Category: Sydney Events

Sydney Event | Whitney Davis on Prehistoric Pictoriality

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A Thin Red Line: The Presence of Prehistoric Pictoriality Whitney Davis The Power institute with Sydney Ideas is delighted to present a lecture by Whitney Davis, Professor of History & Theory of Ancient & Modern Art, University of California at Berkeley, and Visiting Professor, University of York (UK). Professor Davis’s lecture will address one of the most well-established and influential ideas about prehistoric (and specifically Paleolithic) pictorial representation, namely, the idea that their original makers and beholders did not take them and use them as pictures “in our sense” but instead considered them to be the “things themselves”, that is, the objects depicted – such as bison and other animals. But how do we reconcile this idea, which has some anthropological justification, with the visible activity of mark-making and of “painterliness” – of making visible the process of making the…

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Symposium | Paul Klee in Peace and War: Tunisia and the German Home Front 1914-18 | Sydney

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Paul Klee in Peace and War: Tunisia and the German Home Front 1914-18 22 July 2014, Art Gallery of NSW Proudly presented by The Power Institute, The University of Sydney with the generous support of the Consulate General of Switzerland, Sydney and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This forum, convened by Professor Roger Benjamin, will bring together an international panel to celebrate the centenary of Paul Klee’s famous voyage to Tunisia. Claimed by the artist himself as his ‘breakthrough to colour’, the Tunisian trip of April 1914 elicited brilliant work from Klee and his colleagues August Macke and Louis Moilliet. The artists transformed the genre of Orientalism by adapting the aesthetics of Cubism and the high-colour art of the Blue Rider and Orphist avant-gardes to the North African scene. The ancient Islamic capital of Kairouan became the focus…

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Lecture | The Ruination of Everything: Joseph Pennell, America and Illustration before the Great War – Eric Segal | Sydney University

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The Ruination of Everything: Joseph Pennell, America and Illustration before the Great War Eric Segal The Power Institute with Sydney Ideas is proud to present a talk by Eric Segal, of the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida. Segal’s presentation will focus on the artist Joseph Pennell (U.S.A. 1857-1926). Pennell worked throughout Europe and England illustrating Old World cities and landscapes, whist at the same time rendering great American works of architecture and engineering. His dedication to a shabby Europe of the past and a gleaming New-World modernity, reflected contradictions and disappointments in his chauvinistic concerns about the faltering course of American cultural progress. The talk will explore how Pennell tied together thinking about the preservation of art, encroaching immigration and “wonders” of engineering, in an untidy package that led to complex and sometimes explosive…

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Workshops | Enlightenment Cosmopolitanisms and Sensibilities and Cosmopolitan Moments: Instances of Exchange in the Long Eighteenth Century Emerging Scholar Workshop | Sydney

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Two workshops on ideas of cosmopolitanism June 11-12 in Sydney. Enlightenment Cosmopolitanisms and Sensibilities The character of practiced cosmopolitanism during the Enlightenment often appears to amount to little more than an extension of early modern courtly internationalism infused with a new language of ideas. Further investigation reveals the desire on the part of Enlightenment cosmopolites to open borders in the name of economic, political, intellectual and artistic progress. This workshop explores cosmopolitanism in practice during the long eighteenth century in Europe and, through circulation, beyond its borders. It seeks out lived experiences of cosmopolitanism in the evidence of visual, social and textual expressions, and then asks how to interrogate this evidence. What were the opportunities through which border crossings became fixed in the minds of participants and observers? How was Enlightenment cosmopolitanism in practice inflected with different forms of sensibility?…

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Public Lectures | Melissa Hyde and Richard Taws | Sydney Intellectual History Network

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Two lectures on eighteenth and nineteenth-century French art history in Sydney in June. Painted Women in the Age of Madame de Pompadour | Melissa Hyde In this lecture, Prof Melissa Hyde considers the role that cosmetics played in the court politics and social identities of women at the court of Versailles. Focusing largely on portraits of the most famous mistresses of Louis XV, Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry, Hyde will discuss ‘making up’ the face as a symbolic practice. The lecture also considers the historical irony and significance of Madame Du Barry’s eventual refusal of rouge. For the artist, François-Hubert Drouais and Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, who portrayed Pompadour, Du Barry and Marie-Antoinette after them, the problem of depicting an unpainted, natural face through inherently artificial painterly means presented something of a paradox. The lecture also looks at how artists…

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Call for Papers | ‘Ideas and Enlightenment’ The Long Eighteenth Century (Down Under) | David Nichol Smith Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Studies XV

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‘Ideas and Enlightenment’ – The Long Eighteenth Century (Down Under) David Nichol Smith Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Studies XV 10-13 December 2014, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia Call for Papers The Sydney Intellectual History Network and ‘Putting Periodisation to Use’ Research Group at the University of Sydney invite you to the Fifteenth David Nichol Smith Seminar (DNS), with the theme ‘Ideas and Enlightenment’. Inaugurated and supported by the National Library of Australia, the DNS conference is the leading forum for eighteenth-century studies in Australasia. It brings together scholars from across the region and internationally who work on the long eighteenth century (1688-1815) in a range of disciplines, including history, literature, art and architectural history, philosophy, the history of science, musicology, anthropology, archaeology and studies of material culture. We welcome proposals for papers or panels on the following topics, although please note…

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Lecture | Professor Thomas W. Gaehtgens, Director, The Getty Research Institute | Sydney University

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Professor Thomas W. Gaehtgens, Director, The Getty Research Institute The Power Institute and Sydney Ideas are proud to present a lecture by internationally respected art scholar and historian, and Director of the Getty Research Institute, Professor Thomas W. Gaehtgens. In his presentation, Professor Gaehtgens will share insights from his seven years at the helm of the Getty Research Institute, one of the world’s most preeminent research centers for arts and culture. In particular, Professor Gaehtgens will discuss the work of the Getty Research Institute with regard to its global commitment to research and scholarly resources. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to hear Professor Gaehtgens speak, and to learn how a leading institution such as the Getty successfully dedicates itself to advancing further knowledge and understanding within the field of visual arts. The Getty Research Institute is an operating program of…

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Lecture | Dr Barbara Gaehtgens on Rembrandt’s Abduction of Ganymede | Sydney Intellectual History Network

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Looking Closely: Interpreting Rembrandt’s Abduction of Ganymede Dr Barbara Gaehtgens An ‘Undoing the Ancient’ FASS Collaborative Research Group Event Special Lecture by Dr Barbara Gaehtgens The abduction of Ganymede 1635 – an early work by Rembrandt van Rijn – has puzzled many generations of Rembrandt scholars. The painting illustrates the classical Greek myth of the abduction of Ganymede, most beautiful of male mortals, by an eagle-guised Zeus, who desires the beautiful youth as his cup bearer. The theme was not new in art and had been represented by many other artists, including Michelangelo and Peter Paul Rubens. Rembrandt’s representation is unusual, however, in that Ganymede is not a beautiful, ephebic nude but a screaming, urinating toddler, dressed in a linen smock, who is squirming to free himself from the scarf in which the eagle is carrying him. An independent art…

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Seminar | Visual Manipulation and Auto/Biography | Sydney Intellectual History Network

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Visual Manipulation and Auto/Biography The first seminar for 2014 in Auto/Biography and History series sponsored by the Global Sensibilities Group within the Sydney Intellectual History Network at the University of Sydney. Barbara Gaehtgens | 1643 or How to Represent the Queen’s New Power? Mark De Vitis | Madame as the Marquise: The Politics of Making a Mockery at the Court of Louis XIV This seminar will combine the work of two art historians researching the visual self-representation of royal woman at the French court during the seventeenth century. Dr Gaehtgens (an independent scholar based at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles) explores how Anne of Austria used multiplied images as visual propaganda to change her image from a widowed queen to a self-assured regent. In turn, Dr De Vitis (National Art School) considers the theatrical performances of Elizabeth Charlotte…

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Symposium | Art Gallery of NSW – Revolutionary ideas Perspectives on the building of an American nation

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Symposium: Revolutionary ideas Perspectives on the building of an American nation This symposium considers the role of the visual arts and other forms of cultural expression in building an idea of nationhood in America from its foundation as a colony through the beginning of the 20th century. It addresses the aims of portraiture, the meanings of landscape, the rise of genre subjects and the significance of garden projects in the contexts of relationships with Britain, claims of independence, pivotal wars and moments of dramatic social change. Presented in conjunction with the Sydney Intellectual History Network at the University of Sydney Date: Saturday 16 November 2013, 10.30am Venue: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Bookings: $65 non-member/ $50 member/ $30 full-time student/ 02 9225 1878 or via the website. Website: http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/calendar/revolutionary-ideas/ Program 10.30am Registration and morning tea, Domain Theatre foyer 11am…

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Lecture | Hero and Villain: Lafayette’s Legacies by Laura Auricchio

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Hero and Villain: Lafayette’s Legacies by Laura Auricchio Laura Auricchio, Associate Professor of Art History and Dean of the School of Undergraduate Studies at The New School in New York. Co-presented by Sydney University and the Sydney Intellectual History Network (SIHN@Sydney) Americans have long hailed the Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834) as an extraordinarily admirable figure – a wealthy French nobleman who, at the age of 19, volunteered to fight in the War of Independence and prodded his king to support the rebel cause. But in France, Lafayette is seen by partisans on both the left and the right as an opportunist, a misguided dreamer, even a traitor. In her talk, Auricchio will consider how Lafayette, a man who lived by a principle that he called ‘moderation’, could have garnered such disparate reputations. While part of the answer lies in the very…

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