Renaissance Society of America (RSA) 2017 Conference
Chicago, The Palmer House Hilton, 30 March - 1 April 2017
Call for papers
Panel: Paper in the Artist's Workshop
This panel seeks to consider paper across the early modern world and
how artists utilized paper not only as a support for drawing and
printmaking but also as a material that already had embedded meaning in
its production. Paper defined early-modern mobility from the
innovations in papermaking in the Arabic World to the import of paper
in the New World for the first printing presses; from the Japanese
paper used by the VOC to wrap goods to its mobilization in artistic
production by artists such as Rembrandt. Frequently paper carried in it
the traces of the season in which it was made, minute hairs from felt
fibers, and the waste running through the watermill used to process the
paper. With the invention of watermarks, paper began to carry the
impression of local places and customs. Paper was also frequently made
from the debris of the shipping industry: sailors’ uniforms; rigging;
ropes and sails. In turn, this brown or blue paper was then utilized
for the packaging and shipment of goods. Paper was a made product
already stamped with an artisan’s mark and carrying with it traces of
its local environmental conditions. This panel suggests that artists
were well aware of the multiple qualities of paper and sought to
examine and exploit these particularities of paper in the workshop.
Topics of particular interest are transregional studies of paper;
theoretical studies of watermarks; paper as a device for wrapping;
paper as a substance created through local environmental waste and
reused by artists.
Please submit abstracts of` 150 words and a short CV to Caroline
Fowler, Postdoctoral Associate in the Physical History of Art, Yale
University: [log in to unmask]
Deadline: June 1.
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