The Art of Collaboration in the Long Eighteenth Century

The eighteenth century is an era known for its joint ventures, from sweeping publications like the Encyclopédie to crowd-sourcing spaces like the Enlightenment salon. This panel invites papers that consider the group dynamics and agencies that shaped the production, distribution, and consumption of visual and material art and culture during the long eighteenth century (ca. 1688-1815). How did eighteenth-century makers and their art worlds define “collaboration”? Scholars have noted that this term (at least in relation to artmaking) did not arise until the nineteenth century. What then were earlier vocabularies and discourses used to characterize a shared creative process and its participants? Papers could engage with conventional hierarchies of fine and craft arts. They could examine divisions of labor within academic, guild, domestic, and other contexts of production, both local and global. Particularly welcome are contributions that take up the politics and (in)visibilities of collaboration: how has credit been attributed to artworks produced by more than one individual? Whose names have or have not been ascribed to such works, for instance when displayed in exhibitions, sold on the art market, or described in critical writings? How do modern and more recent ideas of authorship fit or conflict with the eighteenth-century realities of artistic practice, which often involved multiple people working at different sites and stages, whether in concert or competition, to realize products of visual and material culture? Ultimately, this panel seeks contributions that challenge or complicate lingering norms of individual—relatedly, male and white—authorship in eighteenth-century art history.