Call for papers: Invention and Imagination in British Art and Architecture, 600—1500

This conference will take place between 30 October and 1 November 2014 at the Paul Mellon Centre and the British Museum. It will explore the ways in which artists and patrons in Britain devised and introduced new or distinctive imagery, styles and techniques, as well as novel approaches to bringing different media together. It is concerned with the mechanisms of innovation, with inventive and imaginative processes, and with the relations between conventions and individual expression. The conference will also address the notions of sameness and difference in medieval art and architecture, and how these may be evaluated and explained historically.

Topics for discussion can include authorship, creativity, experimentation, envisaging, representation, and regulation by guilds or patrons, as well as case studies of particular objects, buildings, commissions or practices. Papers should be of twenty minutes’ duration. Proposals/abstracts of 500 words should be submitted to Ella Fleming by 25 March 2014.

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