HGCEA

Opportunities

Call For Papers:

Association of Art Historians Conference 2010
University of Glasgow
15 - 17 APRIL 2010

Re-Assessing National Romanticism

Co-Chairs: Charlotte Ashby, Birkbeck College, University of London
Sabine Wieber, Roehampton University, London

deadline: 9 November 2009

"Until this powerful movement is recognized and demystified, we will not fully understand the intellectual and cultural climate of turn-of-the-century Europe."
Michelle Facos, Nationalism and the Nordic Imagination: Swedish Art of the 1890s, Berkley and Los Angeles, 1998, 2-3.

Although linked to the re-evaluation of the legacy of Art Nouveau in the 1960s and 1970s, the term National Romanticism came into wider art historical use in the 1980s and 1990s in relation to growing interest in the cultures of the so-called 'peripheral'nations of Europe; first in the Nordic region and then the post-Eastern Bloc countries. In this context, National Romanticism facilitated the integration of these new regions into the sphere of Western art history, but its continued currency can now be seen to limit the scope of understanding of these cultures in a larger
pan-European context. This session intends to provide an international platform for a critical re-assessment of National Romanticism that challenges some of the art historical assumptions and expectations called up by this term. At the turn of the last century, artists and designers crossed boundaries between disciplines and between social, political and aesthetic concerns, making it difficult to maintain ideological and formal categories and posing a real challenge to the historian of this period. And yet, the works and objects understood as National Romantic and
their relationship to the wider culture of the period offer an intriguing challenge to the lingering influence of a Modernist emphasis on a linear, progressive reading of history.

Deadline for proposals, with a copy to both convenors: 9 November 2009

Further details of the conference can be found at www.aah.org.uk

CALL FOR PAPERS:

EAM and HGCEA Joint Session: High and Low in Central Europe – Dada and Constructivism to Neo-Dada

Session Chair: Timothy O. Benson

HGCEA member are invited to submit paper proposals for the following joint session of HGCEA and the European Network for Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies (EAM) at the next EAM conference High and Low to be held at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan in Poland from 9-11 September 2010. Deadline: November 30, 2009

The 1920 Berlin “Dada Fair” proclaimed the “suspension of art dealing” in favor of the sale of “products.” In 1925 Czech Dev?tsiler Karel Teige proclaimed that constructivism brought about “the all-out liquidation of art" and "total collapse of all varieties of so-called art." Rejecting "all aesthetic fetishism" he embraced instead a broad range of activities including film, poetry, photography, and even travel that he considered the functionalist heritage of constructivism.

Teige’s “Poetism,” like Berlin Dadaist Raoul Hausmann’s “Presentism” and Jend?ich Štyrský and Toyen’s “Artificialism,” was intended as a means beyond “-isms,” one strongly dependent upon a leveling of the distinction between high and low. The encounter with popular culture initiated by Dada continued across Europe in the 1920s in many directions with constructivist roots including Hans Richter's montage films of the late 1920s, László Moholy-Nagy’s “Dynamic of a Metropolis” with its “Jazz band and talking picture,” and Teige’s imaginings of "a poem of dance using dynamic abstract forms" of Keaton and Chaplin. Popular imagery flourished in photocollages by artists ranging from Hannah Höch and John Heartfield in Germany to Mieczys?aw Szczuka and Kazimierz Podsadecki in Poland.

Echoes of modernism’s encounter with popular culture in the 1910s and 1920s were sounded in the 1960s when “Neo-Dada” brought about a reappearance of the use of generic culture in Pop Art, Nouveau Réalisme, Fluxus, and various allied movements. With this resurgence came the concern for the dangers of kitsch raised by writers like Erno Kallai and artists like Naum Gabo at the end of the twenties and codified by Clement Greenberg in 1939. The sixties also saw a return to an anthropological perspective on culture clearly indebted to the rise of functionalism and consideration of what artworks share with artifacts in the twenties.

This session invites papers exploring the role of popular culture and the leveling of the high-low distinction in Dada, Constructivism, and related movements as well as the relationship these movements might have to the “Neo-Dadaist” movements of the 1960s.

Each proposal should include:
1. The paper’s title and a 500-word abstract of the paper
2. The speaker’s name, institutional affiliation, position or title and contact information.
3. The speaker’s CV (one page)

Proposals for participation in sessions must be received by November 30, 2009. Proposals for participation in this session should be sent directly to Timothy Benson at tbenson@lacma.org

Other EAM sessions of interest can be found at http://www.eam2010.amu.edu.pl/