CFP: Thematic issue on textiles for Perspective. La revue de l¹INHA

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Justine De Young

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Feb 14, 2015, 5:14:26 PM2/14/15
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Perspective. La revue de l’INHA
Call for papers for a thematic issue on textiles (2016-2, December)

The forthcoming thematic issue of Perspective. La revue de l’INHA (slated for publication in December 2016 and conceived jointly with the Mobilier national and the Manufactures nationales) will be devoted to textiles across different periods and different places of production and use.

The double purpose of this issue is to bring together articles that represent the state of recent – or even ongoing (in the case of Switzerland, Germany and France) – research, while at the same time following single diachronic threads: from medieval embroidery to Louise Bourgeois’s arachnid works, from the ornamentation of the body in antiquity to the Silk Road… It will provide an occasion to examine the textile craft as portrayed by Diego Velázquez in Las Hilanderas (1657, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado); indeed, this seminal painting from the artist’s abundant oeuvre inspires precisely the sort of innovative study that considers the notion of textile as a metaphorical and intermedial space, whereby the canvas reveals itself as both surface and subject.

While textiles offer art history a plethora of objects and subjects, the field must also open itself to interdisciplinary dialogue involving labor history, gender studies, and museum studies, as well as material culture studies, postcolonial studies, economic history, and geopolitics, especially as it relates to the procurement of raw materials. Art history is similarly strengthened when it brings scientific and technical history to bear on the fabrication of hand-made or industrial artifacts. The history of artisans and other agents, from producers to consumers, also offers particularly rich areas of study, on topics ranging from the Cévennes weavers of yesteryear to today’s Bangladeshi textile workers to visitors at the Centre national du costume de scène (National Center for Stage Costumes) in Moulins. In the context of a denationalized history of art, it is possible to examine – to name just a few – the industry of Indian-inspired cotton fabrics in eighteenth-century Europe, the international distribution in the twentieth century of ready-made clothing manufactured in China, or the many avatars of African textiles that reappear, for example, in the contemporary art of Yinka Shonibare, but that can also be traced through the long history of Benin appliqué cloths or the appropriation of ancestral textile practices in contemporary art of the Maghreb.

The issue will delve into the worlds of cultivation (sowing and harvesting), manufacture (weaving, dyeing, tailoring), and local and international commerce, and, more generally, examine the manifold uses of textiles in all periods and in all the corners of the globe. Artists have constantly been reinventing their relationship to textility as both ideal and material, from Mesoamerican feather cloth to Jana Sterbak’s Flesh Dress, not to mention the well-established archetypal relationship with abstract painting. Finally, a diachronic exploration of the history of textile institutions is also encouraged, ranging from centuries-old traditional manufactures to franchised fashion institutes such as the Parsons The New School for Design, now established in New York, Paris, and Shanghai. Similarly, much can be gained from looking more closely at museums involved in the conservation, restoration, or exhibition of textiles, or even the re-creation of old textiles and the commissioning of contemporary creations (Aubusson, Beauvais, The Gobelins).

These numerous topics (textile archeology, printed embroidery materials, theories of the arabesque, sampling processes, etc.) and objects (wall hangings, rugs, lace, clothing, upholstery, stage props, sculpted draperies, and so on) represent a variety of leads that Perspective wishes to explore. The thematic issue on textiles will comprise articles representing multiple forms and contents. Proposals may fall into one of two categories: either a synthetic article highlighting a particular aspect of textiles (25,000 characters/4,000 words) or a historiographical study concentrating on a specific medium, territory of production, or historical period whose textile specificity (in terms of materials, style, etc.) remains to be defined (45,000 characters/7,000 words).

This call for papers does not aim to cover all of the projected subjects. All submissions are therefore welcome, although we wish to favor, as far as possible, a trans-chronological approach. Submissions will be examined by the editorial committee for the issue, which includes Marc Bayard, Marion Boudon-Machuel, Catherine Breniquet, Pascale Charron, Rossella Froissart, Charlotte Guichard, Rémi Labrusse, Anne Lafont, Johanne Lamoureux, Philippe Malgouyres, Sara Martinetti, Nicole Pellegrin, Zahia Rahmani, Katie Scott, Philippe Sénéchal, Philippe Thiébaut, Merel van Tilburg, and Tristan Weddigen. 

Please send submissions (a 2000-3000 character/300-500 word abstract and a 2-3 line biography) to revue-pe...@inha.fr by March 31, 2015.

Sarah Féron
Chargée de communication
Institut national d'histoire de l'art (INHA)
2 rue Vivienne
75002 Paris
01 47 03 79 01
http://www.inha.fr
http://www.facebook.com/Institutnationaldhistoiredelart

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