SCSC, Vancouver, October 22 - 25, 2015
Deadline: Mar 31, 2015

Illusionism and Interference in Early Modern Sculpture

Sixteenth Century Society Conference (SCSC), Vancouver, British
Columbia, Canada, October 22 - 25, 2015

Call for Papers

Struts left intact between the fingers of a marble figure, rough
tool-work visible on the surface of a bronze statue or misalignments of
perspectival space on a carved relief, all disrupt the illusionistic
effects early modern sculptors adopted to transcend the limits of their
media and equal the deceptiveness of painting. Rather than look beyond
such interruptions as accident or practical necessity, this panel seeks
papers that explore the friction between illusionism and interference
in early modern sculpture as a deliberate strategy and an integral
component of the experience and meaning of the work. Papers might
address—but are not limited to—the following questions: In what ways
did sculptors muddle illusionism? How might surface quality, insistent
materiality or tactility, incompletion or the assertion of mass and
flatness over form and depth, challenge the viewer into more engaged
looking? In what ways did viewing distance and modes of framing or
display obstruct rather than mediate? If illusionism in sculpture
presupposes painterly or pictorial paradigms of viewing, how might
interference work to assert a sculptural paradigm? Paper topics may

focus on the fifteenth, sixteenth, or seventeenth centuries, and on any
part of Europe or the New World.

Please submit a 250 word abstract and CV to Carolina Mangone
(cm3289@columbia.edu) and Lorenzo Buonanno (lgb2108@columbia.edu) by
March 31, 2015.