CEM Magazine – Culture, Space & Memory, No. 19, 1st semester 2025

Thematic dossier: “The Art of Carving”

Editors: Manuel Joaquim Moreira da Rocha (CITCEM/FLUP) and Nuno Resende (CITCEM/FLUP) CITCEM – Centro de Investigação Transdisciplinar Cultura, Espaço e Memória invites article proposals for its journal CEM – Cultura, Espaço & Memória, no. 19, 1st semester 2025, with the theme “A Arte da Talha”.
This issue of the journal is part of the “Material and Immaterial Heritage” and “Sociabilities and Religious Practices” Lines of Research.
This thematic dossier aims to contribute to crossing the action plan of CITCEM’s lines of research that touch on aspects of the materiality and intangibility of heritage and its uses and representations in diachrony.
Wood carving is one of the main elements of the integrated and mobile cultural heritage of Portuguese art history.
Generally associated with Catholic altarpieces and sacred spaces, its spread to mundane environments, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries, its application in ephemeral structures and its importance as a design and expression of architectural morphologies, make woodcarving one of the main assets of Portuguese, Iberian and European cultural heritage.
The Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto was a pioneer in the study of carving and retabulism, leaving a historiographical mark on the subject that should be remembered and revisited.
We therefore need to revisit and reflect on this legacy and open up new paths and new ways of seeing, analyzing and interpreting this way of doing things, in which practices and crafts as diverse as carving, carpentry, gilding and painting, among others, converged.
We welcome articles on: a review of the thematic literature, retabulistics and associated arts, the knowledge on carving produced by academic and non-academic historians; the history of production and of institutions and patrons, equipment, integrated heritage and buildings associated with carving; the conservation, restoration and musealization of carving; interdisciplinary readings on carving and other arts.

• The Art of Woodcarving: Sources, Producers, Institutions and Individual Clients and Loyalists;
• Artistic equipment in the sacred space/integrated and mobile heritage;
• The Design and Architecture of the Retable;
• Conservation, restoration and musealization of woodcarvings;
• Interdisciplinary and intermediate readings: woodcarving and the other arts and woodcarving and the means of dissemination (treatises, memorials, etc.).

Acceptance of texts will be subject to peer review. In addition to the thematic dossier, CEM accepts other studies in the Various section, as well as news and critical reviews.  THE DEADLINE FOR SUBMITTING PROPOSALS IS 30-09-2024.Accepted languages: Portuguese, English, French and Spanish.