Patterns – Models – Drawings, Art Readings 2019, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, April 5–6, 2019

The suggested theme focuses research efforts on issues of working methods and practices of artists rather than on questions of politics and ideology in art. We aspire to contribute to the growing discourse on these matters by bringing together an international group of about 25 scholars to renew the state of art by exploring the connection between model and image, between preparatory sketches and the final piece, between religious and secular art, between commission and realisation of art work, between graphic art and painting, sculpture, etc.

Main topics of paper proposals could be:

• models as starting point for other images
• model books
• transfer patterns (anthivola)
• loose drawings
• graffiti images and texts
• woodcut and printing production as a source for artistic and iconographic decisions
• Roman, Western, Byzantine models in arts from later periods

In addition, participants could explore artistic motifs used to symbolise certain ideas; varieties within overall iconographic patterns; origins of repeated patterns in ornaments.

Scholars working on similar themes in non-art historical traditions are also encouraged to apply. 10 % of the participants will be young researchers, post-docs and PhD students. The working languages of the conference will be English and Bulgarian, but texts will be published in a separate volume in French and German as well.