I have decided that I am the Dawn Weiner of conference-goers. Maybe I’m Ugly Betty (who is decidedly nicer than Dawn, but still out of sync). I am the CAA attendee that all the serious panelists hate: I walk in an out of panels, I type on my laptop when in the audience, I walk hurriedly down the halls, my nose in the conference program, nearly running into everyone my path. I am proud to say, however, that my cell phone has not gone off once during the entire conference. More than I can say for a surprising amount of other attendees. What is up with that? Have we not learned to turn phones off during public presentations?? Still? (more…)
CAA News
Responding to Beth and Steven’s excellent proposal, (”Couldn’t we rethink this a bit?”) though not, lamentably, in the form of a comment — the idea of expanding the conference format via modern technology is exciting and full of promise…
Coinciding with the much-discussed LACMA exhibition (see below; eventually traveling to Nuremberg and Berlin), curator Stephanie Barron and Lutz Koepnick chaired a session on Art of the Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures…
So the parking was better this morning, but the little convenience only made me miss the spirit of yesterday, of all those immigrants moments away from becoming citizens, of the end of long, painful journies. The stories of the hall yesterday gave the conference a vitality that it lacks today.
Congratulations New Citizens!!! We are happy you can join us.
That said, however, there was a sort of spirit this morning. I witnessed a couple of great talks that really cheered me up. Matthew Biro from the University of Michigan’s talk on the Bechers and Andreas Gursky was stellar, pointing out the changes in how the Bechers approached their work over time and how Gursky is a logical extension of their teaching. What a clear, well put together presentation, my notes on the talk unfolded like an outline and then were pulled tight at the end. We all could take a lesson from this guy. (more…)
Allyson Drucker, a correspondent for the Art History Newsletter, has reviewed two Thursday sessions: “Renaissance and/or Early Modern: Naming and/or Knowing the Past” and “Eighteenth-Century Art, Decorative Arts, and Architecture: Shattering the Nineteenth-Century Image of the Eighteenth Century.” I look forward to reading a few more posts from the art-history website, run by Jonathan Lackman of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, who has covered the past few CAA conferences.
Encouraged by the warm climate and the postmodern architecture in Los Angeles, conference organizers have recently decided that the 2010 CAA annual conference will be in Dubai, and they’re are already hard at work at next year’s sessions. Here are some samples of panels that have already been accepted:
The Merleau-Ponty effect in high modernism: Greenberg and Fried’s secret love affair with phenomenology in the underground café culture of 1950s Manhattan. (or, “Was that really Clement Greenberg in that photo of a Happening at the Franklin Furnace?”)
A Paradigmatic Paradigm shift; from Diderot to Baudrillard and back again in seconds on Second Life (this panel will be presented as a webcast only, streaming live from the book fair)
Hands off my object fetish: touching the curve, stroking the brush, and redefining the tactile in the realm of supraphysicality.
Dismantling Discursivity in the 21st Century: Sanctioning the myopia of an iconographic taxonomy of signs and analogons (signalagons) in pictorial representation.
Impacted Colon: The Role of Paper Titles in Signaling Political Affiliation, Disciplinary Adherence, and Career Aspiration.
Untouching Site/Sight: privileging smell, dissembling the somatic, and recannonizing the metasenses.
The Society of Contemporary Art Historians, a new CAA affiliated society founded this year under the leadership of a DC-based trio of younger scholars, packed the house for a lively set of position papers. Topic A: “What is Contemporary Art History?” chaired by Suzanne Hudson and Alexander Dumbadze. (more…)
Wow. It was standing-room-only at the panel “Land Use in Contemporary Art”, organized by University of Nevada, Las Vegas’s Kirsten Swenson - and there appeared to be so little standing room available that people in the back kept leaning on the light switch, cutting the room’s illumination. An apt metaphor for some of the panelists’ explorations of place, unassimilability, discomfort, delay, and technological takeover. Also beautifully poetic was the fact that at least two panelists mentioned sites and projects in rural Nevada - a state whose infrastructure is taking an apocalyptic nosedive. “Everyone in Las Vegas is losing their shirts right now,” an insider confided right before the panel began. To quote fellow Nevadan Dave Hickey, “Quelle fuckin’ surprise.” (more…)
I admit I’ve wandered from the path this morning. While usually keeping to Contemporary Art like the silly person I am, I chose instead to attend a talk by Samuel Edgerton on Renaissance Perspective. The best talk I’ve been to so far, it laid out the history of perspective as born of theological and medieval concerns and rooted in a sort of divine rather than secular geometry. Galileo’s studies in art, interpretations by Alberti of Brunelleschi’s religious impulses, aided his science and enabled his great intuitive leaps. The implication of the talk was to give us a full view of the Rennaissance and to break down some false markers between the medieval divine and more secular advances in society. This was an amazing talk, the kind of thing that makes wandering around this building in a morning haze a wonderous thing.
I’m in bed with my laptop and a glass of water, currently experiencing a poverty of riches.
Here’s what I’d like to see this morning:
The Networked Nineteenth Century
Water Is Power: African Art History
Baroque Anatomy: Motives and Methods
The Americanization of Neoclassicism in Latin America
Photography and Architecture: Shaping a New Dialogue
Land Use in Contemporary Art
