Noémie Etienne: Liotard and the Exotic

Centered around a Still-Life painting made by Jean-Etienne Liotard, dated 1783 and preserved at the J. Paul Getty museum, this paper explores visual sources and objects around the creation of this artwork. I argue that Liotard, taught as a craftman and enamel painter in Geneva, took a specific interest in lacquer panels circulating at the time in Europe. This presentation stems from a broader research project at the University of Bern, aiming to study how the exotic was constructed during the Enlightenment in Switzerland, a country with neighter maritime boarders nor international trading compagnies at the time. At a methodological level, it aims to connect global art history with conservation science and history of collecting.

Noémie Etienne is SNSF Professor at the University of Bern and a specialist in early modern art and material culture. She is currently leading a research project on the Exotic in Europe between 1600 and 1800. Previously, she studied dioramas as a transcultural and trans-historical media. Her forthcoming book, entitled: Others and Ancestors. The Dioramas by Franz Boas and Arthur Parker in New York, 1900, will be published by the Getty Research Institute (English) and the Presses du réel (French) in 2020. She is also a specialist in the history of restoration. Her first book, entitled The Restoration of Paintings in Paris (1750-1815) was published in 2012 in France, and subsequently translated into English by Getty Publications in 2017. Recently, she was also guest-professor at the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, and a fellow at the Getty Research Institut and the Institut of Fine Arts-NYU.