Carl Magnusson
Carl Magnusson is currently a Guest Researcher at the University of Lausanne. He is preparing a book devoted to French discourses on decoration from the 16th to the 18th century. The aim of this book is to highlight the hegemony that the notion of decoration, as well as that of ornament, enjoyed in this textual corpus. It also aims to show how this hegemony began to be called into question in the second half of the eighteenth century; in other words, to go back to the period when a process was set in motion that led to a form of radical depreciation of decoration and ornament in the first half of the twentieth century.
After completing his graduate studies at the University of Lausanne (2003), Carl Magnusson worked as a trainee at Christie’s (Paris), the Musée Carnavalet, the Musée du Louvre and the Schweizerisches Nationalmuseum. Having been appointed as a Research assistant at the University of Lausanne, he then undertook PhD research on ornament sculptors in eighteenth-century Geneva. He completed and defended his dissertation in December 2011. He was thereafter appointed as an assistant professor at the same university for four years, focussing his teaching on the decorative arts in conjunction with architecture. He spent one and a half year at the Courtauld Institute of Art (London) as an Associate Lecturer and Invited Research Fellow (2016-2017); one year at the Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles) as a Guest Researcher (2017-2018); one year at the Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte in Paris (2018-2019).
He has organised and published the results of several conferences (Penser l'art dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle: théorie, critique, philosophie, histoire, 2013; Penser le rococo, 2017; Décor et architecture: entre union et séparation des arts, 2020).
After completing his graduate studies at the University of Lausanne (2003), Carl Magnusson worked as a trainee at Christie’s (Paris), the Musée Carnavalet, the Musée du Louvre and the Schweizerisches Nationalmuseum. Having been appointed as a Research assistant at the University of Lausanne, he then undertook PhD research on ornament sculptors in eighteenth-century Geneva. He completed and defended his dissertation in December 2011. He was thereafter appointed as an assistant professor at the same university for four years, focussing his teaching on the decorative arts in conjunction with architecture. He spent one and a half year at the Courtauld Institute of Art (London) as an Associate Lecturer and Invited Research Fellow (2016-2017); one year at the Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles) as a Guest Researcher (2017-2018); one year at the Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte in Paris (2018-2019).
He has organised and published the results of several conferences (Penser l'art dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle: théorie, critique, philosophie, histoire, 2013; Penser le rococo, 2017; Décor et architecture: entre union et séparation des arts, 2020).
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Book by Carl Magnusson
Edited Books by Carl Magnusson
Les discours se multiplient, se nourrissent mutuellement, s’entremêlent. On discute des origines de l’art, de ses finalités, des moyens de le faire progresser… Les débats qui s’engagèrent et les systèmes explicatifs qui furent utilisés, pour la plupart, ne sont plus les nôtres, mais ils ont ouvert la voie, pour le meilleur et pour le pire, à la multiplicité des approches encore aujourd’hui usitées et qui font de l’art un objet de préoccupations largement partagées par les chercheurs et le public. Les actes de ce colloque témoignent du foisonnement intellectuel qui caractérise le siècle de l’abbé Du Bos, de Diderot et de Winckelmann.
Collection d’histoire de l’art n° 15 – Actes du colloque co-organisé par l’Académie de France à Rome – Villa Médicis et la Faculté des lettres de l’Université de Lausanne, avec le partenariat du Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art de Paris et l’Institut Suisse de Rome.
Thematic issue of a journal by Carl Magnusson
qu’il suscite, occupe une place centrale dans
l’historiographie, en particulier au sein de ce
qu’il est convenu d’appeler l’histoire des styles.
De ce fait, il structure et détermine, par les frontières
et les corpus qu’il établit, notre appréhension
de l’art du XVIIIe siècle, mais également le
regard que nous portons sur les soi-disant revivals
du phénomène aux XIXe, XXe et XXIe siècles.
L’objectif des articles publiés dans ce cahier est
d’interroger les fondements des discours élaborés
autour de la notion de rococo, en d’autres
termes de développer sur celle-ci une réflexion
épistémologique.
Articles by Carl Magnusson
century is generally described as the golden
age par excellence of decoration. The so-called major
arts are often considered to have played a lesser
role in its artistic development. The period is thus
systematically associated with artefacts produced
by artisans, hence belonging to a less dignified category
in the artistic hierarchy. In order to investigate
the ideological background of this assumption,
the article focuses on the debates on art which
emerged, mainly in France, in the 1740s. These
highly biased discourses, targeting the so-called
bad taste of contemporary French painting and interior
decoration, shaped a vision of the first half of
the eighteenth century of which many aspects were
later inherited by Rococo historiography, especially
in its relation to decoration.
qu’il suscite, occupe une place centrale dans
l’historiographie, en particulier au sein de ce
qu’il est convenu d’appeler l’histoire des styles.
De ce fait, il structure et détermine, par les frontières
et les corpus qu’il établit, notre appréhension
de l’art du XVIIIe siècle, mais également le
regard que nous portons sur les soi-disant revivals
du phénomène aux XIXe, XXe et XXIe siècles.
L’objectif des articles publiés dans ce cahier est
d’interroger les fondements des discours élaborés
autour de la notion de rococo, en d’autres
termes de développer sur celle-ci une réflexion
épistémologique.
Podcasts by Carl Magnusson
This talk highlights the impact of these historiographical misreadings on the status of objects produced during the second half of the eighteenth century. Most of them are regarded as not ‘pure’ enough, often as too pretty, exotic or even Rococo in character, to be affiliated with true Neo-classicism; hence they somehow fall outside the categories of both it and the Rococo.
Carl Magnusson is currently an Associate Lecturer and Research Fellow at The Courtauld Institute of Art. The author of Les sculpteurs d’ornement à Genève au XVIIIe siècle (2015), he is currently preparing a book devoted to the discourses on decoration in eighteenth-century France, in which he analyses how ornament came to be deprived of its dominant position within the artistic hierarchy of the time, and ultimately became a discarded category. After defending his Ph.D. dissertation in 2011, he was appointed lecturer at the University of Lausanne for four years, focussing his teaching on the decorative arts in conjunction with architecture.
Les discours se multiplient, se nourrissent mutuellement, s’entremêlent. On discute des origines de l’art, de ses finalités, des moyens de le faire progresser… Les débats qui s’engagèrent et les systèmes explicatifs qui furent utilisés, pour la plupart, ne sont plus les nôtres, mais ils ont ouvert la voie, pour le meilleur et pour le pire, à la multiplicité des approches encore aujourd’hui usitées et qui font de l’art un objet de préoccupations largement partagées par les chercheurs et le public. Les actes de ce colloque témoignent du foisonnement intellectuel qui caractérise le siècle de l’abbé Du Bos, de Diderot et de Winckelmann.
Collection d’histoire de l’art n° 15 – Actes du colloque co-organisé par l’Académie de France à Rome – Villa Médicis et la Faculté des lettres de l’Université de Lausanne, avec le partenariat du Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art de Paris et l’Institut Suisse de Rome.
qu’il suscite, occupe une place centrale dans
l’historiographie, en particulier au sein de ce
qu’il est convenu d’appeler l’histoire des styles.
De ce fait, il structure et détermine, par les frontières
et les corpus qu’il établit, notre appréhension
de l’art du XVIIIe siècle, mais également le
regard que nous portons sur les soi-disant revivals
du phénomène aux XIXe, XXe et XXIe siècles.
L’objectif des articles publiés dans ce cahier est
d’interroger les fondements des discours élaborés
autour de la notion de rococo, en d’autres
termes de développer sur celle-ci une réflexion
épistémologique.
century is generally described as the golden
age par excellence of decoration. The so-called major
arts are often considered to have played a lesser
role in its artistic development. The period is thus
systematically associated with artefacts produced
by artisans, hence belonging to a less dignified category
in the artistic hierarchy. In order to investigate
the ideological background of this assumption,
the article focuses on the debates on art which
emerged, mainly in France, in the 1740s. These
highly biased discourses, targeting the so-called
bad taste of contemporary French painting and interior
decoration, shaped a vision of the first half of
the eighteenth century of which many aspects were
later inherited by Rococo historiography, especially
in its relation to decoration.
qu’il suscite, occupe une place centrale dans
l’historiographie, en particulier au sein de ce
qu’il est convenu d’appeler l’histoire des styles.
De ce fait, il structure et détermine, par les frontières
et les corpus qu’il établit, notre appréhension
de l’art du XVIIIe siècle, mais également le
regard que nous portons sur les soi-disant revivals
du phénomène aux XIXe, XXe et XXIe siècles.
L’objectif des articles publiés dans ce cahier est
d’interroger les fondements des discours élaborés
autour de la notion de rococo, en d’autres
termes de développer sur celle-ci une réflexion
épistémologique.
This talk highlights the impact of these historiographical misreadings on the status of objects produced during the second half of the eighteenth century. Most of them are regarded as not ‘pure’ enough, often as too pretty, exotic or even Rococo in character, to be affiliated with true Neo-classicism; hence they somehow fall outside the categories of both it and the Rococo.
Carl Magnusson is currently an Associate Lecturer and Research Fellow at The Courtauld Institute of Art. The author of Les sculpteurs d’ornement à Genève au XVIIIe siècle (2015), he is currently preparing a book devoted to the discourses on decoration in eighteenth-century France, in which he analyses how ornament came to be deprived of its dominant position within the artistic hierarchy of the time, and ultimately became a discarded category. After defending his Ph.D. dissertation in 2011, he was appointed lecturer at the University of Lausanne for four years, focussing his teaching on the decorative arts in conjunction with architecture.
Despite the scepticism or irony which it provokes, the notion of the Rococo occupies a central position within the historiography of 18th-century art. It structures our understanding of this epoch and determines the way in which we see it. This symposium, planned as an answer to the stimulating research of the last twenty years on the Rococo, aims at an epistemological reflection on a protean notion which was progressively defined as a style during the 19th century.
This symposium therefore favours a critical approach to this notion, urging contributors to reconsider how it emerged, how it was formed and diffused. What were the first manifestations of the Rococo, on what preconceived ideas was it founded, and how did it become a formal and aesthetic canon? Which sources did it draw upon ? What ideas and categories have been used to structure it ? How were the boundaries of the Rococo established ? How has the context in which interpreters have written about the Rococo oriented the formulation of narratives during the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries ? How have the ideas upon which their work is founded inflected the production of imitations of 18th-century objects ? How have these revivals, in turn, acted upon our understanding of the Rococo?
Version française:
Le rococo, en dépit de la méfiance ou de l’ironie qu’il suscite, occupe une place centrale dans l’historiographie. En tant que catégorie stylistique et critique, il structure notre appréhension de l’art du XVIIIe siècle et détermine le regard que l’on porte sur celui-ci. Ce colloque, conçu en écho aux stimulantes recherches de ces vingt dernières années sur le rococo, vise à développer une réflexion épistémologique sur une notion protéiforme.
La perspective privilégée pour ce colloque est celle, critique, de l’étude d’une notion devenue catégorie, le rococo, appelant à réfléchir sur son apparition, sa sédimentation, sa diffusion. Quelles sont les premières formulations de ce terme ? Sur quels présupposés se fonde-t-il ? Comment devient-il un canon formel et esthétique ? De quelles sources se nourrit-il ? En fonction de quels enjeux établit-on les frontières et les corpus du rococo ? Comment la situation d’énonciation des exégètes, aux XIXe, XXe et XXIe siècles, a-t-elle orienté la mise en récit de son histoire ? Comment les idées véhiculées dans leurs travaux agissent-elles sur la production tardive d’objets imitant le XVIIIe siècle ? Comment ces revivals agissent-ils en retour sur notre compréhension du rococo ?