Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art (CIHA), 34th World Congress of
Art History, Beijing, September 15 - 22, 2016
Deadline: Jun 30, 2015

Call For Papers for Session 19:

History of Beauty vs. History of Art

Chairs of the Session:
- Claudia Cieri Via, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy,
claudia.cierivia@uniroma1.it
- LIU Weidong (Mr.), Nanjing University of the Arts, Nanjing, China,
moji_ny@sina.com
- DAI Dan (Junior Chair, Mr.), Nanjing University of the Arts, Nanjing,
China , dai-tan@hotmail.com

The relationship between the concept of Beauty and Art History, between
aesthetics and Art History, the theme this panel proposes, calls into
question a wide spectrum of issues regarding the status of Art and the
role images, history, culture, and national and ethnics identities play
in a globalized world. The aim of this panel is to reconsider the
relationship between the concept of art and the concept of the canon in
critical terms and in a dialogue with the scholarly debate the issue
generated in the past decades. Special attention will be given to
comparative studies able to broad the cultural and spatial borders and
engage different cultural identities in their diverse contextual and
transcultural dimensions. Possible points of reference include the
pictorial turn and the anthropology of images, specifically the
question of agency. By questioning the boundaries between artworks and
images, between Art History and Visual Studies, these interpretive
models call special attention towards the diversity of ethnic and
national identities and their respective discrete cultures.

This session will focus on the following topics:
- The concepts of beauty and of the canon through a reconsideration of
the different canons formulated by different cultures in relation to
their original contexts and their possible migrations.
- The concept of beauty as antithesis of ugliness: a transcultural
field of inquiry.
- The role images play in the field of communication, freedom of
artistic expression, and defense of human rights.
- The aesthetic experience today and its connection to the neuro - and
cognitive sciences.
- Art and the artistic process: the concept of agency.
- The attention towards the image and the emergence of history and
memory.
- The vitality of images, "as if they were alive."
- The animation of images, between consecration and intelligence.

Please submit the abstract of your paper for this session to the chairs
before June 30, 2015.