Call for Papers "Text Versus a Piece of Art" conference at the University of Lodz, Poland

Dear SHERA,

On behalf of my colleagues from the Department of Art History at the
University of Lodz, Poland I would like to share with SHERA
subscribers the following call for papers.

Thank you very much in advance.

Best regards,

Joanna Matuszak
Ph.D. candidate in Art History
Indiana University, Bloomington






Call for papers: “Text Versus a Piece of Art” conference


18-20 May 2015,

the University of Lodz

conference is organised by:

Department of Art History

Department of Slavic Studies

and

Faculty of the History of Arts

at the Lviv National Academy of Arts,



Waldemar Ceran Research Centre

for the History and Culture of

the Mediterranean Area

and South-East Europe

CERANEUM

at the University of Lodz

The aim of the Conference is to exchange interdisciplinary views
within the scope of the suggested topic.  Despite numerous attempts to
describe the topic, we have decided to take the challenge once again.
We are intrigued by a question to what extent unity, closeness of
meaning of textum/ τέχνη, characteristic of the ancient culture, is
significant for describing art and text at the begining of the 21st
century.

We are curious whether relationships between an image and text,
remaining in the centre of attention for a long time, are universal
or, being on the boundaries, peripheries, in areas between cultures,
they achieve different specificity and intensiveness. That is where
the idea of the conference situated on the peripheries of the West
came from. Closeness of the orthodoxy is an incentive to raise a range
of detailed problems resulting from disparate approach to an image and
text in the Orthodox Church (e.g. Imiaslavie). Even further area,
which is of equal interest to us, is otherness of approach to this
problem developed by the cultures of the New World of America. Only in
comparison with such perspectives, still exotic to some, we are able
to discern the outlines of Western identity.

History of art, understood broadly as visual arts (paintings,
sculptures, graphic and architectural pieces), literary arts (lyric,
narrative and dramaturgical pieces) as well as multimedial ones (video
installations, films, computer games, etc) has often involved a
theoretical thought, different forms of recording, and, above all,
various forms of word presence. The problem is perceived in both a
historical dimension and a modern one. While in the past a
relationship between text and a piece of art was shaped according to
regulations and treatises, the last century introduced a manifesto as
a new form of language, which dominated almost all avant-garde trends
in the 20th century. Letters, words and the whole inscriptions or
scores happen to be an equivalent component of iconographic/dramatic
depictions/performances, lending them numerous additional semantic
references.  In such an extensive research field, we want to analyse
relationships between text and art. We suggest dividing sessions
thematically into three basic groups of problems: text and a
manifesto, ecphrasis and hypotyposis, a letter and an inscription.
What we find interesting within each of them is both theoretical
discussions and analyses devoted to particular pieces.

•             A treatise and a manifesto

"Producing" a piece of art was often associated with particular
technical, aesthetical or ideological regulations. Treatises defining
a process of creation functioned from the antiquity to the 19th
century, when they were replaced by templates.  Pauperisation of art
resulted in appearance of yet another form of communication with a
viewer/buyer, raising artistic acts to the rank of
uniqueness/dissimilarity. Manifestos provided creative act with unique
power, which at the same time had educational value, explaining ideas
contained in a piece of art.

•             Ecphrasis and hypotyposis

Ecphrasis (gr. ékphrasis) or "precise description" was originally
regarded only as a rhetorical figure; over time it developed into a
separate literary trend.  The term refers to a description of pieces
of art in literary works (religious texts, prose, poetry, drama). It
infrequently plays a role of a psychological, rhetorical or
ontological element in a literary piece. We are particularly
interested in ecphrases concerning particular pieces of art, but also
in evocative hypotyposes (gr. hypotyposis "sketch, outline"), creating
almost tangible paintings, which (although nonexisting) may be placed
in the context of research into visual depictions within the field of
both history of literature and history of art.  A separate category,
created above mentioned terms, is undoubtedly "recording of a theatre
performance" existing in both film and literary forms, like scores,
shooting scripts, created at various stages of shaping a theatre or
film piece.

•             A letter and an inscription

Single letters, whole words, longer inscriptions are elements of
visual arts. Dialogues explaining depictions have accompanied scenes
from the times of ancient Egypt until modern cartoon or city murals,
like single letters which appear as elements of composition, playing
an important formal, symbolic and semantic role. What seems
interesting is both objects in which inscriptions are treated
ornamentally, those in which text is an equivalent component of a
picture and those in which illustrations serve as an addition to the
text. Particular attention should be paid to the text introduced as a
picture/object into a theatre or film piece; meticulous attention
should be also paid to titles of art pieces.

We would like to invite art historians, art critics, literature
historians and theoreticians, culture anthropologists, culture
experts, theatre experts, film experts and other people undertaking
research into abovementioned field to take part in the discussion.



Paper proposals (a title and an abstract 250-300 words) should be sent
by March 22, 2015 to: [email protected]

Conference fee:               full payment                     250
PLN/ or 60 EUR

                                                reduced payment
    150 PLN/ or 35 EUR

Conference languages are: Polish, Ukrainian and Congress Languages

Coordinators: Dominika Łarionow PhD, Julia Sowińska-Heim PhD
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