Art and Text
18th École de Printemps of the Réseau international de formation en histoire de l’art
Cambridge (UK), 11–15 May 2020
Art history in the twenty-first century has participated in turns toward
embodiment, the digital, and the global. Correspondingly there has been greater
emphasis on phenomenology, materiality, and translation in studies of art and text.
We now concern ourselves not just with questions of iconography, and with thevisual and material configurations of art and text, but also with meanings producedby their making, and their place in wider sensory experiences. Analysis of forms andinscriptions across cultures helps us to compare and relativize concepts andcategories, and studies of travelling images and objects have shown us that, as
things move, material and artistic responses relate in complex and inconsistent ways
to language-based forms of interaction.
Digital experiences of pictorial forms and words not only fuel our desire to study
objects first-hand, but also affect our ways of thinking about our visual and textual
objects of study. On our screens, moving and interactive images are embedded in
the bodies of texts; we scroll and swipe, and view windows side by side; and words
are read aloud to us as we experience forms visually. Scholarly inquiry into a wider
range of past uses of art and text has developed in parallel with these changes in ourown viewing and reading practices.
Many twentieth-century approaches—semiotics, structuralism, poststructuralism—
spurred art historians to think past iconography toward visual, material, and verbal
modes themselves, to the nature of their operations, to their interactions in realms ofthought and experience. The idea of a natural relationship between art and text is
now not taken for granted. There is as much interest in divergences, tensions, andenigmas—phenomena that resist straightforward modes of interpretation—as there
is with matches and resonances. Art historians have developed terms—such as ofsurface and scape—for analysis of pictorial and formal aspects that stand apart fromlanguage.
The École de Printemps, 2020, will be dedicated to reassessing and reimagining art
history’s investments in art and text. How might we respond to, reactivate, andenvision past, current, and future approaches to this fundamental dyad? As scholars
from diverse disciplines increasingly contend with visual materials, what do we bring
to questions about art and text that is distinctive to art history? Applicants are invited
to submit proposals that address one of the following sub-themes (you must indicate
which one in your application):

Incantation: Some artworks are the result of a prayer or relayed speech; many
experiences of art involve aural sensation. How are invisible texts made present by
art or by the voice?
Animation: Many art/text apparatuses need to be flipped, turned around, or otherwise
moved to be efficacious or meaningful. How do process and movement relate toaesthetic and social functions?
Gesture: The signature is only one of many possible forms of inscription. A carved
graffito, for example, has a special tactility and materiality, evoking the presence of abody and its actions through time. What purposes are served by inscriptions as acts?
Labelling: To find and make sense of artworks, we are assisted by labels andmetadata. How are the choices made in the textualization of art significant orlimiting? How do words relate to frames?
Access: This panel will attend especially to systems of knowledge and questions ofdifficulty, expertise, and barriers to accessing meaning. Proposals that address
intelligibility across cultures and issues of translation are especially welcome.
Materials: Image and text often share a substrate or support which links them with
the natural environment, creates its own environment, and produces particular
sensual and aesthetic effects. How do properties like weight, texture, solidity, andreflectivity produce or enhance meaning? In what ways are the sources of materialssignificant?
Retrievability: Things become less intelligible as materials and meaning decay overtime. How do these problems inhibit or encourage re-interpretation and remediation?
What issues arise in acts of renewal?
Dissonance: Art can resist subordination to or explication with reference to texts.
What is it about images that makes them behave differently from texts? How should
our methods respond to these considerations?
We welcome proposals on topics from any period from antiquity to the present day.
Practical information
The École brings together doctoral students from eight countries to discuss their
thesis research with other students and experienced scholars from the Réseau
whose backgrounds and working methods are different from their own. Students will
be divided into discussion groups led by members of the Réseau, and will present
15-minute papers to the full group. There will be supplementary activities inCambridge related to the theme of the École. Participants are expected to attend forthe full five days.

Application procedure
Doctoral students who wish to participate should submit a proposal, of no more than
300 words, and a short CV, to edp2020cambridge@gmail.com by Monday,February 17, 2020. The proposals may be written in English, French, German, orItalian. Candidates should have proficiency in at least two of these languages, andthe CV should contain a section on language abilities. The proposal must indicate
which of the eight sub-themes will be addressed by the paper, and include theapplicant’s e-mail address, institutional affiliation, and place of residence. The
proposal and CV should be sent as a single document, with title formatted as follows:‘Proposal_FirstName_LastName_Institution’ (e.g. Chloé_Miron_UdM). The subject
line of your e-mail must contain your name and your country of application (e.g.
Chloé Miron Canada). Applicants will be notified of the outcome of their application inMarch 2020. Updates will be published on the website of the Réseau,
https://www.proartibus.org/.
N.B. Successful applicants will be asked to submit their abstract in another of thefour official languages of the Réseau in the two weeks following acceptance of their
proposal.
Organization
The 18th École de Printemps is organized by Andrew Chen (Research Fellow, St
John’s College, University of Cambridge) in collaboration with Todd Porterfield andBronwen Wilson (USA), Lucie Grandjean and Ségolène Le Men (France), and BrunoGrimm (Germany). Support is generously provided by St John’s College and theInstitut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris.