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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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.