Abstract for Peter Paul Rubens and Fatness: Aesthetic, Language, and Fetish (Part Two Here)

Peter Paul Rubens was known for diplomatic presence and allegorical oil paintings in the 17th century, but his love of full-figured women created a legacy he never intended. Through historical, cultural, and visual context, this presentation argues that despite Rubens’s adoration for fat women within his work, the long-term impact of his representation has held back the ability for fat bodies to be discussed in contemporary portraiture. The term “rubenesque” describes the “rounded and alluringly plump” women in Rubens’s paintings. Examples of scholarship using the term “rubenesque” for contemporary portrait artists underscore how the term works to reduce body types to an artistic aesthetic instead of promoting body inclusivity.

One way to move forward linguistically is to describe fatness using the feminist fat theory of body neutrality instead of maintaining Rubens as the standard source of nomenclature. Body neutrality is a response to the body positivity movement, arguing that the value in a body should not be based solely on aesthetics; rather, a neutral view frames the body objectively versus socially and culturally. Objective visual description is a core part of writing about art; however, social influences hinder writers from truly being objective. The negative social associations with the word “fat” has made many art historians defer to terminology that perpetuates fetishized and reductive language like rubenesque. This lens applies to other areas of portraiture beyond fatness, including disability, gender, and race. Body neutrality carves a path to the future of visual description across the field of art history. 

Abstract for Graphic Recording at Agnes Scott (watch Q&A here)

Through reviewing the student group, Scottie Scribes’s, involvement at the Women’s Global Leadership Conference with Graphic Recording along with their mentor, Matt Sullivan, this presentation offers reasons to implement graphic recording as a more wide spread practice at Agnes Scott College events. Driven by audience engagement, visual language, and archival purposes, the Scottie Scribes are able to continue Matt’s practices at Agnes in a way that serves the larger Agnes Scott Community.

Graphic Recording by Matt Sullivan