The LexArt project | Words for Art: The Rise of a Terminology (1600-1750) led by Michèle-Caroline Heck and hosted by the University Paul-Valéry of Montpellier is one of the six French research projects selected in 2012 by the European Research Council in the field of humanities (ERC - Advanced Grant 323761).
In a perspective of fundamental and transversal research, the project focuses on the artistic vocabulary in North of the Alps, tracking its development in the seventeenth century and its transformation in the first half of the eighteenth century, in the writings on art published in French, German, Dutch, English and Latin between 1600 and 1750.
Taking into account the permeability of artistic boundaries and the circulation of concepts, as well as the specificity of each language, author, term and period, the ambition of the project is to show how scholars and theorists developed a common language across artistic communities in Early Modern Europe.
An innovative digital tool provides the academic community with a new resource: definitions of terms and concepts retrieved from the texts are presented and connected, allowing users to conduct a simple study or a complex multi-layered research by combining different elements such as terms, authors, areas, periods.
To deepen the research, the project team published articles dealing with methodological and thematic issues, complementing a dictionary of artistic terminology structured in multilingual entries and organized synthetically, including bibliographies, references to works of art and translations. Both are published in Open Access.
LexArt received a financial support from the ERC for a five-year period, starting in April 2013. The research team consists of a dozen European researchers and includes a scientific committee of professors and senior researchers. In addition, the project builds on a network of scientific partnerships with academic and research institutions.
The LexArt conference proceedings have just been published under the title Artistic lexicography: forms, uses and issues in Early Modern Europe. They are published by the Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée (PULM), and in accordance with the European Research Council (ERC), this publication is available in Open Access via the Oapen website, at the following URL: http://oapen.org/search?identifier=644313 These conference proceedings bring together the papers from Montpellier (symposium from 15 to 17 June 2016, Université Paul-Valéry) and Paris (Study Day of 25 January 2017, INHA). They include 24 papers in French or English, written by members of the LexArt team (research team and scientific committee) as well as by art theory specialists and senior researchers. This book is also available in paper version on the Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée website (24 €). As a reminder, the plan of the work is articulated as follows: …
As part of the LexArt project, which will end on March 31,2018, the team of researchers and the project instigator, Michèle-Caroline Heck, will present the results and achievements of the project at a conference to be held on March 21, 2018 at the INHA (Paris, Galerie Colbert, auditorium – 6 pm). In addition to the scientific publications of the project that will be presented, a large part of this event will be devoted to the Database developed by the Center for Digital Humanities of the Trier University (Germany). This digital tool is specifically dedicated to the artistic vocabulary of the North of the Alps (French, English, German, Dutch and Latin) and to its elaboration between 1600 and 1750. Indeed, the Lexart project’s objective is to offer to the academic community a new, reflective and documentary resource designed in three parts: – A theoretical volume that addresses methodological, thematic…
As the project is now entering in its last phase, the research team dedicated this year to the study of the remaining and major books of art theory and to their input in the FuD software (Forschungsnetzwerk und Datenbanksystem). Among these books, we can for example mention The Mysteryes of Nature and Art by John Bate or The Excellency of the Pen and Pencil (anonymous) which now complete the English corpus, while Die durch Theorie erfundene Practic by Preissler has been added to the German corpus. The French and Dutch corpus which both required more work and have been noticeably enriched. Apart from Goeree’s writings which have been finished, Junius’ texts, but also Beurs’ and Lairesse’s have all been integrated into the database for the Dutch part. For the French one, L’art de peinture by Dufresnoy, including the Remarques of De Piles was added to the corpus of the second…
