Perspectives on The Lasting World Symposium September 22–23, 2017
MUSEUM OF ART
AND ARCHAEOLOGY UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI Simon Dinnerstein Biography
imon Dinnerstein, a Brooklyn-based painter and graphic artist, holds Sa B.A. (1965) in history from the City College of New York. He studied painting and drawing from 1964 through 1967 at the Brooklyn Museum Art School with Louis Grebenak, David Levine and Richard Mayhew. Dinnerstein received a Fulbright Fellowship to Germany, and from 1970–1971 he and wife Renee resided near Kassel, in north-central Germany. While in Germany, he attended the Hochschule für Bildende Kunst in Kassel, traveled to Nüremberg to see the exhibit commemorating the 500th anniversary of Albrecht Dürer’s birth, and visited Colmar, France, to view Gruenewald’s Isenheim Alterpiece. Simon Dinnerstein has also received many other prestigious art awards, such as the Rome Prize for living and working in Italy at the American Academy in Rome, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant, the Ingram Merrill Award for Painting, a New York State Foundation for the Arts Grant, three Childe Hassam Purchase Awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was elected (1992) to the National Academy of Design. He has been represented in New York by Staempfli Gallery and ACA Galleries, and his work is included in numerous private and public collections. Dozens of articles and books, especially The Suspension of Time: Reflections on Simon Dinnerstein and The Fulbright Triptych, edited by Daniel Slager (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2011) reflect upon multiple aspects of his work. To learn more about Simon Dinnerstein and view other examples of his work, visit his website at http://simondinnerstein.com.
(Detail) Simon Dinnerstein (American, b. 1943) Rear Window, 1994 Perspectives on The Lasting World Symposium 101 Swallow Hall (On the Francis Quadrangle)
Friday, September 22, 2017
5:30pm Welcome and Introductions
5:45pm Keynote Address Dr. Melissa Wolfe Curator of American Art Friday Saint Louis Art Museum September 22, 2017 The Quince Tree Sun (1992) Followed by audience questions Directed by Victor Erice Starring Enrique Gran, Antonio López Garcia, and Maria Moreno 6:45pm Film Introduction by Simon Dinnerstein
The Quince Tree Sun, which won the International Critics’ Prize at the 7:00pm MAA Ad Hoc Film Series Screening 1992 Cannes Film Festival, explores the creative process of world- The Quince Tree Sun renowned contemporary artist Antonio López Garcia, whose work has strongly influenced that of Simon Dinnerstein himself. Spanish director Victor Erice loosely documents the ongoing efforts of the artist to capture 9:00pm Film discussion before the end of the season the distinctive light falling on the leaves of a tree López Garcia had planted in his backyard. The film begins as documentary, with voiceover narration from López Garcia himself, then slowly evolves from narrative storytelling to nature film to philosophical meditation on art and mortality, offering an excellent complement to the symposium and The Lasting World exhibition. Perspectives on The Lasting World Symposium 101 Swallow Hall Abstracts (On the Francis Quadrangle) Saturday, September 23, 2017
9:00am Welcome and Introductions
9:10am Matthew Ballou Associate Teaching Professor Studio Art, School of Visual Studies, University of Missouri
9:35am [In absentia] Dr. Steven Mansbach Distinguished Professor and Professor of the History of Twentieth-Century Art, University of Maryland
9:50am Short break
10:00am Dr. Anne Rudloff Stanton Associate Professor, Medieval and Northern Renaissance Art Art History, School of Visual Studies, University of Missouri
10:25am Dr. Rachel Lindsey Assistant Professor, Theology Department of Theological Studies, Saint Louis University
10:50am Dr. Rabia Gregory Associate Professor Department of Religious Studies, University of Missouri
11:15am Dr. James van Dyke Associate Professor, Modern European Art Art History, School of Visual Studies, University of Missouri
11:40am Audience discussion and wrap-up Symposium Introduction Sleepers, Dreamers, and the Persistent Object
Dr. Arthur Mehrhoff Simon Dinnerstein and A Narrative Academic Coordinator of American Art Museum of Art and Archaeology University of Missouri Dr. Melissa Wolfe Curator of American Art Saint Louis Art Museum ear the center of The Fulbright Triptych, Simon Dinnerstein Nincluded a quote from philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein: “And to the question which of our worlds will then be the n recent years, critical inquiry has been directed toward twentieth- world, there is no answer. For the answer would have to be century American artists whose works had often been seen as given in a language, and a language must be rooted in some I forms of life, and every particular form of life could be other idiosyncratic or detached from the more mainstream problems and than what it is.” issues of the art world. Artists such as George Tooker, Jared French, The Museum of Art and Archaeology has applied Wittgenstein’s Gregory Gillespie, or Honore Sharrer, produced work in the last half aphorism to our exhibition of Simon Dinnerstein’s works entitled of the century that, in both their technical and conceptual mastery The Lasting World. This exhibition in particular helps augment the and in their pertinence to lived experience, have well warranted this Museum’s collection by exploring modern American art, one of the renewed inquiry. The works of these artists offer a fertile dialogue less developed of the Museum’s interests and collections. Some of within which to consider the themes and motifs that construct the ‘languages’ we are using to more fully understand The Lasting meaning in the works by Simon Dinnerstein. World include: a musical work by noted composer Robert Sirota that was inspired by several Dinnerstein drawings; a book discussion of John William’s novel Stoner, a Simon Dinnerstein favorite; text labels reflecting multiple backgrounds and perspectives; this academic symposium featuring artists, art historians, cinema, and even scholars of religion. Although we have no single answer to the question of what this exhibition ‘means,’ we hope the different ‘languages’ and answers put forward in this symposium broaden and deepen your appreciation and understanding of The Lasting World. Simon Dinnerstein (American, b. 1943) The Fulbright Triptych, 1971–1974 Oil on wood panels On loan from the Palmer Museum of Art at the Pennsylvania State University Paying Attention To Sinks A Triptych Between Past and Present
Matthew Ballou Dr. Steven Mansbach Associate Teaching Professor Distinguished University Professor and Studio Art, School of Visual Studies Professor of the History of Twentieth-Century Art University of Missouri University of Maryland
imon Dinnerstein and Antonio López Garcia have built their he historical monumentality of Dinnerstein’s tripartite Scareers on tenacious attention. People, places, objects—as well Tcomposition merits emphasis. His embrace of the triptych as their associations and meanings—have come alive under the format, along with the rigorous compositional choices both within gaze of these two artists. In a time when our attention is called away and among the panels, constitute a brilliant wedding of art historical incessantly, the work of Dinnerstein and Garcia stand as paragons tradition and modern aesthetics, Renaissance reference and of the great value our focused minds may create. In their eyes, contemporary aesthetic practice. Indeed, the creative combination of darkened windows and dirty sinks become embodiments of profound a long-established religious format and a time-honored figuration, understanding. Like all great wisdom, artworks crafted from acts of on the one hand, with a fully modern focus on strict geometrical observation and translation cause the banalities that surround us to organization united to an ingenious strategy of symmetry, on the blaze with resonating, transformative power. This talk will explore other, elevate this painting to an iconic level. The Fulbright Triptych just a few instances of the artists’ attentive creativity, and will posit a thus functions as a monumental work of art that hovers between connection between representational attention and symbolic intent. religious allusion and secular description, between the highly personal and the accessibly public, between the art historical past and the insistently present. The Fulbright Triptych Renaissance Roots, Modern Eyes All on the Table Banality as Spiritual Inventory in Simon Dr. Anne Rudloff Stanton Medieval and Northern Renaissance Art Dinnerstein’s The Fulbright Triptych Art History, School of Visual Studies University of Missouri Dr. Rachel Lindsey Assistant Professor, Theology Department of Theological Studies Saint Louis University his talk will address The Fulbright Triptych as a latter-day Tdescendant of one of the Renaissance paintings it resembles, eyond adopting the compositional structure of the triptych, which communicated meaning through visual and spatial Bwhich has been a popular visual form of Christian theological relationships with other works of art, and with the functions of narrative since the middle ages, Simon Dinnerstein’s The Fulbright the spaces in which they were viewed. The Renaissance triptychs Triptych conscripts even the most seemingly banal artifacts of daily Dinnerstein echoes were altarpieces, their large scale and careful life—his artist’s tools, childhood art, newspaper articles, government symmetries intentionally imposing a transformational presence IDs—into a visual narrative of spiritual contemplation. For all of that was emphasized by the meticulous depiction of surfaces and its much-deserved celebration as a triumph of American art, and textures. Like these works, The Fulbright Triptych demands slow and notwithstanding Dinnerstein’s own reservations about classifying his immersive looking. artwork as religious, The Fulbright Triptych invites scrutiny as an object of study within the framework of American religion; albeit an object that stretches rather than affirms conventional boundaries of what religion is and can be in the modern world. This paper works to situate The Fulbright Triptych in relation to other twentieth-century artistic engagements with banality as spiritual inventory in order to define its contribution to the study of religion in the United States. Dinnerstein and Dürer Dinnerstein and the Flatbed Picture Plane
(Un)natural Women and Dr. James A. van Dyke the Veneration of Art Associate Professor, Modern European Art Art History, School of Visual Studies Dr. Rabia Gregory University of Missouri Associate Professor President Department of Religious Studies Historians of German, Scandinavian, and University of Missouri Central European Art & Architecture
Reviews Editor Designate his presentation explores the use of nudity and clothing, human The Art Bulletin beauty and lived imperfection as they pertain to Dinnerstein’s T substitution of “art” for “icon” as an object of veneration in the his paper will think about Dinnerstein’s early work, especially secular twentieth century by comparing Dürer’s and Dinnerstein’s The Fulbright Triptych, in relationship to an important approaches to portraiture, representations of sexualized and sacred T critical term—“flatbed picture plane”—that was coined in 1972. human bodies, apocalyptic expectations, and the sexual epidemics Leo Steinberg, the critic who first used it, did so to describe what of sixteenth-century Syphilis and twentieth century HIV/Aids. After distinguished Robert Rauschenberg’s work from earlier Modernist a discussion of the gendered hierarchies of viewer and subject, and art. Thinking about Dinnerstein’s painting in this framework will the possibilities introduced by physically unnatural but artistically lead to a discussion of his pictures in relationship to the tradition of idealized nudes, I conclude with Dürer and Dinnerstein’s portraits critical realism, which is associated with the expression of political of their wives in the posture of sainted women and the ways they dissidence in times of historical unrest and crisis. appropriate iconography in their own self-portraits to discuss Dinnerstein’s skillful adaptations of sacred art. Notes Notes