Open Inquiry Archive is an independent online project established for the purpose of publishing scholarly occasional papers on topics related to culture, broadly construed. At OIA we are interested in publishing papers on culture and the arts, and especially pieces that may cross disciplinary boundaries, or that offer new insights into aspects of the author’s own discipline and beyond. Papers treating topics in the humanities, arts, and social sciences are welcome.

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Sincerely,

G. Arnold and Kimberlee A. Cloutier-Blazzard, co-editors & publishers

Deconstructing Feminine Civility: Counter-Portraits of Élite Women by Jan Steen

Early modern portraits of élite women have often been seen as signifiers of women’s social functions as sweethearts, wives, mothers, and the subordinates of men. This paper will explore portraits of upper-class women by the Dutch artist Jan Steen that function rather differently.  Steen’s images evince parodic intent that renders the conventional public personae of the portrayed individuals ambivalent: a trend that has elsewhere been termed “counter-portraiture.” In contrast to traditional portraits of élite sitters, “counter-portraits” open up avenues of irony, giving us a richer understanding of the role of women in early modern culture.  This paper will provide a northern extension to a reassessment of Italian images of women in Virtue and Beauty, exploring of how the parodic “counter-portrait” construct is used in female portraiture specifically, and what meanings such a survey might illuminate.

First drafted as a job talk in 2004 (no, I didn’t get the job), and later reworked so as to not let my hard work go to waste, my 2007 article on Cindy Sherman’s “History Portraits” continues to have a life of its own.

MetroPictures, Sherman’s home gallery, found it when it first came out on Bread and Circus, the online magazine that I co-edit.  Once (but no longer) listed on the MetroPictures site, it is still listed on the Cindy Sherman bibliography page of the Sprüth Magers Gallery. With roughly 20, 000 hits to present date, the article has recently been cited in an interesting blog-article about the nachleben of the Baroque artist Caravaggio:

Why is Caravaggio so popular now? by author Robert Reincke.

Let’s hear it for “everything has a purpose.”  Even in academia.

Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, 22-24 March 2012

“Playing with Convention: Humor and the Early Modern Portrait”

We seek paper proposals on works that appear to manipulate the conventions

of portraiture.  In particular, we are interested in visual representations

that exploit strategies of irony, comedy, satire, and related modes.

Proposals should include the presenter’s contact information; the paper’s

title; a brief abstract (150 words or less); a short curriculum vitae; and

any A/V requirements. Contact me for details.

My article, “The Elephant in the Living Room: Jan Steen’s Fantasy Interior as Parodic Portrait of the Schouten Family,” appears in Aurora: Journal of the History of Art, vol. XI [12/2010].  You can also find “Enchanting the Intellect and the Eye,” my review of A. Georgievska-Shine’s book, Rubens and the Archaeology of Myth, 1610-1620, in the same volume.

Also, my most recent article, ”Bean Kings and Brawling Priests: Pairing Epiphany and Easter in Baroque Haarlem,” [no longer under contract with Ashgate] is now under peer review with a journal.

Here is the abstract for the “Bean Kings” article:

The husband-and-wife artists Jan Miense Molenaer and Judith Leyster generally are considered to have worked collaboratively during their careers. The foci of this paper are two pendant sets painted by Molenaer and Leyster before their marriage in 1636, works not hitherto duly considered in relation to each other, nor understood as parodic commentary on increasingly stratified contemporary culture. I will trace the works’ iconographical, literary, cultural and philosophical sources, beginning with Leyster’s slightly earlier paintings of The Merry Company and The Last Drop of around 1629-1631, and then Molenaer’s set of The Battle of Carnival and Lent and Twelfth Night of around 1634. As we shall see, all four paintings share a common theme: they link the two central festivals of the Christian liturgical calendar—Christmastide and Eastertide.  In European popular culture the two are bound together by an entire socially-leveling carnival season that runs from early December through Mardi Gras or Vastenavond, six weeks before Easter. In their related paintings, Leyster and Molenaer depict carnival celebrations in juxtaposition to the complimentary end of those festivities with the advent of Lent. These works share an overlooked theme of ecumenical Christian humanism and an abiding form of seriocomical philosophy that was burgeoning in select humanist circles of Haarlem and beyond at this time.

Also, the title of the book in which my article “Bean Kings and Brawling Priests: Pairing Epiphany and Easter in Baroque Haarlem” will appear has been changed to: Parody and Festivity in Early Modern Art. Be on the lookout for it in 2011 from Ashgate Publishing.

First, my article “The Elephant in the Living Room: Jan Steen’s Fantasy Interior as Parodic Portrait of the Schoutens.”

Here’s a synopsis: The Dutch painter Jan Steen (ca. 1626–79) is well known for his topsy-turvy comic genre pieces. Steen’s handful of portraits, however, are typically viewed as conventionally decorous and flattering to his sitters. Even in his commissioned portraits, I propose Steen includes a comic mixture of genres and juxtapositions of levels of decorum that his erudite sitters found compelling. Steen’s witty, parodic images emulate the ancient serio-comical style. The focus of my paper is Steen’s Fantasy Interior (ca. 1663, Nelson Atkins Museum), a portrait of his friend Gerrit Gerritsz. Schouten, a Catholic brewer become landed-gentry. In the work, Steen contrasts Dutch social classes and family generations, comparing their looks and morals in parodic ways. Steen points to the folly of late-century forms of exclusionary classicizing etiquette and dress, proposing instead a medieval type of sociability as a preferable alternative. Steen notes the disjunctions in the seventeenth-century social fabric and explores them in his portrait. Even as Steen humorously subverts viewer expectation, he practices a comedy of inclusion versus a satirical rejection of “societal outsiders.” Thus, he creates an endlessly entertaining and provocative image that allowed Schouten both to celebrate and laugh at his own success simultaneously.

And second,“Enchanting the Intellect and the Eye,” Review of Aneta Georgievska-Shine,“Rubens and the Archaeology of Myth, 1610-1620: Visual and Poetic Memory.”

You can purchase copies of Aurora via their online subscription form.

Professor David Levine will be serving as our respondent, facilitating wide-ranging fruitful discussions on the interplay between Northern and Southern European comic art of the Early Modern period.

The “Defining Community Through Laughter” session times/topics are as follows:

DEFINING COMMUNITY THROUGH LAUGHTER IN EARLY MODERN ART I

Friday, 9 April 2010 2:00–3:30

Fondazione Cini – Sala del Consiglio

Co-Organizers: SANDRA CHENG, CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK, NEW YORK CITY COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY AND KIMBERLEE A. CLOUTIER-BLAZZARD, MONTSERRAT COLLEGE OF ART Chair & Respondent: DAVID LEVINE, SOUTHERN CONNECTICUT STATE UNIVERSITY

ROBIN L. O’BRYAN, INDEPENDENT SCHOLAR, HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA Mad Hatters and Punning Dwarfs: Power and Parody in the Renaissance Courts The presence of dwarfs in the Italian courts assured elite audiences of merriment and laughter, inspired as much by the dwarfs’ comic antics as by their physical deformations. But dwarfs also functioned as princely status symbols, becoming important features of the court’s propaganda. We see this paradox at work in two frescoes in the Gonzaga palace in Mantua. In one, a dwarf squire sports a ridiculously-oversized headdress in the dynastic colors; in another a female dwarf makes an obscene gesture, a pun on Gonzaga political connections. This paper argues that the Medici pope, Leo X, had these works specifically in mind when he commissioned a fresco for the Vatican apartments. There, a vulgarly-attired dwarf holding a fantastic helmet over his head brazenly puns on Leo’s newly-achieved princely rank. Using the dwarf to mock the court(s) that disparaged his bourgeois origins, this double-edged parody undoubtedly gave Leo the last laugh.

KIMBERLEE A. CLOUTIER-BLAZZARD, MONTSERRAT COLLEGE OF ART The Elephant in the Living Room: Steen’s Parodic Portrait of the Schoutens The Dutch painter Jan Steen (ca. 1626–79) is well known for his topsy-turvy comic genre pieces. Steen’s handful of portraits, however, are typically viewed as conventionally decorous and flattering to his sitters. Even in his commissioned portraits, I propose Steen includes a comic mixture of genres and juxtapositions of levels of decorum that his erudite sitters found compelling. Steen’s witty, parodic images emulate the ancient serio-comical style.The focus of my paper is Steen’s Fantasy Interior (ca. 1663, Nelson Atkins Museum), a portrait of his friend Gerrit Gerritsz. Schouten, a Catholic brewer become landed-gentry. In the work, Steen contrasts Dutch social classes and family generations, comparing their looks and morals in parodic ways. Steen points to the folly of late-century forms of exclusionary classicizing etiquette and dress, proposing instead a medieval type of sociability as a preferable alternative — something Steen’s Catholic patrons preferred. Steen notes the disjunctions in the seventeenth-century social fabric and explores them in his portrait. Even as Steen humorously subverts viewer expectation, he practices a comedy of inclusion versus a satirical rejection of “societal outsiders.” Thus, hecreates an endlessly entertaining and provocative image that allowed Schouten both to celebrate and laugh at his own success simultaneously.

DEFINING COMMUNITY THROUGH LAUGHTER IN EARLY MODERN ART II

Friday, 9 April 2010 4:00–5:30

Fondazione Cini – Sala del Consiglio

SANDRA CHENG, CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK, NEW YORK CITY COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY Foolish Patrons and Greedy Dealers: Pier Francesco Mola’s Satirical Drawings of the Art World Pier Francesco Mola (1612–66), a painter based primarily in Rome, used caricature to unburden his frustrations and personal anxieties with patronage and the commerce of art. The highly personal nature of some drawings, which were often lewd, indicates they were never intended for public viewing, but to be shared between intimate friends. These satirical drawings offer unique insight to the Seicento art world by illustrating the dynamic between artists and patrons, and the emerging class of amateur art dealers. This paper examines caricatures related to Mola’s troubles with his patron, Prince Camillo Pamphilj, nephew of Pope Innocent X. The drawings also reflect the fluctuating status of the artist’s friendship with the connoisseur and amateur dealer Niccolò Simonelli, who was in the service of the Pamphilj prince. Drawing attention to Simonelli’s role as middleman between artists and collectors, Mola’s satirical drawings ultimately question the effects of commerce on their friendship.

ARIANE WILSON, RWTH AACHEN UNIVERSITY Laughter in Early Modern Architecture From grotesque faces as parodies of egg-and-dart patterns on a cornice in the Medici Chapel to drawings of anthropomorphic profiles for pilaster bases, Michelangelo integrated playfulness within settings of magnificence and spiritual grandeur. In addition to humor based on figurative representation that can be attached to classical “superiority” theories of laughter, more abstract conceptions of architectural “incongruity” as humor are suggested in Michelangelo’s work.Laughter in architecture is rarely examined. This paper seeks to understand the mechanisms of laughter in the production and reception of architecture. Architects’ intentions and critics’ reception will be examined in order to test the hypothesis of an aesthetic community created by the use of wit: while the grotesque may have addressed the common observer, humor in architectural structure — rather than in ornament — may have included only those versed in the very canons being subverted, thus contributing to the social delimitation of cultural circles.

FRANCESCA ALBERTI, UNIVERSITÉ PARIS I–PANTHEON SORBONNE Tintoretto’s Comic Narrative Paintings Tintoretto’s mythologies, painted around 1550–60, are emblematic comic paintings in which gods with human vices are mocked in a way that recalls the antique burlesque and its Renaissance revival. These anti-heroic paintings also function as figurative examples of beffe; deities are depicted in situations that insinuate clear narratives with satirical attacks to cuckoldry or sexual practices like sodomy, current in sixteenth-century Venice. In order to show how Danae becomes a perfect procuress, or Jupiter is pictured as bordello client, uccellato (that is, beffato) by a courtesan Leda, I compare these artworks with the more libertine and popular iconography in prints and illustrations. Furthermore, the comic aspects of the mythological representations will be investigated in relation to contemporary literature by the Venetian polygraphs. Tintoretto’s paintings were probably conceived to entertain Venetian studiosa gioventù for whom, as his biographer Carlo Ridolfi reports, he invented “capricci d’habiti & di motti faceti.”

For more information, visit the RSA Conference website.

And, please stay tuned as Sandra and I plan on publishing a corollary text to the conference proceedings.

If you’re in Paris between Feb. 16 and May 07, 2010 be sure to stop by the École Nationale Supérieure de Beaux Arts for the drawing show “Le Baroque en Flandres: Rubens, Van Dyck, Jordaens.”

“The show exhibits original works on paper by several of the most prestigious 17th-century artists: Peter-Paul Rubens, Anthony Van Dyck and Jacob Jordaens, but also those of their close collaborators like Abraham van Diepenbeck, Pieter Soutman and Theodor van Van Thulden.  The exhibition offers a rare chance to compare these talented artists while looking at works from among genres as diverse as religious subjects, mythology, portraiture, landscape, genre scenes and still-life.

Created in the Low Countries under Spanish rule, the works also allow one to retrace the cultural context of their creation.  While van Dyck creates images evincing new Counter-Reformation theology, conversely Jordaens creates genre images that express his Protestant sense of religious repression. Though each artist is unique, each of them embraces the contemporary Baroque aesthetics of drama, naturalism and extreme juxtapositions of light and shadow.”*

(*My loose translation from the corollary exhibition website.)

And, how cool is this? The exhibition catalogue entry for Jordaens’ preparatory drawing of “The Satyr and Peasant” (Seen at right.  Cat. 10; pp. 56-62) cites my article, “The Wise Man Has Two Tongues: Images of the Satyr and the Peasant by Jordaens and Steen” (in Myth in History, History in Myth [Brill, 2009]). The curators used it as their source for the cultural context behind Jordaens’ chafing at the period reformation of popular, humanist traditions.  And, for good measure, Jordaens’ fabulous drawing is featured on the back cover of the catalogue!

Thanks very much to Camille Debrabant who sent me a gratis copy of the publication and a warm invitation to visit the show.  Perhaps a side-trip from Venice?  :)

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Practical Information:

École Nationale Supérieure de Beaux Arts, 14, rue Bonaparte 75006 Paris. Open everyday from 1 to 6 pm. Closed April 17 to 25 and May 1, 2010. Entrance fee: 3 €, Reduced ticket: 2 €.

Any donations will go to the ELCA Haiti relief fund.

Hope to see folks there! :)