Call for papers--Association of Print Scholars symposium

Call for Papers

Collaborative Printmaking Across Cultures and Times
Association of Print Scholars session at CAA 2017
Harvard University

Chaired by Jasper van Putten

Deadline for submissions: March 31, 2016

The Association of Print Scholars (APS) welcomes applications from
conservators, as well as from printmakers and art historians for
this CFP.

Printmaking, from its earliest to its most recent expressions, has
generally been characterized by collaboration.  This panel explores
the impact of collaboration on the artistic practice of printmaking
across various cultures and times.  In the West, renaissance
printmaking was characterized by divisions of labor that designated
specific tasks of professionals.  Designers, woodcutters, engravers,
printers, and publishers indicated their respective role on the
prints they helped produce with designations such as invenit
[invented], delineavit [traced/delineated], or excudit
[printed/published].  The production of Japanese woodcuts in the
nineteenth century was similarly defined by collaboration and
specialization.  Generally, publishers commissioned drawings from
artists, which were transferred to wood, cut, and printed by
specialized craftsmen on behalf of the publisher.  Collaboration
also characterized much of the printmaking in the modern period,
despite the emphasis on artistic individuality in this time.
Artists like Edouard Manet, Pablo Picasso, and Robert Rauschenberg
produced some of their most celebrated prints in collaboration with
master printmakers.  More recently, digital social networks have
opened up completely new venues for artistic collaboration.  As
technology has made sharing of images and ideas faster and easier
than ever before, it stands to reason that artistic collaboration
also changes.

Scholars have studied the more famous collaborations in the history
of printmaking in great detail.  Still, the impact of collaboration
on artistic practice is often overlooked.  Blockbuster shows
especially tend to focus on famous artists and neglect the vital
contributions of other individuals.  How did the contributions of
craftsmen, patrons, publishers, and agents impact the prints they
helped produce and disseminate?  How was their relative input valued
and remunerated?  To what extent can we interpret prints as the
products of networks of different makers?  Answers to such questions
will differ from time to time and from place to place.  This panel
seeks to further our understanding of collaborative printmaking by
seeking submissions engaging these issues from any culture and era.
Side-by-side, these papers will highlight commonalities and
differences with the aim to obtain unexpected insights.  Especially
welcome are contributions that make use of network theory to account
for the total range of actors involved in collaborations.  Also of
special interest are papers that engage the role of digital tools
and social networks in facilitating collaborations in contemporary
printmaking.

Please send an abstract of 250 words or less and a CV to Jasper van
Putten <jaspervputten<-at->me<.>com> and info<-at->printscholars<.>org by March
31, 2016.


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 29:43
                  Distributed: Tuesday, March 29, 2016
                       Message Id: cdl-29-43-007
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