Information from the organizers
Thursday, December 6 – Saturday, December 8
In The Getty Center and the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
A conference at the Getty Research Institute and the Clark Library organized by Margaret C. Jacob, UCLA, and Wijnand Mijnhardt, Universiteit Utrecht
Co-sponsored by UCLA Center for 17th– & 18th-Century Studies, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, the Getty Research Institute, and the Netherlands Consulate-General of Los Angeles.
Bernard Picart (1673-1733) was one of the most prolific and talented engravers of his age. He was also intellectually curious, and a player in internationally connected social circles – some with a penchant for Deism and Spinozism. Together with Jean Frédéric Bernard, a French language bookseller and publisher of Huguenot stock based in Amsterdam, he published a seven-volume folio work that sought to capture the ritual and ceremonial life of all the known religions of the world: Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde (1723-1743). Bernard supplied the 3000 pages of the text while Picart engraved over 250 illustrations. Its first volume offered the world one of the most sympathetic portraits then available of European Jewry. Despite being the work of two French Protestant refugees and done in Amsterdam, the book attempted to be reasonably accurate about Catholic customs and to cast a more favorable light on the so-called “idolatrous peoples” who on the whole appeared in most of the travel literature as barbarous and even without any religion at all. In the life time of Picart the Dutch Republic stood at the heart of the European book trade. Picart and Bernard took full advantage of the opportunities they found in their adopted land, and the Cérémonies in its various translations sold a remarkable 3000 copies. Its translation into Dutch and English removed some of the more radical comments about religion found in the original French text, but those translations, and one in German, meant that Picart’s images became the standard means of portraying many of the world’s religions until well into the nineteenth century.
Papers: Conference papers presented at the Clark Library will be posted to the Center’s website by November 26, and will remain accessible until December 21.
http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/c1718cs/calendar.htm
Registration Deadline: November 26, 2007
Registration Fees:
Thursday sessions at the Getty Center: Free of charge.
The Getty Research Institute will host a reception. Lunch will not be served; the Getty Center offers a rich choice of indoor and outdoor cafes, a restaurant, and a picnic area.
Friday and Saturday sessions at the Clark Library:
$25 per person; UC faculty & staff, students with ID: no charge*
*Students should enclose a photocopy of their current ID with the registration form.
Fees are not refundable and apply to full or partial attendance.
To register, please visit:
http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/c1718cs/calendar.htm#dec6
Conference Locations & Parking:
Thursday: The Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, off the San Diego Freeway (405), Getty Center Drive exit.
Parking: reserved for registrants at no charge.
Friday – Saturday: The Clark Library, 2520 Cimarron Street, in the West Adams district, one block east of Arlington Avenue, two blocks south of the Santa Monica Freeway (10).
Parking: ample free parking on the grounds.
Lunch and other refreshments are provided complimentary to all registrants on Friday and Saturday.
Please be aware that space at both locations is limited and that registration closes when capacity is reached. No confirmation will be sent, but we will contact you if we receive your registration after we reach capacity.
Please call a week ahead to arrange for wheelchair access.
Program Schedule:
Thursday, December 6
at the Getty Center
9:00 a.m. Graduate Student Session: New Research on Bernard Picart
Getty Research Institute Lecture Hall
Guillaume Calafat, École Normale Supérieure
The Jansenist Roots of the Bernard-Picart Vision
Verónica A. Gutiérrez, UCLA
Quetzalcoatl’s Enlightened City: A Close Reading of Bernard Picart’s Engraving of Cholollan/Cholula
Catherine Clark, USC
Chinese Idols and Religious Art: Questioning Difference in Cérémonies et coutumes
Jesse Sadler, UCLA
The Collegiants, a Small Presence in the Republic, a Large Metaphor for the Book
11:30 a.m. Lunch Break
1:00 p.m. Digital Picart: Presentation & Discussion
Museum Lecture Hall
Tom Moritz, Getty Research Institute, Margaret C. Jacob, UCLA, and Lynn Hunt, UCLA
2:00 p.m. Viewing of Picart materials/documents, Getty Research Institute special collections
3:00 p.m. Free Time: visit Museum and GRI exhibition China on Paper
4:00 p.m. Keynote address by Wijnand Mijnhardt, Universiteit Utrecht
Religion, Capitalism and the Revolution in Science: The Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde
Museum Lecture Hall
5:00 p.m. Invitational Reception at the Getty Center Restaurant
7:00 p.m. CONCERT, Harold M. Williams Auditorium
Performed by New Dutch Acadamy, Chamber Soloist Ensemble
Early 18th Century Music Making in the Amsterdam Canal Houses
Elizabeth Dobbin, soprano, Georgia Browne, baroque flute, Karl Nyhlin, baroque lute, Simon Murphy, cello piccolo/viola pomposa, and Rebecca Rosen, cello
Friday, December 7
at the Clark Library
9:30 a.m. Morning Coffee
10:00 a.m. Bernard Picart in French and Dutch Art
Chair: Margaret C. Jacob, UCLA
Ann Jensen Adams, University of California, Santa Barbara
Originality and Authenticity in the Graphic Work of Bernard Picart
Louis Marchesano, Getty Research Institute
Impostures innocentes: Bernard Picart and Reproductive Printmaking
Inger Leemans, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
Picart’s Dutch Connections: Family Trouble, the Amsterdam Theatre and the Business of Engraving
1:00 p.m. Lunch
2:00 p.m. Inventing Comparative Religion
Chair: Catherine Secretan, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Jacques Revel, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
The Uses of Comparison: Religions in the Early Eighteenth Century
Kishwar Rizvi, Yale University
Persian Pictures: Artiface and Authenticity in the Representations of Islam in Bernard Picart’s Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde
Marcia Reed, Getty Research Institute
Picart on China: “Curious” Discourses and Images Taken Principally from the Jesuits
5:00 p.m. Reception
Saturday, December 8
at the Clark Library
9:30 a.m. Morning Coffee
10:00 a.m. The Sources for the Cérémonies
Chair: Wijnand Mijnhardt, Universiteit Utrecht
David Brafman, Getty Research Institute
Picart, Bernard, Hermes, and Muhammad (Not Necessarily in that Order)
Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink, Universität Saarbrücken
(Re)Inventing Encyclopedias in the Early European Enlightenment. The Work of Bruzen de la Martinière and its Relations with the Cérémonies et coutumes
Peter C. Mancall, University of Southern California
Illness and Death among Americans in Bernard Picart’s Ceremonies and Religious Customs of the Various Nations of the Known World
1:00 p.m. Lunch
2:00 p.m. Translation: Linguistic and Historical
Chair: Lynn Hunt, UCLA
Paola von Wyss-Giacosa, Universität Zürich
David Herrliberger and the German Edition of the Cérémonies
Tomoko Masuzawa, University of Michigan
The Fate of Ceremonies in the Nineteenth Century
4:15 p.m. Concluding Discussion: What we now know, what needs to be known
Moderators: Lynn Hunt, UCLA, Margaret C. Jacob, UCLA, and Wijnand Mijnhardt, Universiteit Utrecht