Art History 40: Image and Memory: 40 Years of Art-Historical Writing

This day of papers brings together for the first time the past and present editors of the Association of Art Historians journal, Art History, in a collective engagement with the role of memory and the image in art-historical writing. As a celebration of the journal approaching 40 years of publication history, the papers will present a range of perspectives on the problem of images and memory, as arguably key to defining the conceptual practice of the discipline. Looking both back onto the journal’s history and forward to prospective avenues of enquiry, the papers are variously concerned with situating art-historical or visual memory across a spectrum of disciplinary concerns. The papers will pursue issues of recollection, reminiscence and memory such as the affect of nostalgia, the play of temporalities, echoes and reflections, oblivions and forgettings, or conversely the afterlives of forms, whether ephemeral or archival, in their survivals and half-lives, absences and presence; and objects such as monuments, anti-monuments or memorials, mnemonic objects or displays, souvenirs, mementoes, replicas and reproductions, fragments or ruins.

Organised by Dr Genevieve Warwick (Editor, Art History) Dr Gavin Parkinson (The Courtauld Institute of Art)

PROGRAMME

09.00 – 09.30 REGISTRATION

09.30 – 10.00 Opening Remarks – Dr Genevieve Warwick (Editor, Art History) Dr Gavin Parkinson (The Courtauld Institute of Art)

SESSION I (Chair: Christine Riding, Association of Art Historians UK)

Samuel Bibby (Art History, Association of Art Historians UK):
The Pursuit of Understanding: Art History and the Periodical Landscape of Twentieth-Century Britain

John Onians (University of East Anglia): Art History on the Couch: How the New Art History remembered its roots and woke up to a Neural future

11.30 – 12.00 TEA/COFFEE BREAK (provided)

SESSION II (Chair: TBA)

Dana Arnold (Middlesex University): Misprisions of London

David Peters Corbett (University of East Anglia): Memory and Decreation: George Bellows’ Excavation Paintings, 1907-1909

13.30 – 14.30 LUNCH (provided for the speakers only)

16.30 – 17.15 SESSION III (Chair: TBA)

Genevieve Warwick (University of Edinburgh): Memory’s Cut: Caravaggio’s Sleeping Cupid of 1608

Adrian Rifkin (Goldsmiths University of London): From Art History to Art Writing: Dominique Fernandez’ Nicolas Poussin or the Ambivalence of Belonging

16.00 – 16.30 TEA/COFFEE BREAK (provided)

SESSION IV (Chair: Deborah Cherry, University of the Arts London)

Marcia Pointon (University of Manchester / The Courtauld Institute of Art):
Enduring Characteristics and Unstable Hues: Men in Black in French painting in the 1860s and 1870s.

Neil McWilliam (Duke University): Looking Back: Memory, Tradition and Cultural Conservatism in France before World War I

Gavin Parkinson (The Courtauld Institute of Art): Memories of Brittany: Reviewing Gauguin’s Stereotypes

18.00 -18.30 Round Table and Concluding Remarks

18.30 RECEPTION

Ticket/entry details: £16 (£10 students/concessions) and a limited number of free places for Courtauld students available by booking online here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/art-history-40-image-and-memory-40-years-of-art-historical-writing-tickets-18648264461

Otherwise, send a cheque made payable to ‘The Courtauld Institute of Art’ to: Research Forum Events Co-ordinator, Research Forum, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN, stating ‘Art History 40’. For further information, email ResearchForumcourtauld.ac.uk.