Art History, Theory, and Criticism: News and Events

The most exciting development in recent art history has been the growing engagement of 1960s- and 1970s-era practices from Americanist art historical and art theoretical perspectives, which seek to situate works of art within cultural currents that are broader than those previously permitted by modernist formal methodologies or postmodernist theoretical authorities.

The Terra Foundation Academic Program—an annual lecture and corresponding one-day seminar for graduate students in art history each spring for three years—seeks to provide a central platform for this growing body of scholarship while also providing SAIC students with an unique opportunity to interact with and learn from the preeminent scholars in the field of Americanist art history.

Recontextualizing Neo-Dada: Jasper Johns in Tokyo, 1964

Lecturer: Hiroko Ikegami, Graduate School of Intercultural Studies, Kobe University

With the recent "global turn" in the discipline of art history, it has become possible and necessary to situate post-1945 American art in the context of postwar art as an international event. This paper focuses on Jasper Johns's visit to Tokyo in 1964 as a case study to examine how the cross-cultural network he created in Tokyo affected the production and reception of works he made in the city. By examining Johns' interaction with Japanese artists and critics, this paper will map a political dimension of his work and activities in Tokyo from a post-revisionist point of view.

Object–Body–Building:
Claes Oldenburg and the Poetry of Scale

Lecturer: Wouter Davidts, Sint Lucas Antwerp

Claes Oldenburg, one of the most emblematic and yet eccentric figures of post-war American art, gradually moved from object-sized remakes and bulky reproductions of daily items to large-scale sculptures in public space, all the while using scale as a vital and strategic sculptural strategy. My paper will argue that Oldenburg's conceptual understanding and formal use of scale proceeds via three distinct categories: the object, the body and the building. I will demonstrate how the artist has played with the familiar size of all three categories while using the post-war American and European cityscape as backdrop.

Father Figure Mountain Man:
Landscape and the Body in the Films of Stan Brakhage

Lecturer: James Boaden, University of York

In the early 1960s, the experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage settled in an isolated farm in the Colorado mountains with his family, who increasingly became the focus for his films. This paper looks at the way in which Brakhage's film Dog Star Man (1961-64) brings together the landscape of the mountains with the contours of the body to provide a profound critique of the rhetoric of containment that dominated post-war discourse around sexuality in the USA. The way in which Brakhage represents rural heterosexual family life will be examined alongside the exploration of the erotic in Carolee Schneemann's film Fuses (1964-1967).

The Terra Foundation for American Art is dedicated to fostering exploration, understanding, and enjoyment of the visual arts of the United States for national and international audiences. Recognizing the importance of experiencing original works of art, the foundation provides opportunities for interaction and study, beginning with the presentation and growth of its own art collections in Chicago. To further cross-cultural dialogue on American art, the foundation supports and collaborates on innovative exhibitions, research, and educational programs. Implicit in such activities is the belief that art has the potential both to distinguish cultures and to unite them.