AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES (ASECS) 2020 panel.
Abstracts to Jessica L. Fripp, Assistant Professor of Art History, TCU (j.fripp@tcu.edu) before sept 16.
“Too political, too big, no good”: picturing politics in the long eighteenth century
“Too political, too big, no good” were the words Kim Sajet, director of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, reportedly used to turn down Julian Raven’s gift of his propagandistic/fan-art portrait of Donald Trump, Unafraid and Unashamed. Inspired by this amusing, if somewhat absurd, event, this panel seeks papers that address political art in the long eighteenth century (1660-1830) that was celebrated at the time but is now maligned, or vice versa. Topics might include: official commissions celebrating events that have fallen out of favor due to changing understandings of histories of power (for example, colonial or imperialistic endeavors); works that have been positively or negatively affected by the vagaries of taste for a style or an artist; works taken up independently by artists that were well-received or rejected; or works that demonstrate the conflict between the needs of a political regime and the public. What did it mean for a work of art to be “too political,” “too big,” or “no good” in the eighteenth century? What impact do these value judgments have on our understanding of political art, then and now?