Thinking in the box: The benefits of artistic tradition in the Nineteenth Century

This conference invites papers that consider artistic tradition not as the nemesis of creation but in its own right. It aims to examine the potential artistic, commercial and even political benefits of thinking in the box—of continuing artistic tradition(s), working within them or reverting to them during the (long) nineteenth century. What could tradition yield for artists and the way they understood their art that innovation could not? What could it do for audiences and what they might have sought in artworks? What could it achieve for patrons, with their various social, political and aesthetic agendas? We invite papers that deal with the “problem” of tradition in nineteenth-century art, but which do not address the phenomenon itself as a problem. We especially welcome proposals that explore or develop new theoretical paradigms to study the relationship between nineteenth-century art and artistic tradition.