Abstracts for the Annual SECAC Meeting in Pittsburgh, PA Oct 21-24, 2015
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Abstracts for the Annual SECAC Meeting in Pittsburgh, PA Oct 21-24, 2015 Conference Chair: Kurt Pitluga, Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania with Kristina Olson, West Virginia Amanda Adams, Virginia Commonwealth University Syncopated Rhythm: Walter de Maria’s Land Art of 1968–1969 In 2012, Miwon Kwon and Philip Kaiser expanded the historical field of Land art with the exhibition “Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974.” There, Land art grew to include nearly one hundred artists, with Walter de Maria and Michael Heizer as progenitors; a contributing writer, Jane McFadden, argued that De Maria’s text “Art Yard” (1959) is a canonical origin point. Indeed, Walter de Maria’s work has garnered attention in the last decade as scholars grappled with his oeuvre on the fringes of Fluxus, Minimalism, Conceptualism, and Land art. Some have claimed that De Maria’s works, deeply rooted in ecological thinking, create all-encompassing environments or sites. Others have kept De Maria’s intermedia works in tension; unfortunately this leaves too much emphasis on the variety rather than interpretation. This paper reinvestigates De Maria’s contributions to Land art by turning to 1968–1969, when De Maria realized the first work in Germany and participated in landmark exhibitions at Cornell University and Dwan Gallery. Adams suggests that De Maria’s Land art favored an anti-gestalt rather than all-encompassing environments. As anagrammatic investigations, De Maria offered not the expansive sublime but a repetitious syncopation that sought not continuity but disruption. Brad Adams, Berry College In the Kitchen Casually flipping through a drawing textbook, a student might find an Antonio López García graphite work of a cocina that would fit the definition of a “proper” drawing—“proper” being synonymous with rendering because it is highly representational with continuous tone in pencil. Other examples of renderings can be found, but the majority of drawings do not possess these traits. Beyond illustrating a history of drawing, their inclusion obviously helps orient the student to the language of drawing and breadth of expression. However, the drawings could also be seen as the result of problem solving, experimentation, discovery, and failure. This talk lays out exercises and assignments from an introductory, observationally-based drawing class that emphasize creativity rather than the production of an object. Said projects entail being able to see (and consider) multiple solutions to a problem and to engage with tools and methods not limited to a pencil. Further, the tasks are meant to foster flexibility, manage the unpredictable, and promote resourcefulness. The historical examples, rather than forcing appreciation, could serve as windows on innovation, and as renderings “heating to extract the healthful essence” that can be found in García’s kitchen. Margaret Adler, Amon Carter Museum of American Art Alternating Current(s): Winslow Homer’s “Undertow” Scholars writing about “Undertow,” Winslow Homer’s 1886 sea rescue painting, have overwhelmingly addressed its figures. Their analyses have relied on psychobiography or the desire to situate Homer in the international canon. What if we focused on another protagonist: the ocean? Victorian Americans began to see nature as not only unpredictable and dangerous, but also as a resource to be harnessed. Entering into common use in the early 1800s, the term “undertow” was used to explain the perception that treacherous currents flowing near the shore could drag a swimmer under. Everywhere, the waters struck fear into the hearts of bathers. It is a fact commonly acknowledged by today’s scientists that the phenomenon of undertow is a myth. Likely no coincidence, scientist and entrepreneur Edward D. Adams purchased “Undertow” in the year he was to enter the annals of history. Though many had failed in the endeavor, Adams harnessed Niagara Falls to produce electric current. An aficionado of water power, his home was a water-themed plumbing marvel. This talk provides a renewed look at “Undertow” as one of Homer’s first concerted attempts at capturing the real power of the ocean, engaging with water issues of the day. James Rodger Alexander, University of Alabama at Birmingham The Chicago Fire and the Birth of an American Architecture Architecture, at its best, is the successful merging of technology and aesthetics: how a building is designed and how it is constructed. In October of 1871, a fire destroyed most of the central section of downtown Chicago. This tragic event, however, coincided with the introduction of new building technologies which would revolutionize the American urban skyline by giving birth to the skyscraper. The invention of the “balloon-frame” steel skeletal frame, combined with improvements in the commercial use of the elevator, rendered the traditional bearing wall construction, with its vertical limitations, obsolete. The need to rebuild Chicago, the “Second City,” provided the context where architects such as Daniel Burnham, Louis Sullivan, Dankmar Adler and others could redefine construction methodologies to vertically extend the city’s skyline and develop a new American architecture articulated by the birth of the skyscraper. Evidence of this architectural revolution in the last quarter of the 19th century is present, still on display and functioning in cities such as Cleveland, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, and even Birmingham, Alabama, also founded in 1871. Annetta Alexandridis, Cornell University Firing the Canon! The Cornell Casts and their Discontents Partly but not entirely related to the vicissitudes of the history of classics, plaster cast collections of Greek and Roman art still fight to regain their place in academic and art education. The historical, didactic, and aesthetic value of these collections is undeniable. Their revival in academia and the arts has been going on for more than a generation. And yet one still faces ignorance of the value of cast collections or reluctance to make them accessible again to students and the broader community. One way to address this dilemma is to study the casts and their afterlife in their own right so as to make them relevant again. This paper discusses challenges met and multiple strategies employed by the curators of Cornell University’s cast collection in reevaluating this precious resource. To foster a critical approach to these objects, their history, and for what they stand, an interdisciplinary and inclusive approach is key: students work with professionals (archaeologists, conservators, etc.) in teaching, cataloging, digitizing, restoring, or organizing exhibitions. Two recent cast exhibitions at Cornell (“Firing the Canon!: The Cornell Casts and their Discontents” and “Cast and Present: Replicating Antiquity in the Museum and the Academy”) serve as examples. Bryan Alexis, University of Arkansas at Fort Smith Iteration in Design and the Principle of the Build This presentation addresses the sometimes paralyzing and sometimes stimulating conflicts and similarities between “design” and “fine art.” This longstanding, awkward, and semantic dance between art and design may be as necessary as it is chronic. Alexis provides a philosophical manifesto as well as a glimpse into the presenter’s “art by design.” Albert Alhadeff, University of Colorado Boulder Countering the Memoirs of Colonel Bro: Géricault and Sainte-Domingue “L’égorgement de tous les blancs,” to strangle and choke whites, see them suffer, dying and gasping for breath, was Toussaint l’Ouverture’s shrill rallying cry in the struggle that overtook Saint-Domingue (today’s Haiti) in the early 1800s, a call to arms that calls for blood. Théodore Géricault experienced these tumultuous events and, through several images, studies from 1818–1819 of blacks valorously facing death, sided with those who abetted the “slave revolt.” This in turn placed him at odds with his peers, especially men like Henry Bro de Comères, an ardent Bonapartist and an intimate in his circle of friends who had fought in Haiti and who in a posthumously published account—Mémoires du Général Bro, 1796–1844 (1914)—detailed his encounters as experienced in Sainte-Domingue. Alhadeff focuses on Géricault’s response to Bro’s Mémoires and to the Haitian wars in general. Accepted freely by l’Ouverture’s men, death, as Géricault treats it, ennobles the very men whom Bro and his men feared. And so this paper focuses on these opposing views—“l’égorgement de tous les noirs” versus “l’egorgement de tous les blancs,” or, rather, Géricault’s images of valiant death versus Bro’s images, as expressed in his text, of murderous blacks. Eva J. Allen, Excelsior College Problems of Attribution: A Case Study of a Painting’s Journey from the Hand of One Artist to Another To attribute an artwork, be it painting, sculpture, or work on paper, is a difficult task for an art historian. It becomes even more difficult when the work in question has been attributed previously to a specific artist. This talk presents such a case concerning a painting located in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. The painting depicts a fisher family, possibly returning from the market. It was attributed to the 17th-century Dutch landscape painter Pieter Molyn (1595–1661) with a question mark for over a century. Today it is reattributed to another Dutch artist, genre painter Jan Miense Molenaer (1610/11–1668), similarly from Haarlem. The reattribution required a painstaking process of showing why the old attribution was no longer tenable. Then a step-by-step