Rethinking "Pictorialism": American Art and Photography from 1895 to 1925
Conference

"Pictorialism," as a loosely constituted, international movement advocating photography's assimilation into the traditional fine arts, succeeded to the extent that it fostered widespread acceptance of the medium as "art" prior to World War I, but failed in the post-war period as its aesthetic agenda was condemned as antimodernist, agrarian, bourgeois, and imitative of outmoded, idealizing paintings. This two-day international symposium reconsiders and complicates the stylistic goals, methods, influences, politics, and social networks of American photographers who identified as "pictorialists" and yet produced works ranging from book and magazine illustrations to advertising and fashion photographs and from hand-manipulated gum prints to sharp-focus gelatin silver prints.

Registration is free, but to guarantee a seat please register at:
http://www.princeton.edu/visualresources/rethinking-pictorialism/registration/


PROGRAM
Friday, October 20

1:00 p.m.
Welcome and Introduction
Anne McCauley, Princeton University

1:15 p.m.
The 'Simplicity of the Past': The American and British Reception of Julia Margaret Cameron's Portrait Photographs
Joanne Lukitsh, Massachusetts College of Art

2:00 p.m.
A Few Good Men: Social Reform Among Boston Pictorialists
Patricia Fanning, Bridgewater State University

2:45 p.m.
More Than Genius: The Invention of Photographic Genius and the Importance of the Journal Camera Work
Bettina Gockel, University of Zurich

3:30 p.m.
Coffee Break

4:00 p.m.
Anne Brigman's Photographic Heresy and Feminist Magic
Lauren Kroiz, University of California, Berkeley

5:00 p.m.
Keynote: Alfred Stieglitz, 291, and the Nursery of Genius: 100 Years Later
Sarah Greenough, National Gallery of Art

6:00 p.m.
Reception – Princeton University Art Museum


Saturday, October 21

9:00 a.m.
Opening remarks

9:15 a.m.
A Transatlantic Love Affair: Robert Demachy and American Pictorial Photography
Julien Faure-Conorton, École du Louvre

10:00 a.m.
What a Woman Can Do: The Photography of Elizabeth Buehrmann
Elizabeth Cronin, New York Public Library

10:45 a.m.
Commercial Illustration's Pictorialist Inclinations
Jennifer A. Greenhill, University of Southern California

11:30 a.m.
Alvin Langdon Coburn and Arthur Wesley Dow in the American West, 1911-12
Pamela Roberts, Independent Scholar

12:15 p.m.
Lunch break

1:30 p.m.
Doris Ulmann's Ethnography in Soft Focus
Ellen Handy, City College of New York, CUNY

2:15 p.m.
Lejaren à Hiller at the Art Center
Mary Panzer, Independent Scholar

3:00 p.m.
Clarence White's Vision Fulfilled: The Career of Anton Bruehl
Bonnie Yochelson, Independent Scholar

3:45 p.m.
Coffee break

4:15 p.m.
Pictorialism in Art History and Modern Oblivion
Douglas Nickel, Brown University

5:00 p.m.
Roundtable and Discussion: Pictorialism, Modernism, and Other Myths
Wanda Corn, Emeritus Professor, Stanford University; Anne McCauley, Princeton University; Douglas Nickel, Brown University

6:00 p.m.
Reception – Princeton University Art Museum

Moderator and organizer: Anne McCauley, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University (contact mccauleyprinceton.edu)


For information about hotels in Princeton, please consult the registration website.

The symposium is organized in conjunction with the exhibition, Clarence H. White and His World: The Art and Craft of Photography, 1895-1925, on display at the Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ (October 7, 2017–January 7, 2018); the Davis Museum, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA (February 7, 2018–June 3, 2018); the Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME (June 22, 2018–September 16, 2018); and the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (October 21, 2018–January 21, 2019).