Seminar: Visualising the Bible in the Nineteenth Century

Thursday 13th June 2013, CRASSH, University of Cambridge, 9.30am – 5.30pm

Speakers:, Michaela Giebelhausen (Essex), Colin Cruise (Aberystwyth), Ayla Lepine (Yale/Courtauld), Claire Jones (York )

What is the artist’s role – and responsibility – in visually interpreting the Bible? How did this change in nineteenth-century Britain, when the stability of scripture was increasingly uncertain? How do sacred texts in particular pose problems for the relationship between the verbal and the visual? This one day colloquium will consider how religious belief, form, function, medium, gender, and sexuality figured in representations of Biblical narrative, spanning textiles, painting, drawing and sculpture.

Exhibition: The Independent Group at the ICA

Nigel Henderson, Shattered Glass, 1961

Until 9th June 2013, Institute of Contemporary Art, London

To coincide with the 60th anniversary of the ground-breaking exhibition Parallel of Life & Art, this display presents original art works by the Independent Group in the Fox Reading Room.

The Independent Group met at the original ICA in Dover Street from 1952-5 and comprised architects Alison and Peter Smithson, James Stirling and Colin St John Wilson; artists Magda Cordell, Richard Hamilton, Nigel Henderson, John McHale, Eduardo Paolozzi and William Turnbull; music producer Frank Cordell and writers Lawrence Alloway, Reyner Banham and Toni del Renzio. Celebrated today as the so-called Fathers of Pop, the Group worked with art, science, technology and popular culture. From horror films to theories of evolution, modern architecture to Marilyn Monroe, this group project worked beyond traditional boundaries and conventional disciplinary areas.

Exhibition: R. B. Kitaj – Obsessions

Until 16th June 2013, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester

This exhibition at Pallant House Gallery, subtitled ‘Analyst for Our Time’, will feature over 70 major paintings, sketches and prints presenting an overview of all periods of Kitaj’s extensive oeuvre from the 1960s to his death in 2007. It will consider Kitaj’s early presentations of a fragmented world, reflecting his interest in art history and intellectuals such as ‘Aby Warburg’, and his paintings and collages addressing issues of European politics, philosophy and literature such as ‘The Murder of Rosa Luxembourg’ and ‘The Rise of Fascism’. It will also include Kitaj’s remarkable portraits of personal friends and figures he admired such as his portrait of David Hockney, ‘The Neo-Cubist’, and fictional characters from literature such as ‘The Arabist’ His fascination with the relationship between the body, sexuality and history is presented in a series of powerful paintings of bathers including ‘Self-Portrait as a Woman’ and ‘The Sensualist’.

Conference: The End of an Era? New Perspectives on Edwardian Art

Friday, May 10, 2013, 5:30 pm–7:30 pm, and Saturday, May 11, 2013, 9:30 am–5:45 pm
, Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven

Keynote Lecture: The Rhythm of Time in the Arts of Edwardian Britain, Angus Trumble, Senior Curator of Paintings and Sculpture, Yale Center for British Art

This international symposium coincides with the Center’s major exhibition Edwardian Opulence: British Art at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century, curated by Angus Trumble, Senior Curator of Paintings and Sculpture, Yale Center for British Art, and Andrea Wolk Rager, Visiting Assistant Professor, Case Western Reserve University. Although King Edward VII reigned for only nine years, he gave his name to an era remarkable for its opulence and its contradictions. This symposium will offer a forum for considering the state of the field of interdisciplinary studies of the Edwardian period. Presenting a series of position papers in response to key themes, speakers will examine why the Edwardian era continues to exert a powerful afterlife and provide new interpretations of the art of the period. Participants will also have the opportunity to tour the exhibition with the curators. Speakers include: Cassandra Albinson (Yale Center for British Art), Tim Barringer (Yale University), Grace Brockington (University of Bristol), Michael Hatt (University of Warwick), Linda Ferber (New-York Historical Society), Pamela Fletcher (Bowdoin College), Barbara Gallati (Independent Curator), Morna O’Neill (Wake Forest University), Susan Sidlauskas (Rutgers University), Sarah Turner (University of York), and Alison Inglis (University of Melbourne).

The symposium is free and open to the public. Advance registration is recommended. Register online through May 8. On-site registration will begin at 9:00 am on May 11. For further information, please contact Research (ycba.research@yale.edu).

 

Conference: Visual Culture in Crisis – Britain c.1800 – Present

Friday 10th – Saturday 11th May 2013, Bowland Auditorium, Berrick Saul Building, University of York.

Keynote Speakers: Professor Christopher Pinney (UCL), Dr Eric Stryker (Southern Methodist University), Dr. Chad Elias (University of York), and Corinne Silver (artist).

‘European mastery is always in crisis – and it is this same crisis that defines European modernity’ – Empire, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

The word ‘crisis’ is frequently invoked to assess Britain’s current place in the world: crises in finance, journalism, politics and geopolitics dominate the media, all of which see the term used both to reflect, and manipulate, a sense of uncertainty and confusion on personal, national, and global levels. Taking its cue from Hardt and Negri’s location of ‘crisis’ as central to European modernity, this conference seeks to explore how visual cultures from the 19th century to the present have simultaneously responded to – and emerged from – such successive crises. Crisis might signify avant-garde break-through and embrace of modernity. It might impel artistic breakdown or flight from modernity, anarchic celebration, or resistance in the form of protest. Crisis in visual culture could above all be emblematic of the contingent nature of personal and political identities. As both a product and a precipitant of the inter-state and inter-subjective networks that have emerged in conjunction with imperialism and economic globalisation, crisis can articulate a disharmony between metropole and colony, centre and periphery, state and individual, working constantly to disrupt the geographical, cultural and class boundaries of peoples and nations.

This two-day conference, generously supported the British Art Research School at the University of York and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, aims to begin unpacking some of these issues.  See below for a full timetable of the event, or visit our website for more information: http://visualcultureincrisis.wordpress.com/

All welcome – there is no fee.  Please register by emailing visualcultureincrisis@gmail.com

Next Meeting of the British Art Discussion Group

Tuesday 9th April, Tate Britain, 4.30pm

The British Art Discussion Group is a forum of graduate British art researchers who meet to share and discuss current research on modern and contemporary British art. The next meeting of the British Art Discussion Group will take place on Tuesday 9th April at Tate Britain at a new time of 4.30pm. Claire Yearwood, a doctoral student at the University of Bristol, will open the discussion with a presentation on ‘The Pre-Raphaelite Mirror’.

The meeting will be held in one of the Tate’s meeting rooms, and so attendees will need to meet once more as a group beforehand and go to the room together – as a result, those interested in coming should congregate outside the Manton entrance to the gallery at 4.15pm and go from there. The organisers would appreciate it if you could email them if you plan to attend so that a security pass can be prepared for each attendee. If you are interested in attending, please contact Greg Salter (G.Salter@uea.ac.uk) or Kate Aspinall (K.Aspinall@uea.ac.uk).

Conference: Representing War and Violence in the Pre-Modern World

Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, 23rd – 24th September 2013

Registration is now open for the conference Representing War and Violence in the Pre-Modern World, which will explore the documentation, depiction and narration of conflict in the medieval and early modern periods, bringing together historians, art historians and literary scholars. Professor Daniel Weiss (Lafayette College), Professor Richard Kaeuper (University of Rochester), and Professor Anne Curry (University of Southampton) will be the keynote speakers. You can view the full schedule and original call for papers here, as well as information about how to register. You can also contact the organisers at representing.war.conference@gmail.com

Symposium: R. B. Kitaj – Artist from a Fragmented World

R. B. Kitaj, The Killer-Critic assassinated by his Widower, Even, 1997. Photo c. R. B. Kitaj estate and Thomas Widerberg.

Thursday 25th and Friday 26th October 2012, Jewish Museum Berlin

This two-day symposium is being held alongside the special exhibition R.B. Kitaj (1932-2007): Obsessions at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. The exhibition is accompanied by a major catalogue on the artist with multiple illustrations. The Jewish Museum has also been running a useful blog where you can find out more about the project and read essays by those involved. From the 1960s, R.B. Kitaj attracted the attention and appreciation of the London and the international art scene with his figurative style. The first part of this symposium, entitled “R.B. Kitaj and the Heroes of the Modernism”, will explore Kitaj’s innovative artistic contribution as a draftsman, painter, and interpreter of his art; the second part, entitled “Diasporic Art – At Eye Level with Freud and Kafka”, considers identity in the modern age, which became a major theme of Kitaj’s life and work. In his analysis of his own “Jewishness,” he derived the idea and concept of a “Jewish” art from the experience of Diasporic existence. Some of the talks will be held in English, others in German, and for the most part they will be translated simultaneously. The symposium has emerged from a collabroation between the Berlin Academy of the Arts and the Humboldt University of Berlin. Symposium attendance is free of charge. The organisers do however require advance registration, for which they ask you to use their online registration form (in German).

Modern and Contemporary British Art Discussion Group: Next Meeting

Peter Lanyon, Thermal, 1960. Photo c. Tate and the Peter Lanyon estate.

Wednesday 14th November 2012, Tate Britain, 4pm

At the next meeting of the Modern and Contemporary British Art Discussion Group, Rachel Rose Smith, a doctoral student at the University of York and the Tate, will open the session with a talk entitled ‘Post-War St Ives: Negotiating the Modernist Mainstream’. The British Art Discussion Group is a group of graduate British art researchers who meet to share and discuss research on modern and contemporary British art. If you would be interested in joining in the dicussion, please contact the organisers Greg Salter (G.Salter@uea.ac.uk) and Katie Aspinal (K.Aspinall@uea.ac.uk). The session will take place in one of Tate’s meeting rooms, therefore those who would like to attend need to register their interest so that security passes can be prepared. The group will congregate outside the Manton entrance to the gallery at 3.45pm and go to the meeting room together from there.

Talk: New Ways of Modern Bohemia – Edward Burra in London, Paris, Marseilles and Harlem

Edward Burra, The Snack Bar, 1930. Photo c. Tate and Lefevre Fine Art.

The Rothenstein Lecture, Tate Britain, Wednesday 28th November 2012, 6:30pm

The Rothenstein Lecture series is an annual lecture programme at Tate Britain in which eminent scholars address aspects of modern British art, offering fresh insights into the work of individual artists or exploring themes relating to particular periods. Andrew Stephenson presents the next lecture in the series, looking at the shifting geographies of bohemianism in the interwar years as represented in the work of Edward Burra (1905–76).

Taking as his starting point the observation in a 1926 press article that the down-at-heel drinking clubs and music halls of the years before the First World War were being replaced everywhere by modern nightclubs, fashionable hotels and glamorous cocktail bars, Stephenson explores how the identity of Burra and his circle as ‘modern bohemians’ was shaped within and by these metropolitan locations. He notes how Burra’s night life scenes in London, Paris, Marseilles and Harlem were framed by the visual vocabularies of interwar photography, photojournalism and film, and shows how the artist was committed to developing a cosmopolitan modernism that publicised more relaxed, contemporary roles for young men and women and championed sexually liberal values.