Portable Portraits: An Online Workshop

Far from static and immoveable images and objects, portraits are key examples of portable imagery able to serve a variety of functions throughout history. Whether a statue being toppled, a painting being copied into a print, or a digital image being shared on social media, portraits present a key site for artistic and intellectual discourse across a range of different contexts. Portable Portraits aims to explore the moveability and transference of portrait images, whether through quotation of previous works in new creations or the physical creation of objects as designed to be portable.

This workshop forms part of a larger project based at the University of York on the transhistorical topic of portable portraits to discuss both the manifestation of portable portraits, and how they are used, received, and appropriated throughout global history. Papers will be delivered virtually, with time for discussion and audience contribution. The workshop is free to attend and the link to the zoom meeting will be sent to you after you register for a free ticket through Eventbrite

Programme

14.00-14.05 Introduction

14.05-15.05 Panel 1

Chaired by Sara Ayres

Megan Schlanker - Faces from Faiyum: Mummy Portraiture in Greco-Roman Egypt

Wendy McGlashan - The Curious Case of Voltaire and Mr Watson: Fame, Physiognomy, and French Boxes in Late Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh

Rhian Addison - Indoor Spaces for Outdoor Minds: the ‘Portable’ Landscape Studio of George Arnald

15.05-15.15 Break

15.15-16.15 Panel 2

Chaired by Jason Edwards

Izabella Gill-Brown - Queen Victoria’s Walking Portrait: A Miniature Colonial Portrait as an Advertisement for the British Empire

Stacey Clapperton - A Hall of Fame?: George Frederic Watts’s Portraits for the Nation c.1847 – 1901

Jonathan King - Portrait on a Plate: The Camp Historicism of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant’s Famous Women Dinner Service

16.15-16.25 Break

16.25-17.25 Panel 3

Chair TBC

Lucy Mounfield - The Body as Photographic Collage: Advertising Portrait Photography

Zhixuan Wang - Fake Cigarette, Real Photographs: Found Photography and the Narrative of Intimacy in ‘Until Death Do Us Part’

Mariana Zegianini - Around the World in 365 Years: The Life Journey of a Seventeenth-Century Portrait from China

17.25-17.30 Break

17.30-18.00 Roundtable Discussion