Research Forum

Conference

Watts Symposium 2007: G F Watts: Art & Social Concerns

Thursday 20 and Friday 21 September 2007
9.30 – 17.00, Thursday 20 September, Watts Gallery, Down Lane, Compton, Guildford, Surrey GU3 1DQ
9.30 – 17.30, Friday 21 September, Kenneth Clark, Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN
Speaker(s): Anne Anderson (Senior Lecturer, Southampton Institute), Mark Bills (Curator, Watts Gallery), Barbara Bryant (Consultant Curator and Author G F Watts: Portraits of Fame & Beauty in Victorian Society), Julia Dudkiewicz (Assistant Curator, Watts Gallery), Veronica Franklin Gould (Author GF Watts: The Last Great Victorian and Curator of The Vision of G.F. Watts), Christopher Jordan (Curator, South London Gallery), Paul Nelson (Course Leader, Fine Art, University College for the Creative Arts), Leoneé Ormond (Professor Emerita, King’s College London), Julian Treuherz (Former Keeper of Art Galleries, National Museums Liverpool), Alex Werner (Senior Curator, Museum of London), Professor Michael Wheeler (Chairman, Ruskin Society and Visiting Professor of English, Southampton University)
Ticket/entry details: Thursday 20 September - £40, Friday 21 September - £45, Thursday & Friday - £75 (all prices include lunch and refreshments)
Please include payment with your booking, making cheques payable to ‘Watts Gallery’ and send with your completed booking form to: Tamsin Williams, Symposium Co-ordinator, Watts Gallery, Down Lane, Compton, Guildford, Surrey GU3 1DQ. Alternatively places can be booked by credit or debit card over the telephone on 01483 810235.
Through the generosity of The Derek Hill Foundation, there are a number of bursaries. For details, or for any further information, please contact Tamsin Williams at Watts Gallery (address above) on 01483 810235 or email tamsin.wattsgallery@yahoo.co.uk
Organised by: Watts Gallery and Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum
Further information: This two-day symposium exploring the impact of key social issues on the work of the Victorian artist, George Frederic Watts OM RA, is presented by the Watts Gallery in collaboration with the Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum. It will bring together experts in the fields of Victorian art, history and literature to consider how Watts and his contemporaries reacted to the social conditions of the poor and dispossessed. It will also examine the legacy of their pioneering responses, which can still be felt today, including Watts’ support of philanthropic movements that instigated the ethos of ‘Art for All’.
Thursday’s proceedings will conclude with a reception and an opportunity for delegates to view the Watts Gallery. There will also be a reception to close the symposium on Friday.
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Conference

Between Culture and Capital: Art, Institutions and Corporate Patronage

13.30 – 18.00 Wednesday 10 October (with registration from 1pm)
10.30 – 18.00 Thursday 11 October (with registration from 10.00am)
Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre 

Swetlana Heger. Playtime (SH &
Purification Garcia, photographed by
Marcus Gaab), 2006. Photograph
courtesy of COMA Berlin, Galerie
Frank Elbaz, Paris & Purification Garcia

Speaker(s):
Alexander Alberro (University of Florida), Sabine Breitwieser (Generali Foundation), Sue Daniels (Arts & Business), Deborah Doane (Sustainable Consumption, WWF-UK), London), Swetlana Heger (artist, Berlin), Mark Rectanus (University of Iowa), Julian Stallabrass (Courtauld Institute of Art), Jaime Stapleton (Birkbeck College), Chin-Tao Wu (Academica Sinica, Taiwan), Carey Young (artist, London)
Ticket/entry details: £10 per day (£5 concessions, Courtauld staff and students) including coffee and tea. Organised by: Dr. Julian Stallabrass and Jeannine Tang

Further information: This two-day conference was inspired by a work of art by Carey Young, entitled Image Transfer, in which Young and collaborator Deborah Doane teach participants the skills to research potential corporate sponsors. The conference addresses issues raised by Image Transfer, to examine conditions under which cultural capital is produced and traded in relationships between art, art institutions and their corporate sponsors. The conference focuses on art practice and production from the 1990s onwards, emerging from 1970s and 80s state policies and culture supporting intersections of art and business patronage. The conference will look at the aesthetics of the neo-liberal economy, corporate social responsibility, the interface of arts policy and public goods, and the role of art consultancies and/or art-business agencies in fostering relationships between the arts and corporate sponsors. Institutions supporting and exhibiting art production will be considered in relation to branding and fashion, within the spaces of the museum and gallery, and the resulting changes and innovations in curatorial and exhibition practices navigating courses between art production and sponsorship. The conference will also examine changing forms of art-work and labour, legacies of institutional critique and post-conceptual artistic strategies for both critical and collaborative involvement with corporate funders. This event has been made possible through the support of LCACE (London Centre for Arts and Cultural Enterprise) and the British Academy.
Programme
Biographies and abstracts

Conference

Beyond Borat: Contemporary Art in Kazakhstan

Saturday, 13 October 2007
11.00 – 14.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre

Rustam Khalfin, Northern Barbarians,
Part II, Love Races, 2000
Video still, courtesy of the artist.

Speaker(s):
Valeria Ibrayeva (Director, Soros Centre for Contemporary Arts, Almaty, Kazakhstan), Nariman Skakov (University College, Oxford)

Ticket/entry details:
Open to all, free admission.

Organised by:
Aliya Abykayeva-Tiesenhausen

Further information:
Kazakhstan has been attracting increased attention since the collapse of the Soviet Union. One of the reasons for this is its very rich natural resources and an unprecedented amount of and support for foreign investment. Another reason is the appearance of novel forms of contemporary art practices such as performance, video, experimental photography, etc. Learning from their western counterparts these Central Asians produced work which seemed like a very fast-forward history of late 20th century art. Similarly to their Russian counterparts they draw references from the common Soviet past. Yet their reflections do not always coincide. Kazakhstan’s nomadic and Islamic traditions, both heavily repressed during the Soviet period, play an important role both in terms of the construction of national identities and as a source of criticism. At the same time Kazakhstan’s position as a peripheral state, bowed to Russia’s position as the ‘Imperial’ centre. Today, Kazakhstan’s artists prefer to seek ‘approval’ and artistic exchange in the West. The first major appearance of Kazakhstan’s new art took place at the Venice Biennale in 2005, as part of a Central Asian pavilion curated by Viktor Misiano. Last year a film was made documenting Waldemar Januszczak’s adventures in the steppes of Kazakhstan’s contemporary art world. Curating and presenting Kazakhstan’s art is the main theme of this symposium. It is held in conjunction with pioneering video and performance artist Rustam Khalfin’s first exhibition in London: Love Races at the White Space Gallery (4 October – 2 November 2007). This symposium has been made possible through the support of the Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation. 

Frank Davis Memorial Lecture Series

Writing Art History: Aesthetics, Identity and Art History

Tuesday 16 October 2007
17.30 – 18.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Speaker(s): Amelia Jones (Pilkington Chair and Professor of Art History and Visual Studies, University of Manchester)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Catherine Grant
Further information: Since the Renaissance in European-based cultures, works of art are invested with selfhood, and thought to convey the "identity" of the individual who made them. Aesthetics, Identity and Art History critically addresses the way in which this belief structure continues to condition how we understand the visual arts, even in the wake of theories of the "death of the author" and the current suspicion towards identity politics.
This lecture is part of the Writing Art History series, which will be the theme for a number of Research Forum events during the academic years 2007-08, and 2008-09, and which begins with the Frank Davis Memorial Lectures in Autumn 2007. The series addresses the changing role of the art historian across historical periods, and considers how art history incorporates a range of writings on art, from the novelist to the critic to the philosopher. More information on the series can be found here
Amelia Jones is Professor and Pilkington Chair in Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Manchester. She has written numerous articles in anthologies and journals and has organised exhibitions with accompanying catalogues, including ‘Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago's Dinner Party’ in Feminist Art History (1996). Jones co-edited the anthology Performing the Body/Performing the Text with Andrew Stephenson (1999), edited the volume Feminism and Visual Culture Reader (Routledge Press, 2003), and has published the books Postmodernism and the En-Gendering of Marcel Duchamp (1994), Body Art/Performing the Subject (1998), and Irrational Modernism: A Neurasthenic History of New York Dada (2004). Her edited anthology A Companion to Contemporary Art Since 1945, a handbook and intellectual survey, includes 27 original essays and is just out from Blackwell Press. Her book Self Image: Technology, Representation, and the Contemporary Subject, on artists' use of technologies of representation to interrogate the boundaries of the self, is just out from Routledge Press. Jones has received ACLS, NEH, and Guggenheim fellowships.

Writing Art History seminar

Markets and Media

Friday 19 October 2007
14.00 – 16.00, Research Forum South Room
Speaker(s): David Joselit (Professor and Chair, Department of the History of Art History of Art, Yale University)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Catherine Grant and Professor Mignon Nixon
Further information: How can we practice an art history where the object of study reaches beyond individual artworks? If visual meaning is a function of the circulation of images, what techniques are adequate to mapping image worlds as opposed to simply interpreting their individual elements?
This seminar by David Joselit will form part of the Research Forum’s Writing Art History series, which examines the changing role of the art historian, the different perspectives from which art history is written, and the different kinds of art histories that are generated. Further details on the series can be found here.
David Joselit worked as a curator at The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston from 1983-1989 where he co-organised several exhibitions including: DISSENT: The Issue of Modern Art in Boston (1985), Endgame: Reference and Simulation in Recent Painting and Sculpture (1986) and The British Edge (1987). After receiving his Ph.D. in Art History from Harvard in 1995, he began teaching in the Department of Art History and Ph.D. Program in Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine, where he taught until 2003. He is currently Professor and Chair of the History of Art Department at Yale. Joselit is author of Infinite Regress: Marcel Duchamp 1910-1941 (MIT Press, 1998), American Art Since 1945 (Thames and Hudson, World of Art Series, 2003), and Feedback: Television Against Democracy (MIT Press, 2007). He writes regularly on contemporary art and culture for such publications as OCTOBER and Artforum.

London seminar for Early Modern Visual Culture

Landscapes and Music: Religious Iconography in Seicento Media

Monday 22 October 2007
18.00, Research Forum South Room
Speaker(s): Dr Arno Witte (University of Amsterdam)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Mechthild Fend, Dr Denis Ribouillault, Rose Marie San Juan
and Katie Scott
Further information: This seminar series has been organised jointly by the Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum and University College London.

Frank Davis Memorial Lecture Series

Writing Art History: Art and Non-Art: the Conditions of Modern Realism

Tuesday 23 October 2007
17.30 – 18.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Speaker(s): Alex Potts (Professor and Chair, Department of History of Art, University of Michigan)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Catherine Grant
Further information: Understandings of realism in modern art have to a large degree been governed by a duality between the representational and the abstract. A work’s realism is seen to reside, either in its compelling depiction or reflection of realities existing in the world outside the gallery and museum, or in its own reality as a phenomenon that any too direct or imitative a reference to other phenomena dilutes. Alex Potts will argue that a fruitful understanding of modern realism, that does justice to the distinctive preoccupations of twentieth-century art rather than being grounded in nineteenth-century conceptions of visual depiction, needs to blur the boundaries between abstract and representational visual languages. Such realism would be defined, not by its adhering to realistic modes of depiction, but by the compulsion to break down the boundaries that artistic culture keeps reinstating between art and non-art.
This lecture is part of the Writing Art History series, which will be the theme for a number of Research Forum events during the academic years 2007-08, and 2008-09, beginning with the Frank Davis Memorial Lectures in Autumn 2007. The series addresses the changing role of the art historian across historical periods, and considers how art history incorporates a range of writings on art, from the novelist to the critic to the philosopher. More information on the series can be found here
Alex Potts is Max Loehr Collegiate Professor in the Department of History of Art at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is author of the books Flesh and the Ideal: Winckelmann and the Origins of Art History (1994 and 2000) and The Sculptural Imagination. Figurative, Modernist, Minimalist (2000). He has published articles on aspects of sculpture and sculptural aesthetics from the mid-eighteenth century to the present day, on modern revivals of the classical, on art and art theory in the Enlightenment and Romantic periods, and on different aspects of mid- and later twentieth-century art. He was project scholar and wrote the introduction for the new English translation of Winckelmann’s History of the Art of Antiquity (2005)and is co-editor of a volume of texts on modern sculpture, The Modern Sculpture Reader (2007). His current research examines the changes taking place in the artistic culture of postwar Europe and America that led to a radical questioning of the status of the art object in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Research seminar: Medieval Work in Progress

‘Frau Venus’, the Eucharist and the Jews of Landshut: The Living Cross Revisited

Thursday 25 October 2007
17.30, Research Forum South Room
Speaker(s): Achim Timmermann (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professor John Lowden

Conference

Louise Bourgeois

Saturday 27 October 2007
10.30 – 18.00, Tate Modern, Starr Auditorium
Speaker(s): include psycho-analyst Juliet Mitchell (University of Cambridge), curator Frances Morris (Tate) and art historians Linda Nochlin (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University), Briony Fer (University College London) and Mignon Nixon (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: £20 (£15 concessions), Price includes entry to the exhibition. Booking is recommended. Please contact the Tate for tickets. You can book online via https://tickets.tate.org.uk or call 020 7887 8888.  Quote 'Louise Bourgeois Symposium'
Organised by: Tate Modern and Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum
Further information: On the occasion of the Louise Bourgeois exhibition this conference brings together a fascinating range of perspectives on the extraordinary work of this artist who has worked in dialogue with most of the major artistic movements of the twentieth century, but has always followed her own path, powerfully inventive and at the forefront of contemporary practice. The conference is a collaboration between Tate Modern and the Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum.

Research seminar: Modern and Contemporary

"Look But Don't Touch": Changing Views of Modern British Sculpture

Monday 29 October 2007
17.30, Seminar Room 1
Speaker(s): Dr Lee Beard (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by:Professor Mignon Nixon

NOVEMBER

Writing Art History seminar

"Between Friends”: Sex, Friendship, and Warhol's “Blue Movie"

Friday 2 November 2007
14.00 – 16.30, Research Forum South Room
Speaker(s): Jennifer Doyle (Associate Professor of English, University of California)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Catherine Grant
Further information: Blue Movie is one of the most mythological of the Factory films – screened publicly only once since 1970 (when it was pulled from theatres for its “obscenity”). It was the last film Warhol ever made, and it was advertised as the first theatrical release in the U.S. to depict sexual intercourse. It is also, in many ways, one of the least typical of especially Warhol's later films – at times tender, warm, and intimate, Blue Movie offers its audience a surprisingly gentle and optimistic portrait of heterosexual intimacy. In this seminar, we will discuss what this film teaches us about the collaborative nature of Warhol's films, the sexual politics on the screen and behind it – and how one might approach it, as a critic. Doyle's work on this film grows directly from her writing about women in Warhol's films in Sex Objects: Art and the Dialectics of Desire (University of Minnesota Press, 2006).
Recommended reading for the seminar: Jennifer Doyle, “‘I Must Be Boring Someone’: Women in Warhol’s Films”, Sex Objects: Art and the Dialectics of Desire, University of Minnesota Press, 2006. This book will be on short loan, and a copy of this essay will be placed in the photocopy boxes in the library.
Jennifer Doyle’s seminar will form part of the Research Forum’s Writing Art History series, which examines the changing role of the art historian, the different perspectives from which art history is written, and the different kinds of art histories that are generated. Further details on the series can be found here
Jennifer Doyle is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, and is in residence this year at Goldsmiths College as a Leverhulme Visiting Fellow in Visual Studies. In addition to writing Sex Objects, she is co-editor of a special issue of the feminist journal Signs on feminist theories of visual culture (Spring 2006), and of Pop Out: Queer Warhol (1996). She is also the event and exhibition review editor of the American Studies Association journal, American Quarterly. Other recent work include essays about David Wojnarowicz, the lesbian love poems in the novel Little Women, and queer studies in art history. She co-curated Aquí No Hay Virgenes Queer Latina Visibility for the Los Angeles Lesbian and Gay Center in the spring of 2007, and is currently developing a group exhibit called “I Feel Different” for Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, slated for 2009. She is currently working on two books, one about sex and friendship (of which this presentation is a part), and another about contemporary art and the politics of emotion.

London seminar for Early Modern Visual Culture

The "Holy Cunning" of Landscape. Herri Met de Bles's Way to Calvary: a Silenic Landscape

Monday 5 November 2007
18.00, Research Forum South Room
Speaker(s): Dr Michel Weemans (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en sciences sociales, Paris)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Mechthild Fend, Dr Denis Ribouillault, Rose Marie San Juan
and Katie Scott
Further information: This seminar series has been organised jointly by the Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum and University College London.

Late Antiquities seminar

Icons from Roman Egypt and their Religious Uses

Tuesday 6 November 2007
17.00 - 18.00, Research Forum South Room
Thomas Mathews (Professor Emeritus, Institute of Fine Arts, New York)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Antony Eastmond

Research Forum Visiting Professor programme

Richard Hamilton, or the Tabular Image

Tuesday 6 November 2007
17.30 – 18.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Speaker(s): Hal Foster (Townsend Martin '17 Professor of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Further information: Even today we concentrate too much on the content of Pop art. The thesis of Hal Foster’s lecture is that the greatest of these artists also invented new forms of the pictorial image – and that this aspect of Pop, otherwise so familiar, deserves further inquiry.
In his lecture on Richard Hamilton Foster focuses on Hamilton’s notion of "the tabular picture", which he explores through paintings done in the wake of the Independent Group. How does the tabular picture differ from collage? What is its relation to The Large Glass of Marcel Duchamp, with whom Hamilton was much concerned at the time? Its connection to advertisement is clear enough, but how does it bear on the traditional model of the tableau of modernist painting?
Hal Foster is Townsend Martin '17 Professor and Chair in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. A co-editor of OCTOBER, he also writes regularly for Artforum and the London Review of Books. His most recent publications are Prosthetic Gods (MIT press, 2005) and Design And Crime (Verso, 2002), and he is currently at work on a volume of essays on pop art.

Research Forum Visiting Professor programme

Andy Warhol, or the Ruptured Image

Thursday 8 November 2007
17.30 – 18.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Speaker(s): Hal Foster (Townsend Martin '17 Professor of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Further information: Even today we concentrate too much on the content of Pop art. The thesis of Hal Foster’s lecture is that the greatest of these artists also invented new forms of the pictorial image – and that this aspect of Pop, otherwise so familiar, deserves further inquiry.
In his lecture on Andy Warhol Foster argues against the common reading of his Pop images as quick, clean, almost indifferent in execution. Foster points instead to the difficulty of imaging in Warhol: from his own presentation of his persona throughout his Pop production, his images – including of the self – often fail, and Warhol, he thinks, was fascinated by this ruination. "Where is your rupture?" Warhol asks, again and again, of his images, his associates, and us.
Hal Foster is Townsend Martin '17 Professor and Chair in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. A co-editor of OCTOBER, he also writes regularly for Artforum and the London Review of Books. His most recent publications are Prosthetic Gods (MIT press, 2005) and Design And Crime (Verso, 2002), and he is currently at work on a volume of essays on pop art.

Conference

Colour Photography: From Autochrome to Cibachrome

Saturday, 10 November 2007
10.00 – 18.00, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre (registration from 9.30am)

Russell Lee, Untitled Cityscape, Norway,
1968, Kodachrome

Speaker(s): J B Colson (University of Texas at Austin); Anthony Downey (Sotheby’s Institute); Anne Hammond (University of the West of England); Helen James (The Photographers’ Gallery); Alexandra Moschovi (University of Sunderland); Harriet Riches (Middlesex University); Pam Roberts (Independent curator and writer); Abraham Thomas (V&A Museum); Gawain Weaver (Rochester Institute of Technology)

Ticket/entry details:  Tickets are £10. Please send a cheque made payable to ‘Courtauld Institute of Art’ to: Research Forum Events Coordinator & Administrator, Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN, clearly stating that you wish to book for the ‘Colour Photography: From Autochrome to Cibachrome’ conference. Or call 020 7848 2785/2909 to make a credit card booking. For further information contact ResearchForumEvents@courtauld.ac.uk.
Organised by: Dr Catherine Grant
Further information: This conference, which has been organised in collaboration with The Photographers’ Gallery, considers the fluctuating status of colour photography, from its early, paradoxical associations with artifice in relation to the ‘realism’ of black and white, to its current ubiquity in the art world and beyond. Associated with fashion and advertising for much of the twentieth century, the significance of colour in a wide range of photographic projects has not been adequately explored. As 2007 marks the centenary of the Autochrome, arguably the first practical colour photographic process, it seems timely to address the ‘colour-blindness’ in many traditional histories of photography. Papers will consider a varied array of colour photographic projects, from early autochromists to the politics of colour in contemporary documentary practices to the revisiting of earlier colour processes in contemporary photography.
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Research seminar: Renaissance

Reading Leonardo, ca. 1600

Monday 12 November 2007 (note date)
17.30, Research Forum South Room
Speaker(s): Michael Cole (Professor, Department of the History of Art, University of Pennsylvania)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professor Paul Hills

Research Forum Visiting Professor programme

Gerhard Richter, or the Photogenic Image

Wednesday 14 November 2007
17.30 – 18.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Speaker(s): Hal Foster (Townsend Martin '17 Professor of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Further information: Even today we concentrate too much on the content of Pop art. The thesis of Hal Foster’s lecture is that the greatest of these artists also invented new forms of the pictorial image – and that this aspect of Pop, otherwise so familiar, deserves further inquiry.
In his lecture on Gerhard Richter Foster concentrates on a neglected concern of his painting – the nature of "semblance". A great topos of German philosophy and literature, Foster suggests that this question also drives Richter, who offers up perhaps the most sustained exploration we have of what mediated appearance looks like in the post-war period.
Hal Foster is Townsend Martin '17 Professor and Chair in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. A co-editor of OCTOBER, he also writes regularly for Artforum and the London Review of Books. His most recent publications are Prosthetic Gods (MIT press, 2005) and Design And Crime (Verso, 2002), and he is currently at work on a volume of essays on pop art.

Research Forum Visiting Professor programme

"Intellectual Formation" seminar

Thursday 15 November 2007
14.00 – 16.00, Research Forum South Room
Speaker(s): Hal Foster (Townsend Martin '17 Professor of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Further information: This "intellectual formation" seminar with Hal Foster will be chaired by Professor Mignon Nixon (Courtauld Institute of Art).
Hal Foster is Townsend Martin '17 Professor and Chair in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. A co-editor of OCTOBER, he also writes regularly for Artforum and the London Review of Books. His most recent publications are Prosthetic Gods (MIT press, 2005) and Design And Crime (Verso, 2002), and he is currently at work on a volume of essays on pop art.
Recommended reading for the seminar: Hal Foster, "Antinomies of Art History" and "Art Critics in Extremis", Design and Crime, London: Verso, 2002. This book will be on short loan, and a copy of this essay will be placed in the photocopy boxes in the library.

Research seminar: Medieval Work in Progress

The Pala d’Oro and Paolo Veneziano

Thursday 15 November 2007
17.30, Research Forum South Room
Speaker(s): Julian Gardner (University of Warwick, Emeritus)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professor John Lowden

SYMPOSIUM

Renaissance Siena: Studying a City and its Art

Monday 19 November 2007
14.00 – 18.00, Research Forum South Room
Speaker(s): Machtelt Israëls (University of Amsterdam), Philippa Jackson (independent scholar), Fabrizio Nevola (Oxford Brookes University), Luke Syson (National Gallery)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Prof. Patricia Rubin & Dr. Joanna Cannon
Further information: To complement the current National Gallery exhibition, this afternoon of papers by four leading scholars – including Luke Syson, curator of the exhibition, and two contributors to the catalogue – invites discussion of the presence of the past in a Tuscan city.  To what extent do the art and architecture of Siena draw on classical antiquity and on the more recent, medieval, past? Are these two histories consciously chosen and clearly distinguishable, or are they intertwined in a manner that is distinctively Sienese?  Papers on painting, architecture and urban design will focus attention on issues that lie at the heart of the National Gallery exhibition. 

Research seminar: Modern and Contemporary

Partisans of the Real: Critical Issues in KontextKunst of the 1990s

Monday 19 November 2007
17.30, Seminar Room 1
Speaker(s): William Roberts (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professor Mignon Nixon

Research seminar: Modern and Contemporary

Hans Haacke and the Politics of Transparency

Monday 26 November 2007
17.30, Research Forum South Room
Speaker(s): Jeannine Tang (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professor Mignon Nixon

Frank Davis Memorial Lecture Series

Writing Art History: The Revenge of the Spiritual Medieval Art History After Theory

Tuesday 27 November 2007
17.30 – 18.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Speaker(s): Professor Paul Crossley (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Catherine Grant
Further information:
The intellectual upheaval created by the "new art history" in the 1970s and 1980s challenged the old comfort zones of medievalist art history - connoisseurship, antiquarianism and archaeology. In its place the reformers offered a theoretical, social and secular view of the Middle Ages. In the last decade, however, a new revisionist generation have claimed that "theory is dead" and are now returning to medieval art as the instrument of religious experience. In this "revenge of the spiritual" what has been lost and what gained?

This lecture is part of the Writing Art History series, which will be the theme for a number of Research Forum events during the academic years 2007-08, and 2008-09, beginning with the Frank Davis Memorial Lectures in Autumn 2007. The series addresses the changing role of the art historian across historical periods, and considers how art history incorporates a range of writings on art, from the novelist to the critic to the philosopher. More information on the series can be found here

DECEMBER

London seminar for Early Modern Visual Culture

Sacred Landscape in Early Modern Rome: The Villa Montalto Reconsidered

Monday 3 December 2007
18.00, Research Forum South Room
Speaker(s):  Dr Denis Ribouillault (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Mechthild Fend, Dr Denis Ribouillault, Rose Marie San Juan
and Katie Scott
Further information: This seminar series has been organised jointly by the Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum and University College London.
Please note that Professor David Solkin (The Courtauld Institute of Art)’s seminar on Turner’s Gleanings, which was originally planned for 3 December will now take place in the Spring term (date to be confirmed).

Frank Davis Memorial Lecture Series

Writing Art History: Alois Riegl and Classical Archaeology

Tuesday 4 December 2007
17.30 – 18.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Speaker(s): Dr Jas Elsner (Humfry Payne Senior Research Fellow, Corpus Christi College, Oxford)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Catherine Grant
Further information: This lecture addresses the significance of Riegl in the history of (especially German) Classical archaeology in the twentieth century. It explores the radical differences between his reception and his memory in the twin disciplines of Classical archaeology and mainstream art history (in both of which he stands as a founding father).
It is part of the Writing Art History series, which will be the theme for a number of Research Forum events during the academic years 2007-08, and 2008-09, and which begins with the Frank Davis Memorial Lectures in Autumn 2007. The series addresses the changing role of the art historian across historical periods, and considers how art history incorporates a range of writings on art, from the novelist to the critic to the philosopher. More information on the series can be found here.
Jas' Elsner is Humfry Payne Senior Research Fellow in Classical Art and Archaeology at Corpus Christi College Oxford. He taught art history at the Courtauld for 8 years in the 1990s, as well as studying for an MA there in the 1980s. His work is on all aspects of Classical and early Christian art, including reception, historiography, collecting, viewing and pilgrimage.

Research seminar: History of Photography

‘Memory of Fire’: Curating the 2008 Brighton Photo Biennial

Wednesday 5 December 2007
17.30, Research Forum South Room
Speaker(s): Dr Julian Stallabrass (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Barbara Thompson and Dr Alexandra Moschovi
Further information: The History of Photography research seminar series aims to be a discursive platform for the discussion and dissemination of current research on photography.  From art as photography and early photographic technology to ethnographic photographs and contemporary photography as art, the seminar welcomes contributions from researchers across the board, whether independent or affiliated with museums, galleries, archives, libraries or higher education, and endeavours to provide scholars with a challenging opportunity to present work in progress and test out new ideas.
The seminars usually take place once a term, on Wednesday evenings at 5.30pm in the Research Forum. The papers, and formal discussion, are followed by informal discussion over a glass of wine.
Contact: Dr Alexandra Moschovi (alexandra.moschovi@courtauld.ac.uk) or Barbara Thompson (barbara.thompson@courtauld.ac.uk)

Research seminar: Medieval Work in Progress

Images of Scholarly Ambition: Individual and Community in the Antechapel Glazing of Merton College Oxford

Thursday 6 December 2007
17.30, Research Forum South Room
Speaker(s): Tim Ayers (University of York)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professor John Lowden

Intellectual Formation Seminar

A Masterpiece and its Meanings: Fifty Years of Simone Martini’s ‘Annunciation’

Friday 7 December 2007
17.00, Research Forum South Room
Speaker: Henk van Os (Professor Emeritus, University of Amsterdam)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Jointly organised by the Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum and Giotto’s Circle
Further information: “As some people get a biography, a few paintings are worth a monograph. One of these paintings is Simone Martini’s 'Annunciation' with Sts. Ansanus and Maxima in the Uffizi…” says Professor van Os.

London seminar for Early Modern Visual Culture

On the Horizon

Monday 10 December 2007
18.00, Seminar Room 1
Speaker: Dr Sarah Monks (University of York)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Mechthild Fend, Dr Denis Ribouillault, Rose Marie San Juan
and Katie Scott
Further information: This seminar series has been organised jointly by the Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum and University College London.

Abbey Church of St. Pierre,
Moissac: Prophet Jeremiah
(or Isaiah?) detail from trumeau of
S. portal (orig. W. portal), view from
R., ca. 1115-1135
Courtesy: Minneapolis College of
Art and Design

ICMA at the Courtauld lecture series 2007-8

Moissac: The Sacred and the Secular in the Sculpture of the South Portal

Thursday 13 December 2007
17.30 - 18.30 , Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Speaker(s): Ilene Forsyth (Professor Emerita of the History of Art, University of Michigan)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, admission free.
Organised by: Dr Joanna Cannon
Further information: This lecture is presented by the Courtauld Institute of Art in association with the International Center of Medieval Art, New York and with the support of the Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum. The International Center of Medieval Art promotes the study of the visual arts of the Middle Ages in Europe.  Its worldwide membership includes academics, museum professionals, students, and other enthusiasts. The lecture series ICMA at the Courtauld is made possible through the generosity of Dr. William M. Voelkle.

ICMA publishes a scholarly journal Gesta, a newsletter, and sponsors lectures and conference sessions.  ICMA@medievalart.org      
http://www.medievalart.org.
Annual membership application forms for ICMA will be available at the lecture: Students $20 Others $60
Local arrangements:  Dr Joanna Cannon, Courtauld Institute of Art, joanna.cannon@courtauld.ac.uk.