The international symposium organized in the framework of the LexArt project will be held from 15 to 17 June 2016 in Montpellier (France). Entitled WORDS FOR THEORY, WORDS FOR PRACTICE : Forms , Uses and Issues in Early Modern artistic Lexicography, this event is subject to a call for papers. It will bring together interventions of experts in art theory, while keeping a multidisciplinary prospect to also handle issues in lexicography and linguistics fields, to approach questions concerning the studies of translations, the editing of writings on art and the relationship between artistic theory and practice. In connection with the digital tool that the LexArt project is developing, a final part will be dedicated to issues and perspectives related to Digital Humanities.

Words are indeed agents in the circulation of concepts, and turn out to be a significant site of experimentation, dissemination, transfers and networks across artistic communities in early modern Europe.Though the chronological and geographical boundaries, as well as the scope of the LexArt project itself are defined precisely, the purpose of this symposium is the necessary confrontation with other patterns from a methodological and conceptual perspective.

This symposium thus proposes various directions and fields of research.

1.     BOOKS ON ART
This interdisciplinary session examines the book as object in the broadest possible sense: from the publication of a book to its dissemination and its audiences, but also its composition (index, glossaries, table of contents). It may also consider the place and role of illustrations in texts on art, the complementarity or discrepancy between illustrations and text, the use and revival of models, as well as the confrontation between literary and visual descriptions of the work of art.

2.     LANGUAGES: THE BOOK AS LEXICAL LABORATORY
To provide a more comprehensive account of the issues at stake, this session considers topics that lie beyond the geographical and chronological scope of the LexArt Project. Different approaches may be imagined from examples found in historical lexicography from Baldinucci to the Encyclopédie méthodique: the mutation of lexical models from classical antiquity or from foundational Italian texts in early modern Europe; the vocabulary of theoretical texts versus that of artistic biographies; poetical language in the theory of art: words and the idiom of an artistic theory.

3.     WORDS AND PRACTICES: FROM THE STUDIO TO THE ACADEMY
This session addresses the rapport between theory and practice, and more specifically the transfer of knowledge through the words used in texts on art. It will explore the connections and differences between the appearance of a word and its practice as well as more generally the question of jargon or the relation between words and artistic professions.

4.     TRANSLATING WORDS
The session approaches artistic lexicography by looking at strategies and process of transfers in textual translations from the early modern era. As well as focusing on networks, it may examine the use of multilingualism in historical lexicography, the notion of transfer as an element of conciliation or differentiation, or even leading to loss of meaning, and more generally on the life of European transfer networks between vivification, transformation, forgotten or abandonment, or the role of the translator as creator of words.

5.     WORKSHOP (OR ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION): QUESTIONS, THEMES AND PERSPECTIVES
This session welcomes contributions that focus on methods of research or more general issues of methodology related to the construction of databases or other web-based instruments.

– The publication of illustrations: selection and indexation of images in databases.
– Cartography, the atlas of words, and the dictionary: the genealogy and typology of words and their topography, the transfer of words from a text to a figured word in an atlas.
– Paradigms of research and interactivity in databases: computerization, digitalization, navigation.
– Questions and perspectives: using concrete examples to think about the use of computer systems for the study of artistic lexicography according to different objects (whether monographic or transversal) but also to raise questions about use and misuse of these new tools.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

– abstracts for papers should be no longer than 400 or 500 words max, and include a title
– the abstracts and papers should be in French or English
– please include a CV
– each proposal will be examined by the Scientific Committee of LexArt

Deadline for submission: October 15, 2015.

Please, send your proposal to these two addresses:

michele-caroline.heck@univ-montp3.fr

marianne.freyssinet@univ-montp3.fr

To download the call for papers : CALL FOR PAPERS_LexArt_def