Events Calendar AUTUMN 2013 Please find below details of Research Forum events planned thus far. Further details for these and other events are placed on the website as soon as they become available. Please check our website: http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/researchforum/index.shtml and/or Research Forum notice boards regularly. Also note that some dates and times may change and these will be shown on the website. Unless otherwise stated, events are free and open to members of the public. If you would like to receive information via email on specific areas of interest, please contact us: [email protected] The Autumn 2013 Frank Davis Memorial Lecture Series on Art and Vision Science , explores the intersection between art and vision science. More than fifty years after Gombrich’s pioneering Art and Illusion, the science of perception remains, for the most part, marginal to art historical practice, despite extraordinary recent advances in our understanding of the visual brain. In this series of five international lectures, leading vision scientists and art historians argue the case for a new engagement between art and science, in which scientific models of vision inform the theories and approaches of art history. The complex dynamics of perception, unlocked by contemporary vision science, contain implications for the study of art that are only now being realised. Traditionally sponsored by the F M Kirby Foundation, this year’s Frank Davis Memorial Lecture Series is additionally sponsored by The Guarantors of Brain, and is organised by Tim Satterthwaite and Dr Meredith A Brown. Art History and Sound Lecture Series will also take place in 2013-14: Following the workshop series Art History and Sound: The Listening Art Historian, this lecture series sets out to continue exploring the aural in art history. In three lectures to be held at The Courtauld Institute of Art during the autumn term 2013, art historians working in different areas and media will discuss the topic of sound and art history from a methodological point of view and engage the audience via a relevant expertise they have gained in their particular research field. The lectures will address topics related to both historical and contemporary instances of sound in art history, and present theoretical and methodological inquiries arising from this preoccupation. This lecture series is organised by Irene Noy and Michaela Zoschg with Dr Katie Scott. Contact: [email protected] OCTOBER Friday 4 October 2013 From 1972- 76 Michael Corris was a member of the 18.00, Research Forum South Room conceptual art group Art & Language, working in Michael Corris on Conceptual Art and After New York with Joseph Kosuth, Mel Ramsden, Ian Michael Corris (artist and writer) Burn, Sarah Charlesworth, Terry Smith and Kathy In the context of recent ‘conceptual’ histories Corris Bigelow. He has exhibited in galleries and museums writes: internationally and is represented in public and ‘As an artist and writer whose practice emerged from private collections in North America and Europe. His Conceptual Art, I find this to be a problematic writings on art and art theory have been published heritage. Contemporary devaluations of the term widely: in artist-run publications ( Art-Language , The “conceptual” — whether as a qualification applied to Fox, and Red-Herring ), scholarly journals ( Word & contemporary art or as a rubric for some practices of Image , Art Journal , and Art History ) and the the 1960s and 1970s — prompt me to maintain a international art press ( Artforum , Art+Text , and Art critical distance from that category. From the Monthly ). Following his PhD at University College standpoint of my work, a sceptical attitude towards London in 1996, his monograph Ad Reinhardt (2008) Conceptual Art and its various offsprings has proven is the definitive study; see also David Dao , 2005; to be neither uncomfortable nor unfruitful. While I and the co-authored Non-Relational Aesthetics , acknowledge my origins as an artist in Conceptual (2008), and Art, Word and Image: 2,000 Years of Art as enabling, I am not about to swallow whole Visual/Textual Interaction (2010). Currently, Corris is representations of that past by others’. the editor for a new series of monographs on art Autumn 2013 events calendar (as at 1 October 2013) since the 1980s with Reaktion Books. He is reviews Monday, 14 October 2013 editor for the College Art Association’s Art Journal. 18.00, Research Forum South Room His selected writings on art will appear in spring Research seminar: Early Modern 2014 with Les Presses du Réel, Dijon. Marginal Figures: A New Approach to George Michael Corris taught an MA at The Courtauld Morland Institute of Art from 1999-2000. Nick Grindle (University College London) Monday, 7 October 2013 Tuesday, 15 October 2013 18.00, Research Forum South Room 18.00 - 19.30, Research Forum South Room Research seminar: Modern and Contemporary Sacred Traditions and the Arts Seminar Negotiating the Volk: Avant-garde Readings of Nordic Art in the Face of Trauma Folk Art in Helhesten (1941-44) Speakers: Professor Tim Gorringe (St Luke’s Kristina Rapacki (The Courtauld Institute of Art) Professor of Theological Studies, University of Exeter); and Dr Glenn Sujo (G. F. Watts Associate Tuesday, 8 October 2013 Artist) 17.30 - 18.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre This seminar will explore from two perspectives how Frank Davis Memorial Lecture Series 20th-century art has responded to 20th-century Art and Vision Science: traumas. These two perspectives contrast in being, Part-Whole Relationships in Art and Vision respectively, Jewish and Christian, but also in bringing Professor Johan Wagemans (Laboratory of insights from the practice of art, and the practice of Experimental Psychology, University of Leuven) theology. As is usual in the Sacred Traditions and the Part-whole relationships constitute a key topic of Arts seminar, the two papers will each be around 20 research in vision science since the early days of minutes long, and the discussion that follows will Gestalt psychology, over a century ago. They are also permit opportunities to discuss and explore both fundamental to the experience of visual art. Johan congruence and contrasts between them. Wagemans’s lecture explores this central theme, Tim Gorringe is St Luke's Professor of Theological focusing on his empirical studies into pictorial relief Studies at the University of Exeter. His academic and shape (for example, in Picasso’s sketches of interests focus on the interrelation between theology, female nudes) and on his recent collaborative projects social science, art and politics. His books include Karl with contemporary artists (Ruth Loos, Wendy Morris, Barth: Against Hegemony (OUP, 1999 - a study of the Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven). A good deal of what theologian in his social and political context), makes an art work visually and aesthetically Furthering Humanity: A Theology of Culture (Ashgate appealing lies in the way the parts can be integrated 2004), The Common Good and the Global Emergency into a larger whole. The ‘beholder’s share’ describes (CUP 2011) and Earthly Visions: Theology and the the flexible organization of the parts into a coherent Challenges of Art (Yale 2011). He is at present Gestalt, a process whose result is the viewer’s working on a two year AHRC funded research project pleasure and fascination. on the values which underpin constructive social Johan Wagemans is lead researcher of the Gestalt change. In this short presentation he will raise some Revision project at the University of Leuven. He has a questions on the extent to which painting can or BA in psychology and philosophy, an MSc and a PhD should respond to horror and pain. in experimental psychology, all from Leuven, where Glenn Sujo is contributing author to G. Pollock, M. he is now a full professor. His research interests are Silvermann, eds., Concentrationary Memories mainly in so-called mid-level vision (perceptual (London, 2013) and D. Mickleberg, C. Granof, eds., grouping, figure-ground organisation, depth and Last Expressions: Art from Auschwitz (Chicago, shape perception) but stretching out to low-level 2002), and is author and curator of Legacies of vision (contrast detection and discrimination) and Silence: The Visual Arts and Holocaust Memory high-level vision (object recognition and (Imperial War Museum, 2001) and Artists Witness the categorisation), including applications in autism, arts, Shoah (Graves Art Gallery, 1995). A study of the life and sports (see www.gestaltrevision.be). He is chief and work of Auschwitz survivor Yehuda Bacon, editor of Perception, i-Perception and Art & Disseminating Memory: Lines Across an Abyss is the Perception . subject of a book and exhibition (in preparation). Glenn Sujo is G. F. Watts Associate Artist. Lifelines , Wednesday, 9 October 2013 an exhibition of his work opens at the Lewis Elton 17.30, Research Forum South Room Gallery, University of Surrey later this year. Research seminar: Medieval Work in Progress The seminar on Sacred Traditions and the Arts is a Picturing science in Medieval Castile: Alfonso X’s joint venture between the Department of Theology Libro del Saber de Astrología and Religious Studies at King’s and The Courtauld. It Dr Laura Fernández Fernández (Universidad seeks to place researchers in dialogue who are Complutense de Madrid) working on any aspect of the sacred and visual culture. It is open to all scholars and students who have an interest in exploring the intersections of religion