Organized by Université Toulouse II – Le Mirail (C.A.S. 801) / S.A.I.T.
; 18-19 September 2014, Musée Paul-Dupuy, Toulouse, France
Call for Papers: Gold in/and Art
In the wake of the 2009 conference on “the eloquence of colour” organized by
the French Society for Word and Image Studies (S.A.I.T.), this 2014
interdisciplinary symposium wishes to examine the unique position of gold
across literature and the arts in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Indeed
gold is a pigment like no other. Its materiality inevitably conjures up a
complex and paradoxical symbolism which typically negotiates tensions between
the mythical and the political, the beautiful and the commercial, the sacred
and the profane, the invisible and the tangible, the untarnishable and the
ephemeral, virtue and lucre, the collective and the singular, the social and
the private. “Gold in/and Art” therefore purports to continue the exploration
of the dialogue between the arts inaugurated by previous S.A.I.T. conferences,
while confronting such issues of cross-fertilization with an analysis of the
processes of valuing/devaluing/revaluing at work in literature and the arts.
Gold will be envisaged under all its forms, as mineral, colour, light and/or
value—whether it be financial, ethical, mystical, philosophical, or aesthetic
value. The conference theme therefore lends itself to a multiplicity of
approaches which may be economic, historical, political, cultural, artistic,
philosophical, literary and/or linguistic.
Taking as a point of departure Gérard-Georges Lemaire’s observation about
gold’s omnipresence in the history of art and its renewed fascination among
contemporary artists (see G.G. Lemaire, L’or dans l’art contemporain, Paris:
Flammarion 2011; and exhibitions such as “Gold” in 2012 at the Belvedere in
Vienna or “Going for Gold” in 2013 at the Seattle Art Museum), researchers are
encouraged to examine works of 19th-century art/literature or writings on art/
literature which give gold pride of place, either because they foreground gold
as their primary material or because they capitalize on myths and legends
about gold.
We are also interested in receiving proposals for papers studying the
intersection between art and economics, building on the work of critics such
as Jean-Jospeh Goux (L’art et l’argent: la rupture moderniste 1860-1920;
Frivolité de la valeur; Symbolic Economies; The Coiners of Language), Marc
Shell (The Economy of Literature, Money; Language and Thought; Art & Money),
Catherine Gallagher (The Body Economic), Mary Poovey (Genres of the Credit
Economy) or Regenia Gagnier (Individualism, Decadence and Globalization; The
Insatiability of Human Wants: Economics and Aesthetics in Market Society;
Idylls of the Marketplace: Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public).
Finally, from a political, philosophical, epistemological, moral, religious or
spiritual point of view, it may be helpful to keep in mind Zarathustra’s
comments on gold : “Tell me, pray: how came gold to the highest value? Because
it is uncommon, and unprofiting, and beaming, and soft in lustre; it always
bestoweth itself. Only as image of the highest virtue came gold to the highest
value. Goldlike, beameth the glance of the bestower. Gold-lustre maketh peace
between moon and sun” (Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, chapter XXII).
Indeed, gold has traditionally been used as a standard—of purity, value,
soundness or excellence. But how has this notion been either consolidated or
challenged in 19th- and early 20th-century art and literature? Do we still
believe in the universal and eternal prestige of gold understood as a
benchmark of value? Or has the possibility for such a consensus disappeared
with the emergence of more diversified centres of power?
Possible topics may include but are not limited to:
- The re-writings of Biblical stories or myths and legends in which gold plays a major part (the Golden Calf, Danae, King Midas, Croesus, Hercules in the Garden of the Hesperides, Jason and the Golden Fleece etc.)
- Art and gold in utopias and dystopias
- Numismatic fiction
- Gold and religion – Gold and the mystic eye – Conversion vs. convertibility – Gold and light
- Theories of art: the golden mean, the golden age, etc.
- Representations of the artist’s creative alchemy
- Symbolic intermedial economies: how does intermediality (i.e. cross- fertilization between various media or art forms) operate productively? What are the benefits/profits of such an intermedial dialogue for the work of art/ the artist/the reader/the spectator?
- Aesthetic revolutions and speculation – Economic crises and crises in representation
- The art world: artistic institutions, critics, and art dealers
- Gold and the literary/artistic canon - Post-colonial perspectives on gold – Gold and gender: the “gilded cage” of womanhood, gendered approaches to gold – Gold and queer theory
- Gold in artistic movements: Orientalism, Impressionnism, Japonism, the Aesthetic Movement, Art Nouveau, etc.
Please send a 500-word abstract with a short bio to Catherine Delyfer
(catherine.delyfer@univ-tlse2.fr) no later than December 30, 2013. Selections
will be made by March 1st, 2014. Papers will be delivered in English. A
selection of papers will be publis
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