Committees
Student Committee
CAA Annual Conference, Chicago, 2001 "What Do We Mean Art/History?"
Chair, Dara K. Sicherman, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Date: Thursday, March 1, 2001
Time: 5:30 p.m.–7:00 p.m.
The Student and Emerging Professionals Committee of the College Art Association organized this special forum in order to create a dialogue between studio artists and art historians to better explore ways in which the two disciplines and their students relate to each other. The panelists, comprised of both students and professionals from each field, have demonstrated an interest in working to bring these two disciplines in closer proximity to one another. One of the main issues addressed in this important session is the common misconception that studio artists are theoretically uninformed and that art historians are unaware of contemporary issues. With these preconceptions in mind, it is our hope that we will be able to begin to bridge the gap between the two disciplines and to broaden our own perspectives as students and professionals, artists and art historians.
Jane Mayo Roos, PhD
Associate Professor, Hunter College and
The Graduate Center, CUNY
"The Facts about Art History"
Several years ago, the New Yorker ran a cartoon that addressed the question of how we assemble and preserve the past. Two men in lab coats stand looking at a dinosaur skeleton. At the top of the skeleton the bones have been configured so that they resemble the body of a fairly standard tyrannosaur. But in the lower part of the skeleton, where the creature's feet would be expected to appear, the dinosaur remains have been constructed into the framework of an automobile, a boxy 1950s hotrod with wheels, grill, framework, windscreen - everything - constructed out of bones. In the caption, one paleontologist asks the other, "Are you absolutely sure about this?"
On one level, the cartoon reminds me that art historians are a bit like paleontologists, in that we spend much of our professional lives taking whatever random bits wind up in the mind's laboratory and assembling them into what appear to be logical, if subjective, patterns. Implicit in the question "what do we mean by 'art history'" is thus a long series of deeper issues, having to do with such matters as the chaotic formlessness of the past - the idea that the past has no a priori structure - and consequently with the selective and contingent nature of any historical statement we make. With this perspective as a starting point, I want to demolish a few of the myths about what supposedly separates art history from studio art. Sometimes the discussion of the two fields is phrased as a binary opposition, cartoonish and absolute in its way: studio artists are seen as creative, if verbally inexpressive, while art historians are seen as articulate, if conceptually stunted. And so they are made to square off against one another: this bakhtinian carnival of free spirits confronting those hide-bound replicaters of an unremittingly factual past. In a very real sense, it is the acceptance of stereotypes that makes conversation difficult, and the authenticity of what each field practices is the issue that my remarks will address.
Jayne Hileman
Associate Professor, Saint Xavier University, Chicago, IL
As an associate professor in the art department at a liberal arts university, I deal with the connections between the visual arts and art history in the studio classes I teach. In my collage and assemblage class, hands-on studio projects follow lectures on an alternative history of modern art, stressing populist arts, crafts, murals, and folk artists who happen to be women and people of color. A history of furniture and architectural design is essential to the three-dimensional design course I teach. As a teacher, I am aware of the impact of the choices of images I present as significant. As an artist and a curator, my intent to provoke thought by the visual statements I present is amplified by the public showing of work and words that follow.
As a member of Artemesia Gallery in Chicago, I've had the opportunity to curate Reconfiguring the Heroic and Local Heroes, in two of our five exhibition spaces, this past May 2000. The project included an illustrated catalogue with my curator's statement and essay by Carol Becker of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
For the panel "What Do We Mean Art/History?" I would like to discuss how the evaluation and presentation of work for an artist-curated show develops, and how artist/curators contribute to contemporary art history. Because artist-run spaces have often been the starting point for successful, recognized artists, I would also like to talk about these cultural structures, particularly Artemesia Gallery, a 25-year-old organization with a rich story of making art/history. How marginalized groups make their own histories, and become integrated into larger ideas of art history will certainly be addressed too.
Valerie Mendelson Moylan, Ph.D. candidate
The Graduate Center, CUNY
"Split Personality? A Nineteenth Century Look at Art and History"
As a practicing painter as well as an Art History graduate student, my life involves a constant interaction between art and art history. I have experienced a tension between the two fields, each practice being wary of the other. Art historians, for example, are often unsure about techniques, while artists are wary of historicizing their own work. I will suggest, through two examples taken from late Nineteenth- Century France, that history and practice have often been interwoven. For Rodin and the less well known art historian of the same period, Moreau-Nlaton, writing and practice have been intertwined. Rodin's book on the cathedrals of France, for example, was conceived in an effort to raise awareness of the great artistic tradition of France. His writing on these monuments of the past reflects his own preoccupations in his own work-the play of light and dark, the interaction of forms and the silhouette, at the same time that he delves into their history. While being motivated by the prospect of loss, Rodin's art historical methodology nonetheless grounds itself in a-temporal observation. In his wash drawings, however, in their emphasis on shadows, foreground the same preoccupation with the passage of time that motivates much art historical discourse.
Moreau-Nlaton, not only wrote many books on the artists of his time, but collected their work, and furthermore was an accomplished painter in his own right. His book on the cathedral of Amiens, undertaken after the destruction of World War I, can be compared with Rodin's for their shared interest in preserving the monuments of the past. Moreau-Nlaton begins with photographs of the devastating effects of the war on the cathedral, but proceeds, with the aid of photographs taken before the war to resurrect the cathedral into an almost timeless idea of itself. In a sense these two men work in opposite directions: Rodin moving from the present in his incorporation of the cathedral into the corpus of his own oeuvre towards an evocation of fleetingness and loss; Moreau-Nlaton beginning with the premise of before and after but in the end evoking the almost Platonic ideal of the eternal cathedral. In the work of each man this complicated relationship between the past, the present and the future sheds important light on the role of art history within artistic practice and vice versa.
Adrienne Lai, MFA candidate
University of California, Irvine, CA
The call for papers for this panel sought to "create a dialogue between studio artists and art historians," suggesting that some sort of divide or separation exists between those who make art and those who write about it. If this is the case, I must wonder on which side of the chasm I locate myself. Although I am currently enrolled in a studio art program, I consider art history (or at least research and writing about art and culture) to be a central part of my practice, commensurate in importance to art making.
Many artists do write and conduct theoretical research; however, often it is with the stipulation that it not intrude on or somehow contaminate their studio practice. I often find that my studio practice and writing interfere and interweave with one another in equal measures. I am interested in exploring the ways in which art and theory intersect with each other, and how they can potentially interact with everyday life. I will analyze the various components of my work and investigate the ways in which my processes correspond and differ. In thinking and writing about my own practice, I hope to articulate an approach that does not merely straddle the two disciplines, but one that allows for a more hybrid integration.