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Midwest Art History Society

MIDWEST ART HISTORY SOCIETY
Annual Conference 2010
Omaha, Nebraska, April 8–10, 2010

SESSION TOPICS

Exploring Monumentality: Rethinking Scale Relationships in Art

Additional Sessions



EXPLORING MONUMENTALITY: RETHINKING SCALE RELATIONSHIPS IN ART

Concepts of Classical Monumentality in Antiquity and the Present

This session will examine the nature of classical monumentality in antiquity and in the present. It will include the analysis of aspects of its original character- which go beyond simple issues of scale- as revealed in the examples of monumental art and architecture in classical Greece. First examples are of particular value in the analysis of antiquity because they are the products of conscious choice, as opposed to the blind following of tradition, and thus provide the opportunity to examine meaningfully the question of why these choices were made, of what specific problems they were trying to solve. Beyond the analysis of its original appearance and meaning, this session will also address more recent choices and interpretations of classical monumental form in examples of contemporary art and design and in the changing conventions of archeological illustration.
Chair: Robin Rhodes, rrhodes@nd.edu University of Notre Dame.


Monumental Medieval Art and Architecture

This session invites papers addressing Monumental works in all media and all periods and regions of Medieval Art and Architecture. Authors may address works which are massive or imposing; works that are exceptionally great, as in quantity, quality, extent, or degree; works of historical or enduring significance; works of heroic scale; or works that serve to honor or commemorate.
Chair: Janet E. Snyder, Janet.Snyder@mail.wvu.edu West Virginia University

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20th Century Art: The Impact of Scientific Discovery on the

This panel addresses the intersection of art and technology in the 20th century, with a particular focus on the way that scientific discovery and advances in engineering have contributed to our modern “view” of the world. Although artists and writers have for centuries imagined worlds both infinitesimally smaller (Pope’s “head of a pin”) and expansively larger (medieval cosmologies) than those of our daily phenomenological experience, it was not until the 20th century that innovations such as the electron microscope or Hubble Telescope allowed us to witness these shifts in scale through technologically assisted vision. This session asks how science and technology have affected artist’s representations of their world and, consequently, our perceptions of our place in the universe. What role might scale play in mediating the fascination and fear engendered by these new discoveries?
Chair: Catherine Jolivette, CatherineJolivette@missouristate.edu, Missouri State University CatherineJolivette@missouristate.edu Missouri State University

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Monumentality in Contemporary Art

Contemporary artists, including Louise Bourgeois, Jeff Koon, Juan Munoz and Charles Ray, have come under attack by popular critics for the monumental objects they produce. For these commentators, such works lack the gravitas of large Abstract Expressionist paintings, or the powerful references to the industrialized environment’s inhuman scale found in minimalist art. This session seeks papers that offer a scholarly perspective on the meaning and function of large-scale objects in contemporary art. Relevant papers on individual artists, specific themes, or a universal perspective on the role of monumentality in contemporary art are encouraged.
Chair: Paula Wisotzki, pwisots@luc.edu, Loyola University Chicago


Monumentality(?) in African and Native American Art

With the exception of a few highly centralized (and usually ancient) societies, African and Native American art is not normally described as monumental. This panel will focus on IF and HOW any art tradition or type of object from Africa and the Americas might be classified as monumental. It is hoped that the papers will define this concept as more than large in scale and long lasting. All cultures have not generated works of large relative scale. Yet by utilizing creative approaches and analysis and also by broadening the definition of monumentality, new insights into African and Native American visual culture will result.
Chair: Fred T. Smith, fsmith@kent.edu Kent State University.


Monumentality in Modern and Contemporary Asian Art and Architecture

Western visitors to Asia in the nineteenth century marveled at the gigantic building and sculptural programs they saw. Many of these remain standing today, but in various states of preservation, and some have recently been destroyed. After Western contacts encouraged industrialization and the introduction of new materials, fabrication techniques, and alternative conceptualizations of art and architecture, Asian artists and designers began pushing the limits of size and scope farther in new quests to create even more colossal artworks and buildings of unprecedented heights. This panel seeks to examine modern and contemporary Asian monumental art and architecture from various perspectives. Papers might consider: How are pre-modern monuments regarded by private individuals, preservation organizations and national governments? What is the impetus for large–scale, sometimes site-specific projects by modern and contemporary Asian artists and in what ways do they reference works created in pre-modern times? Why is it that the tallest skyscrapers in the world are now being erected in Asia and how might these be considered as reflections of the geopolitical and cultural climate of their particular locations? What among these projects can be identified as having the potential for as lasting a legacy as those of pre-modern Asia?
Chair: Patricia J. Graham,pgraham@ku.edu, University of Kansas, Center for East Asian Studies.

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The Monumental Vernacular: Representing the Midwest

In 1913, Walter Gropius hailed the "monumental power" and "unacknowledged majesty" of the grain silos of the American Midwest, likening these anonymous structures to the grandeur of the monuments of ancient Egypt. He considered these structures to represent the "monumental vernacular" of the early 20th century and they, along with paintings and photographs from the period have served to establish the Midwest as a place of national memory and mythology. As such, images of the land and its structures take on a monumentality apart from issues of sheer size–and become a fundamental tool for the construction of American identity. The Midwest also serves as a means of confronting or conceptualizing America from the outside, as in the recent “Heartland” exhibition, produced by the Van Abbe Museum in the Netherlands. This panel seeks to explore the ways in which the Midwest has been framed as monument and myth, as the heroic vernacular of American identity.
Chairs: Acacia Warwick, awarwick@bumail.bradley.edu, Bradley University; Elizabeth Kauffman, ekauffman@bumail.bradley.edu, Bradley University.


Reading the Large Print: Monumentality and the Printed Image

Since its invention, the printed image has had a monumental impact on culture and society, offering artists and their patrons a means of rapidly distributing visual art and information to a broader audience. Throughout the history of printmaking there have also been instances when artists have pressed beyond the bounds of the standard page. This session proposes to explore the history of large format prints and monumental printmaking in any culture or time period. Contributors are encouraged to consider the unique qualities of print media and the ways in which artists, patrons, or collectors, have used the original print or print series to monumental effect. Presentation themes may include, though not be limited to, the meaning and function of very large prints, the logistics of monumental print production, and the print as monument.
Chair: James When, jameswehn@comcast.net, Thrivent Financial Collection of Religious Art.

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ADDITIONAL SESSIONS

African-American Artists in the Midwest

While American art history tends to be fairly parochial with its emphasis on East Coast artists, African American art history seems to suffer even more strongly from this bias. This session will be devoted to African-American artists or art institutions in the Midwest. Although the Midwest was not historically populated by African–Americans, the Great Migration from 1913-1949 brought hundreds of thousands of black Americans to Midwest industrial cities like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and St. Louis. And some of these people made art. Indeed on a trip to Detroit in 1964, Langston Hughes said, "Harlem used to be the Negro cultural center of America. If Detroit has not already become so, it is well on its way to becoming it." Literary historians have frequently taken up the topic of Midwestern African–American writers, but this is far less true in the case of black visual artists. Papers dealing with Midwestern African-American art from all time periods, colonial to the present, will be considered.
Chair: Julia R. Myers, jmyers@emich.edu, Eastern Michigan University.


Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction: How Artwork's Scale is Affected by Infinite Reproducibility

Walter Benjamin's seminal essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" became the basis of much of the 20th century's discourse surrounding the effects of reproduction on the concept of originality in artworks. Now in the 21st century we enter the age of digital reproduction that, while seemingly similar to mechanical reproduction, is inherently different. Mechanical reproduction allowed for the concept of the "copy" which conversely implied an "original". In digital production, there is no original, only data–data that can exist in infinite replication. Almost 50 years after Benjamin, Paul Virilio writes of Dromology, or the science of speed, and the ability of technology to compress distance, space and time. Digital production eradicates the limitations of distance, space and time by the very nature of binary data and lossless reproduction. This lossless reproduction capability creates an environment where imagery can be reproduced identically not only in one location, but simultaneously anywhere in the world. How does this lossless/spaceless aspect of the digital medium affect the production of artwork? This session invites scholars and image-makers to discuss the nature of images today and to share written and creative works that explore concepts related to digital reproduction.
Chair: Liz Murphy Thomas, thomas.liz@uis.edu, The University of Illinois Springfield.

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Encountering the "Other": Cross-cultural Exchanges between Asian and Euro-American Art

This session invites papers that explore artistic and cultural exchanges between Asia (China, India, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia) and Europe or America. Papers concerning any period of influence or exchange are welcome. Topics may relate to Jesuit encounters in the sixteenth century, import goods and trade items represented in Asian or Western art, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist appropriation of East Asian art subjects or styles, or contemporary cross-cultural responses in this age of rapid global communication. Equally welcome are papers that investigate artists who present issues of being stereotyped as "Other" in their own country (e.g. so-called Japanese-American artists, although perhaps 3rd-generation American).
Chair: Jan Kennedy, jkennedy@kcai.edu, Kansas City Art Institute.

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Constructing and Contesting Boundaries: Gender and Art

This session invites papers from all disciplines that investigate the construction, maintenance, and/or deliberate transgression of gender in the visual arts. Those papers that focus on twentieth century art and artists are especially welcome.
Chair: Reed Anderson, sanderson@kcai.edu, Kansas City Art Institute.


Minor Artists of the Italian Renaissance

Scholars and amateurs alike rightly focus on the major artists of the Renaissance and their art. Still, artists of lesser talent often created works of interest and sometimes of beauty. Papers in this session will be about any aspect of minor artists and their art in Renaissance Italy. Papers should be limited to minor painters, printmakers, sculptors and architects. Papers that focus on a single work of art are especially welcome.
Chair: Norman E. Land, landn@missouri.edu, University of Missouri-Columbia.

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Renaissance and Baroque Art Outside of Italy

Open session: Papers invited on all aspects of art and architecture produced in Spain, France, England, and the rest of Northern Europe in the Renaissance and Baroque periods.
Chair: Henry Luttikhuizen, lutt@calvin.edu, Calvin College

Italian Baroque Art

Open session: Papers invited on all aspects of Baroque art and architecture in Italy.
Chair: Gustav Medicus, gmedicus@kent.edu, Kent State University

Global Connections in Nineteenth-Century Art

The global reach of western nations extended to almost every continent by the end of the nineteenth century. The British Empire ruled in India, Australia, and parts of Africa and North America. They dominated trade with China and influenced political decisions in the Islamic Middle East. The French held Indochina and much of West Africa. The Dutch maintained their presence in Indonesia, Africa and parts of Central and South America. The Spanish continued to have profound influence in the Americas. The Portuguese held tightly to outposts in India and China. The United States “opened” Japan to western contact. This panel invites papers that explore the results of these international connections in nineteenth-century art. The myriad possible subjects could include stylistic exchanges, exhibitions, archeological discoveries, ideological clashes or acceptances, fantasy images of the “other,” misunderstandings, biases, business-driven art forms, and patronage. Or, a paper could deal with why global issues or new styles were ignored.
Chair: Nancy Wilkinson, nancy.wilkinson@okstate.edu, Oklahoma State University.

The Permeable West: (Im)migrant Encounters and Aesthetic Entanglements in the Visual Culture of the American West

Throughout its history, the American West has been host to visitors, immigrants and migrants from around the world who came to the region for innumerable reasons. All but the first to arrive encountered already-present populations, and the resulting interactions played a vital role in the construction of the American West (in visual, literary and popular culture) as a discursively distinct space in the American ideological landscape. Strikingly, this distinction is not matched by geographical specificity or unity of purpose; the region referred to as “the American West” has always had uncertain and, at times, hotly contested borders. Moreover, there are many competing ideologies of the American West. This panel seeks to explore the permeability of the American West as a site for real and imagined diversities—of population, class, ethnicity, race, national and regional origins, sexuality, aesthetics, etc. Individual papers might discuss the manifestation of those diversities in visual culture in terms of: strategies of representation, reception or audience, tourism and the art market, histories of race and racialization, discourses of nationalism (or anti-nationalism), or other vectors. Papers which address the relationship between constructions of identity and the historical experiences of migration, immigration, and bounding in/of the West will be particularly welcome.
Chair: Louise Siddons, louise.siddons@okstate.edu, Oklahoma State University.

Open Session

Papers that address issues surrounding art of any time-period or geographical region using any methodology are welcome.
Chair: Jane Hutchison, jchutchi@facstaff.wisc.edu, University of Wisconsin-Madison

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