Subjective Objects:
The Aesthetics of the Object in Symbolist Art and Writing
Friday 14 and Saturday 15 December
Kellogg College and the Department of Continuing Education
University of Oxford, Rewley House, 1 Wellington Square, Oxford OX1 2JA
Gustav Kahn's famous invocation to ‘objectify the subjective' invites a consideration of the intersection between Symbolist subjectivity and material objects. Symbolist aesthetes were discerning collectors of spiritual and deviant objects. Both Oscar Wilde and Proust invoke the ‘decorative' as an ideal art form and fin-de-siècle designers claimed suggestive meanings for their creations. Perhaps more than animate protagonists, objects inhabit pivotal manifestations of Symbolist poetry, theatre and prose. Symbolist texts themselves are complex visual artefacts, both in the typography and arrangement of the page and in the totality of the artistic book, from illustration to binding. This interdisciplinary and international conference brings together scholars in the fields of art and design history, modern languages, literary studies and practicing architects and designers.
Friday 14 December 2007
12:45-2pm Registration
Session 1: Intimisme and interiority
2pm Elizabeth Emery (Montclair University, New Jersey)
Objective Misunderstandings: Mallarmé, Des Esseintes, and the Legibility of Montesquiou's Symbolist Home
2:30pm Juliet Simpson (University of Buckinghamshire Chilterns)
Thinking Inside the Box: Dandies and the Symbolist House Beautiful
3:00pm Richard H Hayes (Rafael Vinoly Architects)
Objects and Interiors: Oscar Wilde
3:45pm Afternoon tea
Session 2: The subjectivity of the artful page
4:30pm Katherine Shingler (University of Nottingham)
Visual and verbal indeterminacies in Mallarmé's « Un Coup de dés »
5pm Philip Healy (Kellogg College, University of Oxford)
The fin de siècle book as art object: John Gray, poet and editor
5:30pm Seth Whidden (Villanova University, Philadelphia)
Word, Sound, Image: Marie Krysinska's Symbolist Aesthetics, Across the Arts
6pm Paola Spinozzi ((University of Ferrara)
The Quest for Verbal/Visual Cosmos in William Morris's Calligraphy and Typography
7.00pm Conference Dinner (Dining Room, Rewley House)
Saturday 15 December 2008
Session 3: Talismans
9:30am Jon Kear (University of Kent)
Intimisme: Objects of Reverie in Symbolist Art and Literature in Mauclair and Proust
10am Rachel Sloan (Courtauld Institute)
Dreams of a new antiquity: Fernand Khnopff, Henri Cros and the mask
10:30am Erika Schneider (Framingham State College in Massachusetts)
Talisman for the Symbolist Movement: Puvis de Chavannes' “Hope”
11:15am Morning coffee
Session 4: Trinkets and Fetishes
11:45am Geneviève Sicotte (Concordia University, Montréal)
The Symbolist Object: Destruction and the Gift
12.15 noon Sophie Pelletier (Université de Montréal)
The “artistiques bijoux d'acier” in La Marquise de Sade: symbols of a society in mutation
12:45pm Claire I R O'Mahony (Kellogg College, University of Oxford)
Metamorphic microcosms: René Lalique and the subjectification of the jewel
1:30pm Lunch
Session 5: Reverie and Irreverence
2:30pm Richard Hobbs (University of Bristol)
Food and drink for Symbolists: Dujardin's 'Les Lauriers sont coupés'
3pm Jill Fell (Birkbeck College, University of London)
Alfred Jarry 'Les Minutes de Sable Memorial' and 'Cesar-Antechrist'
3:45pm Afternoon tea
Session 6: Legacies
4:15pm Dominique Lévy-Eisenberg (Université de Tel-Aviv)
Le fauteuil Rocaille – L'objet fascinant et l'esthétique fin-de-siècle
4:45pm William M. Perthes (Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia)
Baudelaire, Mallarme and the Symbolist Aesthetics of Robert Motherwell
5pm Marjan Groot (University of Leiden)
Symbolism, subjectivity, intentionality
6:30pm Final discussion and close
Conference rates:
(by credit card or sterling cheque payable to “OUDCE”)
£45 Conference fee without accommodation
(includes Friday conference dinner, Saturday lunch and teas and coffees)
£85 Conference fee with single room en suite accommodation at Rewley House
(includes Friday conference dinner, Saturday breakfast and lunch and teas and coffees)
£75 Conference fee with shared twin room en suite accommodation per person at Rewley House (includes Friday conference dinner, Saturday breakfast and lunch and teas and coffees)
Conference Bookings:
ppdayweek@conted.ox.ac.uk; 01865 270380
Short Courses Administrator, OUDCE, 1 Wellington Square, Oxford, OX1 2JA
Conference Organiser: claire.omahony@conted.ox.ac.uk