Conference: Questioning Cold War Art (1945-1965)

The international conference Questioning Cold War Art (1945-1965) will be held in Copenhagen the 8th and 9th of March 2013. The aim of the conference is to create an environment for open, penetrating and interdisciplinary discussion of Cold War art in the period 1945-1965.
Keynote speakers: Professor Serge Guilbaut and historian and journalist Frances Stonor Saunders

Introduction: What is Cold War art? Did such a thing exist, and if so, how can it be defined, investigated and discussed? These questions are of key relevance in light of the growing interest in the Cold War within the field of art history. Whilst the political history of the Cold War is well documented, the nexus of art, culture and politics remains relatively under-researched, not least in a Danish context. Much cultural research has been focused on propaganda, Americanisation and popular culture, while high culture – and in particular the visual arts, which are the central focus of this conference – have received less attention. It is our hope that through this conference we can contribute to a clarification of how the objects of art-historical inquiry can be linked to political history, the history of ideas and cultural research into the first decades of the Cold War.

Programme:
Day 1: Friday, March 8
Venue: University of Copenhagen, Emil Holms Kanal, building 22, auditorium 22.0.11

9.30 – 10.00 Arrival and coffee

10.00-10.10 Opening by Mette Sandbye, Head of Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen

Session 1 moderated by: Associate Professor Michael Fjeldsøe (University of Copenhagen)

10.10 – 10.50 Professor Susan E. Reid (University of Sheffield, England): Cold War Optics and the Construction of Artistic ‘Dissent’

10.50 – 11.30 Post-Doctoral Fellow Oliver Johnson (University of Sheffield, England):
The Invisible Other: Anti-Formalist Hysteria in the Soviet Art World, 1945-1953

11.30 – 12.10 Research Librarian Morten Thing (Roskilde University Library, Denmark):
Socialist Realism or communist serials?

12.10 – 13.10 Lunch

Session 2 moderated by: Rector Mikkel Bogh (Royal Academy of Arts, Copenhagen)

13.10 – 13.50 PhD Fellow Karen Westphal Eriksen (University of Copenhagen, Denmark): Reconstruction - building a new world through art

13.50 – 14.30 PhD Fellow Liza Burmeister Kaaring (University of Copenhagen and National Gallery of Denmark): The artist group Man and the question of a genuine Cold War Art expression

14.30 – 15.10 Adjunct Professor Simo Mikkonen (University of Jyväskylä, Finland): Soviet Artistic Exchanges with the West: From Official to Transnational Networks

15.10 – 15.45 Coffee

Keynote address moderated by: Rector Mikkel Bogh (Royal Academy of Arts, Copenhagen)

15.45 – 16.45 Keynote address: Professor Serge Guilbaut (University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada): Pleasure of Failure: The Saga of the 'Advancing American Art' Exhibition and the role of Modern Art during the Cold War

Day 2, Saturday, March 9
Venue: National Gallery of Denmark, Sølvgade 48-50, 1307 Copenhagen K, the Cinema

10.00 – 10.20 Arrival and coffee

Keynote address moderated by: Professor Emeritus Peter Madsen (University of Copenhagen)

10.20 – 11.20 Keynote address: Journalist Frances Stonor Saunders (England):
American Art from Un-American Artists

11.20 – 11.45 Coffee

Session 3 moderated by: Professor Emeritus Peter Madsen (University of Copenhagen)

11.45 – 12.25 Associate Professor Greg Castillo (University of California at Berkeley, USA): How West Germans Helped MoMA ‘Steal the Idea’ of Modern Architecture

12.25 – 13.05 Post Doc Researcher Iben Vyff (Aarhus University, Denmark): Cold War in a Danish kitchen culture

13.05 – 14.05 Lunch

Session 4 moderated by: Associate Professor Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen (University of Copenhagen)

14.05 – 14.45 PhD Fellow Jens Tang Kristensen (University of Copenhagen and Sorø Kunstmuseum, Denmark): Cool Constructed Danish art in light of the Cold War

14.45 – 15.25 PhD Fellow Helle Brøns (National Galley of Denmark, Museum Jorn and University of Copenhagen): Asger Jorn between Cold War and the Society of the Spectacle

15.25 – 16.05 Professor Ordinarius Piotr Piotrowski (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland): Globalizing Eastern Europe

16.05 – 16.45 Coffee and farewell

Read more about the conference: http://artsandculturalstudies.ku.dk/coldwarart/