2003, p. 165-180.

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November 23, 2020: Circulation of artists between Stockholm and Paris around 1700 (Linda Hinners, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm)

The paper treats French sculptors and painters active around 1700 at the building project of the Royal Palace of Stockholm. They were recruited from Paris by the architect Nicodemus Tessin the Younger (1654-1728),  assisted by his  “agent” in Paris , the diplomatic envoy  Daniel Cronström (1655-1719). My research focused on the craftsmen’s French background as well as their journey and stay in Stockholm.  Through detailed archival studies it was possible to clarify heir professional roles within a social context.

In France these artists were still part of the guild system. These sculptors, painters, casters, gold-smiths, gilders are better described as  artisans (“ouvriers”) rather than “artists” in the modern sense of the word ( i.e. great individual creators of original works of art).  None of them were members of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpturebut however they worked for the Bâtiments du Roi at some of the greatest royal building projects at the time, such as the Trianon and the Invalides. Thus, they were both dependent of an old tradition (the Guild), where the collective work in the workshop was important,  and involved in modern organization and a process changing the conception of the role of  the artist. In my research I studied the Frenchmen’s working conditions, the organization of the work and their status within these professions at this time. To a large extent it is a study about the social identity of the craftsmen/artist and the opportunities they had to influence and develop this at a time when a modern artist’s role is not yet established. My conclusion was that the French artists/artisans, a very homogenous group, played an important role in the reorganization of the Swedish royal and public building projects.  Besides, in Sweden they had a possibility to improve their career by more demanding commissions. They all enjoyed royal pensions, which they had not had in France. Thus, questions open in turn to larger themes in the field of the early modern artist’s professional roles, possible work and career paths, and  work organization in relation to the societal context in which they appeared in.

The artisans who travelled to Sweden in the 1690’s constituted of a group of 15 sculptors, painters and founders, and were often accompanied by family-members. The mobility of these artists/artisans is both geographical and social. By travelling to Sweden these artists wished to improve their professional and economical status.  At the same time,  by recruiting French specialized courtly craftsmen, the Swedish patron (the King through Tessin) wished to manifest the political power by conspicuous consumption. Inspired by the way that the Bâtiments du Roi organized all state building projects, a similar centralized organization was created in Sweden, Överintendentsämbetet, with Tessin as the first “Surintendant” in 1697. The idea of this state art patronage was to transfer the artistic and cultural know-how of the French to the Swedes, thus a form of art mercantilism.

Biography:

Linda Hinners is senior curator at Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, specialized in sculpture. She has curated various exhibitions, for example on Auguste Rodin and the Nordic countries in 2015 (collaboration with Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki). Her doctoral thesis dealt with French decorative artists who worked at the Royal Palace in Stockholm ca 1700. Hinners is currently directing a project concerning Nordic women sculptors which will result in an exhibition and a publication.

Books:

De fransöske hantwerkarna på Stockholms Slott 1693-1713. Yrkesroller Organisation Arbetsprocesser. Doctoral thesis, with an English Summary, Stockholm 2012 http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:505613/FULLTEXT01.pdf

The Gallery of Charles XI at the Royal Palace of Stockhom – in Perspective. Eds Linda Hinners, Martin Olin, Margaretha Rossholm Lagerlöf (Stockholm, 2016)

Rodin. Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) and the Nordic Countries Editor in chief Linda Hinners, coeditors: Antoinette Le Normand-Romain, Timo Huusko, Liisa Lindgren, Ingrid Lindell, Janna Herder (In conjonction with the exhibition ”Rodin” Nationalmuseum at Konstakademien, Stockholm 1 October 2015-10 January 2106/Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki 5 February – 8 May 2016

Papers:

Linda Hinners et Antoinette Le Normand-Romain, ”La Terre au lieu de La Médiation. Découverte d’un plâtre de Rodin au Nationalmuseum de Stockholm », in Revue de l’Art, N 208/2020-2, pp. 55-65

“Rodin, Vigeland and Sweden” in Vigeland, Skulpturens kraft och känsla, ed Patrik Steorn, Thielska Galleriet, Stockholm 2019, pp. 28-34

Dorothea Diemer/Linda Hinners : “Gerhardt Meyer made me in Stockholm”  : a bronze”Bathing woman” after Giambologna.
in The Burlington magazine, Volume 160, number 1384 (July 2018), p. 545-553

« Bourdelle et la Suède » in Transmission/Transgression – Maîtres et élèves dans l’atelier: Rodin, Bourdelle, Giacometti, Richier. Musee Bourdelle , sous la direction de Claire Boisseroles, Stéphane Ferrand et Amélie Simier, Paris 2018, pp. 138-140

Linda Hinners and  Martin Olin “Les Appartements royaux du Chateau de Stockholm » in Versailles et l’Europe (Detsches Forum fur Kunstgeschiste, dir. Thomas W Gaethgens, Frédéric Bussman and Christophe Henry, Heidelberg : arthistoricum.net, pp. 668-692.

“From mobility to stability and a new mobility. French. The Flow of Sculptors to and from Sweden from the Late Seventeenth to the early Nineteenth century”, in Sculpture and the Nordic Region, eds. Sara Ayres and Elettra Carbone, Ashgate (2016)

“The foundry at the Hippodrome. A French foundry for monumental sculpture in Stockholm around 1700”, publication of the symposium French Bronze Sculpture: materials and techniques16th – 18th century, ed. David Bourgarit, Jane Bassett, Francesca G. Bewer, Geneviève Bresc-Bautier, Philippe Malgouyres, and Guilhem Scherf, Archetype 2014

Paris à Stockholm, des échanges franco-suédois de la fin XVIIe au milieu du XVIIIe siècle. Linda Hinners, Anne-Sophie Michel, Linnéa Rollenhagen-Tilly in Bulletin de la Société de Paris et de l’Ile de France, Paris 2014

“Specialist Skills in the Workshop of French Ornamental Sculptors at the Royal Palace of Stockholm, ca 1700” in Questions d’ornements (XVe-XVIIIe s.) Namur (FUNDP, décembre 2009), Louvain-la-Neuve (UCL, février 2011) et Bruxelles (IRPA, février 2012), sous la dir. de Ralph Dekoninck, Caroline Heering et Michel Lefftz Brepols 2013

« La décoration de la Grande galerie du Château Royal de Stockholm » dans Actes de Colloque « La galerie des Glaces après sa restauration, XXVIes Rencontres de l’École du Louvre et Musée national du château de Versailles. 16-17 October 2008, Eds, Nathalie Volle,  Nicholas Milovanovic, Paris 2013.

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December 7, 2020: Développements et mutations de la réception critique des artistes scandinaves à Paris dans les années 1880 (Tanguy Le Roux, Sorbonne Université)

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Durant les années 1880, la réception critique des artistes scandinaves en France évolue sensiblement, devenant plus positive, plus développée et plus élaborée. En s’intéressant plus particulièrement à la réception des artistes suédois, cette communication visera à souligner et commenter plusieurs aspects de ces évolutions en recourant à un large corpus de critiques extraites de journaux et revues contemporaines.

Tanguy Le Roux a débuté ses recherches avec un master consacré à l’étude de la section suédoise à l’exposition universelle de 1889 à partir des sources françaises et suédoises. Ces recherches se sont ensuite étendues à la décennies 1880 et aux artistes scandinaves et finlandais, avec toujours un intérêt plus particulier pour la réception critique des artistes issus de ces pays. Il est aujourd’hui assistant de conservation du patrimoine.

Publication :

LE ROUX Tanguy, « L’apparition de l’École du Nord. L’émergence des artistes scandinaves dans la critique d’art française dans les années 1880 », in Deshima, n° 12, 2018, p. 155-170.

January 18, 2021 : The subjective narrativity of Nordic landscape painting (Carl Johan Olsson, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm)

Historically the perception of Northern romantic landscape painting has been considered an emotional rather than an intellectual act. The purpose of an early 19th Century landscape painting often was to provoke the beholder’s imagination in order to charge images with sentiments of different kinds and thus complete them into meaningful artworks with a patriotic, religious, mythic, historical, literary or more individually orientated content. Thus, the content and meaning of the image is not readable like for example in ideal landscapes of the 17thCentury where the individual imagination also played a part in the perception, but not yet in a strict formal sense, as the realm of nature was subordinated to intellectual content of different kinds. In the 19th Century, nature becomes a subject in its own wright, turning the landscape itself into the active element in relation to the beholder. Hereby the structure of the work av art is rearranged as meaning and content is generated by the beholder rather than “planted” by the artist. My ambition with this presentation is to discuss the possibilities to scholarly approach the artist’s pictorial techniques for involving the beholder into realizing the work of art. To discuss what could be considered a visual rhetoric of romanticism, making it possible to discern a certain way of perceiving nature and argue for relationships between literature and art and between regions or schools.

In his article Death at Work: A Case Study on Constitutive Blanks in Nineteenth-Century Painting (1985), Wolfgang Kemp fruitfully analyses Jean-Léon Gérôme’s The Death of Marshal Ney (1868) from the perspective of Wolfgang Iser’s theory on constitutive blanks as key elements for creating meaning in a literary work. Constitutive blanks are simply “gaps” in a readable structure that provokes the reader or beholder to fill them in to make his or her experience of the work complete or meaningful. In Kemp’s case with Gérôme the blanks are intimately connected to a narrative structure, with spatial qualities supporting the story and emphasizing the fate of Marshal Ney.

Reading Kemp’s text, I could not help but wonder if this method would not be even more fruitful to use on Nordic landscape painting of the romantic period? To see if the blanks are not openings linking the paintings to art philosophy and aesthetics of the early 19thCentury and thereby playing a crucial part in the perception of them.

During the romantic era the function of the beholder and his or her imagination, as stated, obviously became a crucial element of an artwork’s existence. In cases like Caspar David Friedrich’s the means used for engaging the beholder are easily identifiable – for example horizons, misty mountains of openings into the woods.

But what happens when the landscape aspires to be topographically accurate, which is often the case with later Danish Golden Age painting? My ambition with this paper is to look at the art of Johan Thomas Lundbye and Peter Christian Skovgaard among others. To identify constitutive blanks and how they were used and for which purposes and to put them into the context of art serving the idea of an art strengthening a national identity. What part did the artist’s and the beholder’s imagination play respectively? And what kind of meaning do the blanks put them into contact with?

Carl-Johan Olsson is curator of 19th Century Painting at Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.

Selected exhibitions:

The Golden Age of Denmark, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm and Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen 2019, Petit Palais – Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris 2020-21

From Dusk to Dawn, Nationalmuseum Jamtli 2019

Anders Zorn – Le maître de la peinture suédoise, Petit Palais – Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris 2017

De Lumière et de Silence – Peintres Scandinaves, Musée de Toulouse-Lautrec, Albi, France 2016

Carl Larsson – L’imagier de la Suède på Petit Palais – Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, 2014

Selected Publications:

« Des lointains si proches – de l’art de construire une image de la Norvège dans les œuvres de jeunesse deJohan Christian Dahl » i Perspective – actualité en histoire de l’art. Les Pays nordiques n°2019 – 1, Paris 2019, p. 189-197

”Blicken som bild – att göra konst av den egna närmiljön” in Dansk Guldålder (ed. Cecilie Høgsbro Østergaard), Köpenhamn 2019. p. 203-213

”Traderade motiv och nya perspektiv – att måla på resande fot” in Dansk Guldålder (ed. Cecilie Høgsbro Østergaard), Köpenhamn 2019, p. 217-229

“Swedish Art in the late 19th Century – From Modern to National” i Nordic Impressions – Art from Åland, Denmark, The Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, 1821-2018. Washington 2018, p. 161-169

« Zorn – aquarelliste et peintre: la gloire du virtuose » i Anders Zorn – Le Maître de la Peinture Suédoise (red.  Adeline Souverain). Paris 2017 p. 105-124

Papers and lectures over the last years:

Paper “Topography & Constitutive Blanks – on the subjective narrativity of landscape painting” at  symposium Inventing the Pictorial North, Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg och Universität Greifswald, Greifswald, 2019-01-10 – 2019-01-12

Paper ”Rome post Rome – Gustaf Wilhelm Palm’s later paintings of Roman subjects” at symposium Northern European Authors and Artists in Rome 1780-1950 at the Swedish and Danish Institutes in Rome, 6-7 april 2017.

Paper “Carl Johan Fahlcrantz and Peder Balke – a neglected master and his celebrated student.” At symposium Peder Balke – Painter of Northern Light at Scandinavia House, New York, USA, arranged with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Paper “The Subjects of the Oil Sketch – subjective perspectives versus practical purposes” at symposium “Workshop Golden Age exhibition” March 9-10 2017 at Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.

Paper “Painted landscapes of national emotions – from creating to dissolving the pictorial territory of the Swedish-Norwegian union” at the symposium Nation and Loss: Nineteenth-Century Nationalisms and Emotions in the Baltic Sea Region, arranged by Stockholm University and Gothenburg University 12-13 april 2018.

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February 15, 2021: Patterns of Swedish artistic mobility in the early 20th century (Jessica Shöholm Skrubbe, Stockholm University)

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This paper presents preliminary results from an empirical study that investigated and documented transnational connections of c. 700 Swedish artist born between 1875 and 1895, i.e. artists whose professional careers coincided with what has been described as the modernist breakthrough in Swedish art. This quantitative study evidence the extent to which artistic life was permeated by travel and transnational exchange and reveals clear patterns of Swedish artistic mobility in the early 20thcentury, but also indicates different forms of and reasons for mobility (artistic training, professional appointments and collaborations, seasonal migration, voluntary exile, et cetera). The data collected documents travels to and/or exhibitions in nearly 60 different countries on all continents. Unsurprisingly, next to 70 percent of the artists travelled to, or through, Paris and/or France. However, transnational mobility within Europe was almost as strongly directed towards Denmark, Germany and Italy. Transcontinental mobility was particularly prominent in relation the US and North Africa.

Due to the strong focus in Swedish art historiography on Paris as a compulsory passage point for aspiring modern artists, these diverse travelling patterns—and thus presumably also professional networks and artistic practices—have been overlooked or reduced to marginal episodes of lesser interest, despite the fact that many artists travelled widely. Empirical research conducted with quantitative methods contradict the established history of Swedish modern art and call for critical revisions. Without questioning the importance of Paris as an artistic node, the paper reflects upon the discrepancy between dominant tropes in art history and the decidedly varied transnational connections of Swedish modern artists. It also address the possibilities and limitations with the quantitative research method as such.

March 15, 2021: [To be announced] (Marja Lahelma, University of Helsinki)

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April 12, 2021: “L’oeuvre ouverte”. Technologie et matérialité du tableau en Europe du Nord au XVIIe siècle : procédés, transferts et correspondances artistiques (Charlotte Nadelman, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne)

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Le tableau intéresse tout autant l’histoire de l’art – il est un objet replacé et étudié dans son contexte d’origine et en rapport d’une production contemporaine ; la conservation, préservation et restauration des biens culturels – lieu d’appréciation technologique et de sauvegarde de l’objet ; enfin le champ de l’esthétique – cadre de réception philosophique. Il est également éminemment intéressant d’appréhender cet objet singulier à la lumière de l’anthropologie, à savoir – ce que les hommes ont dans la tête, ce à quoi ils pensent et ressentent lorsqu’ils agissent techniquement. Selon cette dernière définition, notre artefact devient un lieu de questionnement primordial : l’objet y fait sens à mesure du processus créatif qui l’a rendu possible, terrain favorable à l’enrichissement de nos connaissances à son sujet.

En guise de dialogue avec la thématique des circulations en Europe du nord portée par ce séminaire, et en cohérence avec les premiers déploiements engagés dans le cadre de ma thèse, Charlotte Nadelman a souhaité rendre compte à la manière d’un relevé scientifique, d’une série de caractéristiques technologiques propres à chacune des trois œuvres de mon corpus XVIIème. Cette enquête inclut une réflexion portant sur les différentes étapes de conception puis de création, en contextualisant chaque fois que cela sera possible l’œuvre dans ce qu’elle a choisi d’appeler son lieu et sa chaîne de production. De cette confrontation entre l’emploi de procédés artistiques singuliers d’une part, au gré des influences et rencontres tacites des artistes selon une géographie commune d’autre part, émergent les linéaments d’un art nourri d’interpénétrations culturelles.

Biographie : Doctorante sous la direction du Professeur Thierry Lalot en charge de l’unité de conservation restauration des biens culturels à l’Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, et de M. William Whitney, responsable du Master Histoire et Technologie de l’Art et de la Restauration, Charlotte Nadelman réfléchit dans le cadre de sa thèse à la formulation de modules pédagogiques pour un enseignement de l’histoire de l’art orienté autour de la matérialité et de cadres d’expérimentation, à l’appui d’un corpus de trois peintures émanant du XVIIe siècle hollandais et flamand. Elle s’intéresse par ailleurs à l’articulation didactique de discours théoriques fondamentaux d’histoire de l’art, afin de les rendre plus accessibles auprès des jeunes publics.

Depuis janvier 2020, Charlotte Nadelman est par ailleurs chargée d’enseignement contractuelle au sein de l’équipe pédagogique de Licence 3 du Centre d’art et d’archéologie Michelet de l’Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, dans le cadre de cours portant sur le “Faire” et les savoir-faire artistiques et artisanaux. En parallèle de cette mission, elle est chargée de missions art et culture , et propose un accompagnement scientifique et opérationnel à des acteurs institutionnels et privés, dans le cadre du déploiement de leurs projets d’expositions, et projets culturels.

Juin 2020. Participation au Printemps de la Recherche en Éducation 2020 – Thématique : “Les arts et les savoirs fondamentaux : Enjeux de formation” organisé par le réseau des Instituts Nationaux Supérieurs du Professorat et de l’Éducation (INSPE) – présentation au format distanciel (vidéo). Poster sélectionné pour la phase finale : L’histoire de l’art au service de la ré-conciliation sensible de l’enfant : Enjeux et ressorts pédagogiques d’une approche expérimentale dès le premier cycle.

Février 2020. Participation à la séance inaugurale du séminaire doctoral de l’Atelier du CHAR 2020 –  “Saintes, tentatrices et sorcières : la femme et le mal” – Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne : L’enlèvement de Proserpine par Rembrandt van Rijn : La violence incarnée.

May 17-18, 2021: Symposium “Cross-border connectivity in Nordic-Baltic Art in the late 19th and 20th centuries”, Swedish Institute.

(alt. at Zoom). Link with presentations and abstracts: www.sh.se/cross-border_connectivity.

June 14, 2021: Beyond the centroid logic: Investigating spatial conceptions and relations of, and within, “the North” (Marta Edling and Annika Öhrner, Södertörn University, Stockholm)

Thinking geographical space as social space: Methodological reflections on artistic contacts between Stockholm and Paris, 1908–1955 (Marta Edling)

In my presentation, I will highlight methodological issues relating to cross-border artistic contacts between Paris and Stockholm in the first half of the twentieth century. I intend to show the relevance of the choice of scale, like the metric scale of topographical maps, and the indication of spatial positions. If we say that Swedish artists had been frequent travellers to Paris during the first half of the twentieth century, what do we mean by “Paris”? Exactly what spatial position are we referring to? The city at large, an arrondissementor a street? What are the analytical consequences of reducing the scale and differentiating between specific locations within Paris in a close-up view?

One answer is that spatial differentiation allows for the distinction of several “Parises” and cross-border contacts as social constructs. Social interconnectedness is vital to cross-border artistic movements (e.g. networks, friendship or other forms of collaborations as well as taking part in professional training or activities). Reducing the scale enables tracking contacts closer to the social spaces facilitating them: who did Swedish artists interconnect with in “Paris”? Which places and people were important to them? And what resources did the travellers access in “Paris”? The aggregated symbolic, economic and social capital in the city was indeed large; however, it was generated by different kinds of sources. In many cases, it was not even French, and if it was, it did not guarantee that it would be of any use for an artistic career in Sweden.

Marta Edling is Professor of History and Theory of Art at Södertörn University, Stockholm, and Docent of Art History at Uppsala University. Often taking as her starting point in sociology, her research includes critical readings of the Swedish artistic field, the history of twentieth-century artistic education and research, art academies and art theory, and the history of photography. Since 2018 she has been researching artistic positions and collaborations in the Nordic region, 1945–89, focusing on the role of national and regional artistic networks and cross-border contacts inside and outside the Nordic region.

Relevant publications:

Building New Collaborations with Old Networks: The Early Years of the Nordic Art Association, 1945–59

From Margin to Margin? The Stockholm Paris Axis 1944–1953

Challenging centroid logics: Investigating spatial relations within the Nordic–Baltic realm (Annika Öhrner)

The time-space of the art scene in the three Baltic states during the decade after 1989 was locally constructed as “a buffer to the past and antechamber for the future” (Jablionskene, 2010). During a limited period of time, artistic action, curatorial efforts and the circulation of art exploded within and beyond Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. Meanwhile, a “Western” structure for curating and presenting contemporary art was implemented by the Open Society Foundations and the Soros Centres for Contemporary Art that opened in Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius as well as in the rest of the former Eastern bloc around 1990. This fulfilled, and responded to, the desire of international curators and museums to explore and colonise the nascent contemporary art field. As a result of a centroid logic, the Baltic countries sometimes were included in international projects, and sometimes not at all due to their topographical position and allegedly marginal importance. Furthermore, as the new eastern expansion of the geographies of contemporary art was explored in the US and Europe, the cultural and political importance of the dominant regional relations between the Baltic countries and the Nordic nations was overlooked.

However, the often complex cultural and political interrelations within the Baltic–Nordic region were important for the art field. The Nordic countries looked to establish cultural relations with the Baltic states after 1989, and even before they had gained their independence in 1991. They did so by opening the Nordic Council of Ministers’ information offices in various Baltic cities (Kharkina, 2013). Young curators and artists from the Nordic region became involved in Baltic art life in order to secure cultural positions at home as well as, of course, in the local art scenes in the three countries. In this paper, I will argue that the Nordic–Baltic realm became an important base for artistic formations, from 1989 to the expansion of the EU by the end of the 1990s. I will discuss curatorial statements from exhibitions during this delimited time-space and demonstrate how “international”, “Nordic” as well as “contemporary” became value-loaded and intertwined concepts.

Annika Öhrner is Associate Professor of History and Theory of Art and Director of Doctoral Studies at Södertörn University, Stockholm. Her research includes perspectives on critical historiography, cultural transfer, museum and exhibition culture and the history of art from the early twentieth century to the present day. Among her recent publications areArt in Transfer in the Era of Pop: Curatorial Practices and Transnational Strategies (ed., Södertörn Studies in Art History and Aesthetic, 2017), which was awarded the Terra Foundation for American Art International Publication Grant, and “Exploring the Territories of the Avant-Garde: Ivan Aguéli and the Institutions of His Time”, in Mark Sedgwick (ed.), Anarchist, Artist, Sufi: The Politics, Painting, and Esotericism of Ivan Aguéli(forthcoming, Bloomsbury Academic), 33–43. Since 2017 she has been exploring issues of conflict and transformations within cultural relations in the Baltic Sea area after 1989.[For further publications, see:Publikationer, se Diva].