Journal18

03/09/2024

Hot off the press, and just in time to add to your syllabi! Check out Matt Gin's take on the Paris Olympics opening ceremony from a longer historical perspective:

On July 26, the 2024 Olympic Games opened in Paris with a pageant staged on the Seine. For the Parade of Nations, tour boats ferried athletes from the Pont d’Austerlitz to a temporary rostrum in front of the Eiffel Tower where they were greeted by President Emmanuel Macron and VIPs (Fig. 1).

28/08/2024

New in Notes & Queries: Kelly Presutti reviews the new displays at the recently renovated Musée national de la marine in Paris.

Paris’s Musée National de la Marine, reopened in November 2023 after a multi-million-euro, six-year renovation, originated in 1748 with a donation of model ships from the naval engineer and renowned naturalist Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau.

11/06/2024

New in Notes & Queries: Curators Laura Turner Igoe and Joe Baker reflect on their exhibition _Never Broken: Visualizing Lenape Histories_.

Our exhibition, Never Broken: Visualizing Lenape Histories, was held at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Bucks County, Pennsylvania from September 9, 2023 to January 14, 2024.

21/05/2024

New in Notes & Queries: Elizabeth Bacon Eagle interviews Jennifer Van Horn about her important 2022 book, _Portraits of Resistance_, touching on the politics of materiality and the responsibilities of art historians.

Fig. 1. Cover of Jennifer Van Horn, Portraits of Resistance (Yale University Press 2022), featuring James Reid Lambdin, Portrait of Delia, ca. 1840-49.

08/05/2024

Proposals are being accepted for issue 20 CLEAN (Fall 2025), edited by Maarten Delbeke, Noémie Etienne, and Nikos Magouliotis.

This issue of Journal18 invites essays on acts of and discourses around cleaning in the long eighteenth century, particularly cases that address issues of authority and ownership.
Full CfP here: https://www.journal18.org/future-issues/

Deadline for article proposals: October 1, 2024

Image: Gerrit Dou, A Maidservant Scouring a Brass Pan at a Window, 1663, oil on panel, 16.6 x 13.1 cm. Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2024

17/02/2024

New in Notes & Queries: Stephanie O'Rourke on mineral extraction, French cartography, and the picturing of space in the eighteenth century.

A functional truism of eighteenth-century French cartography is that it enshrined a topographical way of understanding space—that it mapped with growing precision the features and dimensions of land surfaces.

24/10/2023

New in Notes & Queries: Marika Takanishi Knowles reflects on an encounter with a "viscerally racist image," examining the connections between theatricality, commerce, and the construction of Blackness in transatlantic culture.

In August 2022, while visiting the new permanent exhibition “Bordeaux au XVIIIe siècle, le commerce atlantique et l’esclavage” at the Musée d’Aquitaine, I encountered a viscerally racist image (Fig. 1).

21/07/2023

New in N&Q! The roundtable review of _The Dawn of Everything_ convened by Ashley Cohen provides incisive responses to the book's challenges to eighteenth-century scholars. With contributions by Robbie Richardson, Christen Mucher, Tony C. Brown, Blanca Missé, Stephanie DeGooyer, and Ashley Cohen.

David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021). 704 pages. $35.00. ISBN: 9780374157357.

05/07/2023

New in Notes & Queries: Sasha Rossman looks into the recrudescence of the rococo in The White Lotus TV series!

The distinct theme song of Mike White’s TV hit The White Lotus (WL) returned to screens around the world this past winter. This time, the opening credits paired Cristobal Tapia De Veer’s warbling sounds with a pastiche of rococo wallpaper: fountains gushed, putti and satyrs romped in a pastoral....

08/06/2023

New in Notes & Queries: In a vibrant tribute to Vivienne Westwood, Robert Wellington retraces the fashion designer's fruitful engagement with The Wallace Collection and eighteenth-century art.

The recent death of Vivienne Westwood (1941–2022), Britain’s most influential fashion designer of the last fifty years, gives us cause to reflect on the eighteenth-century art and fashion that inspired her designs.

24/05/2023

New in Notes & Queries: Yasemin Altun reviews Paris Spies-Gans's _A Revolution on Canvas_.

Paris A. Spies-Gans, A Revolution on Canvas: The Rise of Women Artists in Britain and France, 1760–1830 (New Haven: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in Association with Yale University Press, 2022). 384 pp.; 157 color + b-w illus. Hardcover $55.

15/05/2023

New in Notes & Queries: Kathryn Desplanque teases out the connections of the ubiquitous Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience to the eighteenth century.

Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience, Raleigh, NC, April 2022-2023. We are all by now aware of the immersive Vincent van Gogh exhibition phenomenon and have perhaps even encountered whispers of its many mysteries: Why do these immersive exhibitions differ so much in their quality? Exactly how man...

17/04/2023

Thrilled to announce the publication of our latest Spring 2023 issue, Cities, co-edited by Katie Scott and Richard Wittman, with contributions by Aleksandr Bierig, Stacey Sloboda, Anne Hultzsch, Richard Wrigley and Sigrid de Jong:

Art history has traditionally narrated the early modern city through the monuments and buildings that constituted its environment and with reference to its spatial distribution.

10/03/2023

New in Notes & Queries: Katy Rosenthal reviews _The Shoemaker's Stitch_ by Shilpa Shah and Rosemary Crill who bring to the surface the rich legacy of kaarigars through their study of Mochi embroideries of Gujarat in the TAPI collections.

Shilpa Shah and Rosemary Crill, The Shoemaker’s Stitch: Mochi Embroideries of Gujarat in the TAPI Collection (New Delhi: Niyogi Books, 2022). 220 pages. ISBN 9789391125455.

13/02/2023

New in Notes & Queries: Ellen R. Welch reviews _Scripts of Blackness_ by Noémie Ndiaye, an expansive examination of European performances of blackness in the early modern period.

Noémie Ndiaye, Scripts of Blackness: Early Modern Performance Culture and the Making of Race, RaceB4Race: Critical Race Studies of the Premodern series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022). 376 pages, 8 b&w halftones, 12 color images. $64.95. ISBN 978-1-5128-2263-2. This book’s ...

19/12/2022

New in Notes & Queries: Oliver Wunsch reviews the _Dare to Know_ exhibition, a timely exploration of the connection between art making and knowledge production in the eighteenth century.

Exhibition: Dare to Know: Prints and Drawings in the Age of Enlightenment, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts, September 16, 2022 – January 15, 2023. Pictures produce knowledge.

05/12/2022

New in Notes & Queries: Alden R. Gordon reviews Dame Rosalind Savill's Everyday Rococo: Madame de Pompadour and Sèvres Porcelain, with additional remarks about the conference organized in conjunction with the publication by the French Porcelain Society and the Wallace Collection. Congratulations to Dame Savill whose book is shortlisted for Book of the Year 2022 by Apollo: The International Art Magazine!

Rosalind Savill, Everyday Rococo: Madame De Pompadour and Sèvres Porcelain. 2 vols. Norwich: Unicorn Press, 2021. 1211 pp. $275. ISBN 978-1916495715 Dame Rosalind Savill’s Everyday Rococo: Madame de Pompadour & Sèvres Porcelain is a magnificently produced two-volume study of the early d...

01/12/2022

Delighted to announce our newest issue, Silver, brilliantly guest edited by Tara Zanardi and Anna Ficek, with contributions by Dani Ezor, Christina Lindeman, Susan Eberhard, James Middleton, José Andrés De Leo Martinez, and Christina Clarke. Check it out!

In his 1656 treatise El Paraíso en el Nuevo Mundo, Antonio de León Pinelo contends that the amount of silver extracted from Potosí’s Cerro Rico was enough to build a bridge of silver from the top of the mountain to the doors of Madrid’s Royal Palace: 2,070 leagues long, 14 rods wide, and 4 fi...

24/10/2022

Jessica L. Fripp's review of Raphaël Barontini's recent exhibition at Mariane Ibrahim Gallery in Paris is now available in Notes & Queries! The review, which includes a discussion with the artist, examines how his work contributes to the critical rethinking of eighteenth-century visual and material cultures.

Blue Lewoz, Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, Paris, France, June 10 – July 23, 2022. Fig. 1. Raphaël Barontini, Creole Dancer—La danseuse Créole, 2022. Acrylic, inks, and silkscreen on canvas, 106 1/4 x 74 3/4 in. © The artist. Image courtesy of Mariane Ibrahim.

07/10/2022

Part II of L'nu interdisciplinary artist, poet, and scholar Michelle Sylliboy's intervention for Notes & Queries is now available! Sylliboy continues her poetic work around a painful text by a seventeenth-century French missionary who appropriated her ancestors' language, offering an Indigenous perspective on the colonial archive.

Editor’s Note: Published in three installments, this intervention by L’nu interdisciplinary artist, poet, and scholar Michelle Sylliboy offers an Indigenous perspective on the colonial archive.

27/06/2022

New in Notes & Queries: We are honoured to present the first of three interventions by L'nu interdisciplinary artist, poet, and scholar Michelle Sylliboy, who offers an Indigenous perspective on the colonial archive. Parts II and III will be published in the fall. Wishing everyone a revitalizing summer!
https://www.journal18.org/nq/artists-notes-nmultes-is-an-active-dialogue-i-reclaiming-komqwejwikasikl-by-michelle-sylliboy/.

Editor’s Note: Published in three installments, this intervention by L’nu interdisciplinary artist, poet, and scholar Michelle Sylliboy offers an Indigenous perspective on the colonial archive.

15/06/2022

New in Notes & Queries: Katie Scott reviews _Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal Histories and Transnational Networks_.

Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal Histories and Transnational Networks, ed. by Lauren R. Cannady and Jennifer Ferng (Oxford: Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2021). 418 pp.; 76 ills. $100 This edited collection started life as a colloquium.

07/06/2022

New in Notes & Queries: Margot Bernstein reviews the Maurice-Quentin de La Tour catalogue raisonné, a tour de force by Neil Jeffares on his Pastels & Pastellists website.

Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists Before 1800: Maurice-Quentin de La Tour (1704–1788) website, 2021 edition, http://www.pastellists.com/LaTour.htm.

02/05/2022

Delighted to (somewhat belatedly) announce the publication of our Spring 2022 issue on Race: Representation in the French Colonial Empire, guest edited by Stephanie O'Rourke and Susannah Blair, with thought-provoking contributions by Marika Takanishi Knowles, Alicia Caticha, Christelle Lozère, Íris Kantor, Milena Natividade da Cruz, Cabelle Ahn and Katherine Calvin. Check it out when you have a chance:

Race: Representation in the French Colonial Empire In 2019 two projects marked the emergence of a new chapter in the study of race in French art history, one that has only accelerated and become more urgent following the global protests that began in the United States in June 2020.

11/04/2022

New in Notes & Queries: Katie Hornstein reviews the exhibition Les Animaux du Roi at Versailles, teasing out what's lurking in the luscious display.

Les Animaux du Roi, Château de Versailles, Versailles, France, October 12, 2021 – February 13, 2022. Curated by Alexandre Maral and Nicolas Milovanovic. Scenography: Guicciardini & Magni Architetti. Lighting: Lionel Coutou. You are allowed to enjoy this exhibition.

08/02/2022

Proposals are being accepted for issue 15 CITIES, edited by Katie Scott and Richard Wittman.

This issue will explore the fascinating relations between built forms and social bodies. How did the 18th-century city make room for its people? How did urban dwellers make a city their own? Full CfP here: https://www.journal18.org/future-issues/

Deadline for article proposals: 15 Mar 2022

Image: Rococo cartouche, Lentvaris Manor estate, Lithuania. Photo: Yates Norton.

20/01/2022

Journal18 is delighted to welcome Dr Catherine Girard as our new Notes & Queries Editor!

We would also like to thank our out-going N&Q Editor, Dr Zirwat Chowdhury, for her incredible and creative work.

07/12/2021

Very happy to announce the publication of our latest issue, "The 'Long' Eighteenth Century?," which may be the longest we've ever done! Guest edited by the amazing duo Sarah Betzer and Dipti Khera, with contributions by Sussan Babaie, Maggie M. Cao, Meredith Gamer, Bart Pushaw, Andrei Pop, Chanchal Dadlani, Holly Shaffer, Eleanore Neumann, Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Nebahat Avcioglu, Emma Barker, Ananda Cohen-Aponte, Prita Meier, Nancy Um, and Stephen Whiteman

25/10/2021

Two new reviews in N&Q: Giulia Pacini on Organic Supplements, a volume edited by Miriam Jacobson and Julia Park, and Paris Spies-Gans on the recent Peintres Femmes show in Paris:
https://www.journal18.org/nq/organic-supplements-a-review-by-giulia-pacini/
https://www.journal18.org/nq/femmes-peintres-a-review-by-paris-a-spies-gans/

Exhibition: Femmes Peintres: 1780-1830, Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, 19 May - 25 July 2021. In the first room of the Musée du Luxembourg’s unprecedented exhibition on women artists from the Revolutionary era, Women Painters, 1780-1830: The Birth of a Combat, four lines from the French writer Cons...

05/10/2021

New in N&Q: Craig Hanson reviews Matthew Craske's Joseph Wright of Derby: Painter of Darkness, noting that Craske offers a fresh take not only on the artist and his time but on that old chestnut of the monograph too:
https://www.journal18.org/nq/joseph-wright-of-derby-a-review-by-craig-hanson/

Matthew Craske, Joseph Wright of Derby: Painter of Darkness (London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2020), 368 pages, ISBN: 978-1913107123. Everything you think you know about Joseph Wright of Derby ( 1734–1797) and his paintings may be wrong.