University of Southern California, Department of Art History
Graduate Student Symposium
October 26–27, 2017, Los Angeles, California

Working on It… Preparation in Art

Keynote Speaker: Jenni Sorkin, Assistant Professor, History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara

Every work of art, architecture, and design undergoes a process of becoming. Yet the material traces of preparation and process—such as studies and sketches, architectural blueprints, or photographic proofs and negatives—are often underexamined or undervalued. This symposium will investigate the overlooked, ephemeral, or no longer extant objects and activities generated in the preparation of art. We invite topics that explore how drawings, sketches, plans, instructions, and/or models are used to work out, set down, and circulate ideas across a wide range of creative practices. We are interested in how examinations of the techniques and products of preparation can address questions related to the creative process, what constitutes a work of art, the collaborative nature of art making, translations between media, and the dissemination of ideas about art, architecture, and design. Graduate students in art history and related fields are welcome to submit proposals on any time period, style, culture, or geographic region.

Topics might include, but are not limited to:
- Underdrawings and underpaintings
- Preparation of materials such as dyes, pigments, fibers, and grounds
- Multiple firings of ceramics
- Proofs for printmaking
- Cartoons for tapestries and panel paintings
- Prototypes for product and industrial design
- Artists’ notebooks and sketches
- Drawings and plans made with computer aided design software
- Labor and workshop practices
- How preparatory works communicate ideas between artists, clients, collaborators
- Intellectual theories, such as disegno, related to preparation
- How ideas of process and preparatory works have changed over time
- How technologies have impacted preparation in art making

Eligibility is limited to current M.A. and Ph.D. students. Submit a CV and 300-word abstract to uscgradsymposium2017usc.edu by May 31, 2017.