The Idea of Luxury and the Role of the Object
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Special Session
Organizer Name
Andrew Sears, Laura R. Tillery
Organizer Affiliation
Univ. of California-Berkeley, Univ. of Pennsylvania
Presider Name
Andrew Sears
Paper Title 1
Economies of Luxury in the Mabinogi
Presenter 1 Name
Audrey Becker
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Marygrove College
Paper Title 2
The Functional Role of Luxury: Considering Utility in the Grandes Heures of Philip the Bold
Presenter 2 Name
Maggie S. Crosland
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Courtauld Institute of Art
Paper Title 3
Material Anxiety: Pendants and Sumptuary Law in the Late Middle Ages
Presenter 3 Name
Sophie Ong
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Rutgers Univ.
Start Date
14-5-2017 8:30 AM
Session Location
Schneider 1345
Description
As Christopher Berry has shown in The Idea of Luxury, the concept of luxury is determined by countless factors: it is situated by socio-economic forces, enacted politically, and both justified and critiqued by philosophy and theology. Luxury is also a difficult scholarly concept to contend with, requiring close engagement with these aforementioned fields as well as distance from our own modern judgments and conceptualizations.
Our panel seeks to integrate physical objects within such epistemological studies and consider anew the vital role of Art History. We hope to use artworks to reevaluate some fundamental questions: what is luxury, how is it manifested in physical terms, and what are its functions for patrons, makers, and beholders? We also hope to bring to the fore new questions about the role of luxury objects in shaping scholarly questions and Art History as a discipline, dealing with the nature of the canon, the extant corpus of objects, and the role of collecting practices through time. Indeed, in today’s economic climate, it seems time to consider luxury’s history, our relationship to it, and what art historical lines of inquiry can bring to bear on cultural commentary.
Andrew Sears and Laura Tillery
The Idea of Luxury and the Role of the Object
Schneider 1345
As Christopher Berry has shown in The Idea of Luxury, the concept of luxury is determined by countless factors: it is situated by socio-economic forces, enacted politically, and both justified and critiqued by philosophy and theology. Luxury is also a difficult scholarly concept to contend with, requiring close engagement with these aforementioned fields as well as distance from our own modern judgments and conceptualizations.
Our panel seeks to integrate physical objects within such epistemological studies and consider anew the vital role of Art History. We hope to use artworks to reevaluate some fundamental questions: what is luxury, how is it manifested in physical terms, and what are its functions for patrons, makers, and beholders? We also hope to bring to the fore new questions about the role of luxury objects in shaping scholarly questions and Art History as a discipline, dealing with the nature of the canon, the extant corpus of objects, and the role of collecting practices through time. Indeed, in today’s economic climate, it seems time to consider luxury’s history, our relationship to it, and what art historical lines of inquiry can bring to bear on cultural commentary.
Andrew Sears and Laura Tillery