Date: 15 November 2024 (Friday)
Time: 7:30-9:30 pm
Format: Hybrid mode (Onsite: CVA109, Lee Shau Kee Communication and Visual Arts Building, Hong Kong Baptist University/ Online via ZOOM)
Language: English
Speakers:
Angelo LO CONTE (Associate Professor, Hong Kong Baptist University)
LU Yun-chen (Assistant Professor, DePaul University, Chicago)
Discussant & Moderator:
WANG Yizhou (Research Assistant Professor, Hong Kong Baptist University)
Moderator:
WANG Lianming (Associate Professor, City University of Hong Kong)
Registration
Registration is required for online/onsite participation. Please complete the online registration form
All are welcome!
Lecture Abstracts
Micro-art-histories and Social Perceptions of Disability in Early Modern Europe by Dr. Angelo Lo Conte
The paper retraces micro-art-histories that foster the investigation of social perceptions of sensory disability in early modern Europe. By looking at early modern biographical accounts, archival documents, works of art, and contemporary poetry, it challenges the stereotype that presents people with deafness as outcasts and emphasizes that the consideration of intersectional factors was essential to how early modern people responded to impairment. The paper recognizes the presence of deaf artists in the history art, presenting their artworks, notebooks, and documents pertaining to their life to describe how they asserted their own profession, identity, and citizenship through art practice.
Speaker Biography
Angelo LO CONTE is Associate Professor and Associate Director (Research) at the Academy of Visual Arts, School of Creative Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University. He is the author of several studies on various aspects of Renaissance and Early Modern Art, including A Visual Testament by Luca Riva: a Deaf Pupil of the Procaccini, winner of the 2023 Renaissance Studies Article Prize, The Procaccini and the Business of Painting in Early Modern Milan (Routledge, 2021); and articles in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, Renaissance Studies, Source, Italian Studies and the Journal of the History of Collections. He is a recipient of the Haskell Prize (Burlington Magazine) and of the 2022 RSA-Samuel H. Kress Fellowship in Renaissance Art History.
The Creation of Disability Art and Aesthetics in Eighteenth-Century Yangzhou” by Dr. Yun-chen LU
The Yangzhou School, also known as the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou, was a group of artists who were active in eighteenth-century Yangzhou and gained renown for moving beyond the orthodox literati style in favor of their own aesthetic choices. Several of them had physical disabilities. My research centers on these artists and how they developed a new disability art and aesthetics that were favored by local art patrons. Among these artists, Gao Fenghan (1683–1749) first earned fame because of his left-handed style, which he developed after the paralysis of his right hand in 1737. This talk focuses on Gao Fenghan’s formation as an artist with a disability and the creation of his left-handed style, which has “raw, obstinate, rough, and awkward” qualities that he valued. I investigate Gao’s artistic developments before and after his disability, how disability is part of his own narratives when discussing his works, and how his art was received and gained success in the Yangzhou art market. This research considers an older tradition and history of appreciating different bodies and abilities in China. More specifically, it offers a new understanding of disability aesthetics rooted in Chinese culture, history, and philosophy.
Speaker Biography
Yun-chen LU is Assistant Professor of History of Art and Architecture at DePaul University, Chicago. She specializes in East Asian art history, particularly Chinese painting and calligraphy, visual and material culture, artists with disabilities, disability aesthetics, and East Asian interregional art history. Her current research project investigates the relationship between artists with disabilities and the trend of artistic eccentricity in eighteenth-century Yangzhou, and the development of disability art and aesthetics in premodern China.
