|
Conference Review
The Arbeitskreis Niederländische Kunst- & Kulturgeschichte (ANKK), which was founded in 2007, has successfully hosted its first major
conference. The three-day event, from September 30 - to October 2, 2011, took place in Frankfurt, offering some 150 German and international
participants the difficult decision of choosing between six lecture sessions and eight workshops, all of which addressed in differing ways the overall
theme of the conference: Ordnung des Sehens. Innovationsfelder der kunsthistorischen Niederlandeforschung (Systems of Perception: Innovatory
Concepts and New Approaches to Netherlandish Art and Culture).
As in HNA's own conference in Amsterdam in 2010, where ANKK, as a sister organisation, was given the opportunity to organize its own session within the
program, ANKK reciprocated in Frankfurt by handing over a slot to HNA. The session, 'Explorations in Early Modern Exhibition and Display Practices',
was organized and chaired by Miya Tokumitsu (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia), whose perceptive selection of papers from the many proposals
she received made for a coherent and fascinating morning. The first talk by Bert van de Roemer (Universiteit van Amsterdam) examined 'Nature in Order.
Nature in Abundance'. He showed how the representation of natural objects in the late seventeenth century was subjected to two different modes of
display. One method is found in illustrations which through the use of heavy shadows and close-up views presents the object in a manner that is very
much 'in the face of the viewer.' Quite a different approach was to opt for a rigidly ordered system: objects such as shells were kept in drawers and
arranged in beautiful decorative patterns, while other specimens, such as those needing special forms of preservation, were stored in glass jars, which
were arranged according to size in cabinets. This inner symmetry was repeated in the symmetrical arrangement of the cabinets according to height and
width within the collector's space.
Gero Seelig (Staatliches Museum Schwerin), who chaired the ANKK session in Amsterdam, presented a paper on 'The Collection Catalogue as a Change of
Perception.' This examined the significance of early printed catalogues of ducal collections, focusing in particular on Johann Gottfried Groth's 1792
catalogue of the Schwerin collection. Groth worked on his own initiative, and was dismayed to find that the duke, Christian Ludwig, the founder of the
collection, was not prepared to fund the publication, which was to include engravings showing a room-by-room hanging of the paintings. Groth therefore
only published the text, which, as Seelig showed, was nevertheless much appreciated by visitors. Such ducal collection catalogues also had an
unexpectedly negative consequence because they provided Dominique-Vivant Denon, Napoleon's ruthless art 'collector', with a handy guide to what was
available for confiscation in Germany and consequently he only visited those castles that had printed guides to the collection.
The third paper, 'Painting (for) the Cabinet: Jan van Kessel's The Four Parts of the World in the Collection of an Antwerp Silversmith' was presented
by Nadia Baadj (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor). Looking at Van Kessel's four paintings (Munich, Alte Pinakothek), each of which comprises an
elaborate ebony frame holding one large central panel and sixteen surrounding smaller ones, all on copper, she related the distinctive form and the use
of costly materials to the luxurious 'kunstkasten' produced in Antwerp at that time. Thus each panel was sort of a "cabinet-without-drawers" and as
such would have had a particular significance for the silversmith and collector Jan Gillis, probably the first owner of the series. She suggested
further that Van Kessel's series was inextricably linked to Gillis's own collection through the array of objects portrayed in the paintings.
The final paper, 'Curiositas und Civilité - Ostasien in fürstlichen Palästen und bürgerlichen Stuben), presented by Eva Zhang
(Ruprecht-Karl-Universität Heidelberg), examined different aspects of European interest in eastern art, in particular from China. She examined the
influence of illustrated books such as Johannes Nieuhof's publication of 1665, which detailed the visit by members of the East-India Company to the
Chinese emperor; the ever-growing fashion for Chinoiserie, particularly at the French court of Louis XIV, who drew parallels between his own sovereign
status, power and wealth and that of the Chinese emperor, and commissioned a tapestries series showing the History of the Emperor of China. Zhang
followed the changing manner of display of Chinese and Japanese objects and porcelain in princely collections, at the same time also looking at how
bourgeois society in the Netherlands satisfied its longing for the exotic. Moreover, this was not just the prerogative of the male collector. Wealthy
women assembled their own collections in exquisite dolls houses, such as that owned by Petronella Oortman (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) who commissioned
miniature pieces of porcelain and lacquered furniture from China to furnish her doll's house, spending enough money on its decoration to have been able
to purchase a real house on one of the canals. The taste for the East went to such an extreme that the wearing of kimonos became so widespread that
they had to be banned for church goers.
Krista de Jonge (KU Leuven) was one of the two keynote speakers (the other being Mieke Bal), presenting a paper on 'Designing Architecture in the
Sixteenth-Century Low Countries. On a New Attribution and Its Implications.' The topic was, as her title suggests, the significance of new additions to
the oeuvre of the draughtsman who made the drawing for the rood screen at Sainte-Waudru, Mons (1535). The number of HNA members chairing sessions or
workshops or giving papers is too numerous to mention them by name. The excellent scholarly input, the superb organization by the ANKK committee
(Ursula Härting, Dagmar Eichberger) and Jochen Sander (Städel Museum and Goethe Universität Frankfurt), the beautiful location on the
university campus and the excellent weather all contributed to making the conference a memorable occasion.
Fiona Healy, HNA Liaison
Mainz
<<BACK
|
