Hogarth's Moral Geography

To coincide with the Hogarth: Place and Progress exhibition at the Sir John Soane’s Museum, this one-day workshop will explore the moral geography of Hogarth’s images and the environments they represent. Papers by a range of international speakers will discuss the idea of moral geography in relation to Hogarth and his contemporaries. Hogarth’s famous Modern Moral Subjects are entirely fictional, but their principal characters’ progress towards death or high office is also a physical progress through particular places and buildings in London. How do we best make sense of these moral and physical forms of passage? This workshop, as well as looking at the moral geography of Hogarth’s London, is interested in the relationship between his work and literary and pictorial alternatives, as well as its legacies for contemporary culture. The programme includes a visit to the exhibition.

Agenda

08.30 Exhibition visit to Hogarth: Place and Progress (Sir John Soane’s Museum)

10.00–10.30 Walk to the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (16 Bedford Square)

10.30–11.00 Coffee and pastries

Session One

11.00–11.20 Mark Hallett (Paul Mellon Centre, Director of Studies)

Welcome and Introduction

11.20–12.00 Meredith Gamer (Columbia University, Department of Art History and Archaeology)

Meat and Bones: Topographies of Violence in Hogarth’s Four Stages of Cruelty

12.00–12.30 Q&A

12.30–13.30 Lunch

Session Two, chaired by Martin Postle (Paul Mellon Centre)

13.30–13.50 William K.S. Aslet (University of Cambridge)

Hogarth and Modern Architecture

13.50–14.00 Q&A

14.00–14.20 Gillian Williamson (Birkbeck, University of London)

Lodging the Garret Poet: Before and After Hogarth

14.20–14.30 Q&A

14.30–14.50 Stacy Sloboda (University of Massachusetts, Boston)

“The Four Times of Day in St. Martin’s Lane”

14.50–15.00 Q&A

15.00–15.30 Tea

Session Three, chaired by Bruce Boucher (Sir John Soane’s Museum)

15.30–15.50 Cristina S. Martinez (University of Ottawa, Ontario)

Towards a Topography of Law in Hogarth’s Modern Moral Subjects

15.50–16.00 Q&A

16.00–16.20 Kate Grandjouan (Courtauld Institute of Art/New College of the Humanities)

Moral Geography in Marriage à la Mode: Hogarth’s Dirty French

16.20–16.30 Q&A

16.30–17.30 David Bindman (University College London, Curator of Hogarth: Place and Progress) and Panel

Final Discussion

17.30–19.00 Drinks Reception