Impeded Circulations
from November 18, 2024 to November 20, 2024
Published on November 13, 2024– Updated on November 13, 2024
Fools as Artists ? Court Jesters in Modern Europe
Location: - 18/11 Médiathèque du Patrimoine et de la Photographie, Charenton - 19/11 Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art - 20/11 Louvre Museum, Centre Dominique-Vivant Denon
International meeting coordinated by Hector Ruiz Soto, UMR Héritages (CY Cergy Paris Université)
The jesters, fools, and dwarfs are exceptional beings. Acceptable monsters and figures of marginality in modern Europe, they also embody artistic competence and performance. These men and women dance, write, demonstrate wit, and humor. Concurrently, artists represent them in painting, engraving, and sculpture; their jokes are imitated, and jesters take up the pen to create a genuine literature of buffoonery. Their presence at the Court is a European phenomenon that marks modernity, as jesters travel from one country to another until the end of the Ancien Regime. This conference aims to examine the jesters of modern Europe, studying them as artists excluded from the noble arts as well as from our concept of classical heritage. Through this lens, we seek to question our aesthetic categories, reconsidering the relationships between artistic competence, social distinction, and disability. This conference will coincide with the exhibition at the Louvre Museum dedicated to "Figures of Fools" in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It will include a guided tour of the exhibition by the curators, Elisabeth Antoine-König and Pierre-Yves Le Pogam. Additionally, it will strengthen the ties between CYU and the Louvre Museum, as well as with the ANR within the framework of the Access ERC 2023 FAME (Fools as Artists in Modern Europe) project, led by the organizer of the day.
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The jesters, fools, and dwarfs are exceptional beings. Acceptable monsters and figures of marginality in modern Europe, they also embody artistic competence and performance. These men and women dance, write, demonstrate wit, and humor. Concurrently, artists represent them in painting, engraving, and sculpture; their jokes are imitated, and jesters take up the pen to create a genuine literature of buffoonery. Their presence at the Court is a European phenomenon that marks modernity, as jesters travel from one country to another until the end of the Ancien Regime. This conference aims to examine the jesters of modern Europe, studying them as artists excluded from the noble arts as well as from our concept of classical heritage. Through this lens, we seek to question our aesthetic categories, reconsidering the relationships between artistic competence, social distinction, and disability. This conference will coincide with the exhibition at the Louvre Museum dedicated to "Figures of Fools" in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It will include a guided tour of the exhibition by the curators, Elisabeth Antoine-König and Pierre-Yves Le Pogam. Additionally, it will strengthen the ties between CYU and the Louvre Museum, as well as with the ANR within the framework of the Access ERC 2023 FAME (Fools as Artists in Modern Europe) project, led by the organizer of the day.
More information
