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Call for Papers - and apologies for cross-posting Annual AAH Conference Royal College of Art, London 10 - 12 April 2014 http://www.aah.org.uk/media/docs/AAH%25202014%2520Conference%2520Session%2520Listings.pdf Session: Sense as a Ratio: Early Modern Proportional Analogies in Visual Art This session addresses early modern uses of proportional analogies, theories and systems for representations of sensory information or ideas. With the rise in art treatises, along with technical assessments, of the body and its sensory judgments, there was a shift away from traditional Neo-Platonic and Neo-Pythagorean concepts of universal truth in quadrivium and humanistic studies. Increasing interests in the ‘beauty’ of phenomena or ideas (analogia, αναλογια) expanded the discourse on the predominantly sense-oriented beauty of proportio, symmetria, pulchritude, and harmonia. Often addressing the human condition, this period of work involved clever developments of visceral and intellectual contrasts, paradoxes, and concettismi. An opportunity to discuss this history of ideas, analogies and contrasts, this session considers differences between systematic and intuitive applications of proportional sensory content in visual art, with particular interest in correspondences between technical and demonstrative/suggestive aspects of an object. Generally at issue is the role of proportional methodologies for technical and sensory assessments of the human condition. Topics could cover, for example, approaches to proportional systems and analogies in landscape, figural arrangements, printmaking, still-lifes, grotesques, mechanical drawings, architectural representations, anatomical studies, visual rhetoric, botanical collections, natural philosophy, cabinets of curiosities, draughting mechanisms, art treatises, paint chemistry, pietra dura, intarsia, design, hybridity, rhythmos, rilievo, colour theory, fragrance, taste, festivals, religious reform, European expansion, political discourses, etc. Abstracts of less than 250 words may be sent to Matthew Landrus (convenor) at [log in to unmask] before 11 November 2013.