[1] The Real Price: Between Art and the (Art) Market

From: Bill Balaskas
Date: 10 July 19

The global financial crisis of 2008 caused widespread political and social turmoil, whose consequences can still be felt around the world. Yet, as the Lehman Brothers investment bank was collapsing in New York in the early autumn of 2008, an auction of works by Damien Hirst in London was fetching record prices. The fact that on the eve of the most severe economic crisis for eight decades a contemporary artist could, as Maev Kennedy put it, make ‘more money in two days than all the artists in the National Gallery earned in a lifetime’ (Guardian, 2008), raised important questions not only about the way in which the (art) market functions, but also about the way in which we evaluate culture at large. Today, a decade after the end of the Great Recession, art organisations and artists continue to struggle, while policymakers systematically overlook culture and art education.

This session aspires to explore the relationship between art and the economy in different historical periods and from diverse points of view. Proposed topics might include, but are by no means limited to:

- Artworks as commodities: use and exchange values
- The art circuit: economic actors and networks
- Marketing and the spectacularisation of art
- Contribution of culture to the economy
- Artists’ productivity and subsistence
- The artist as a businessperson
- The value of cultural capital
- Art’s reaction to economic crises
- Depictions of marketplaces, transactions and enterprises in art
- The role of patrons and collectors
- Cultural policies and economic institutionalisation
- Intellectual property
- Art education, employability and the creative industries

Please, email your paper proposals direct to the session convenor, Dr Bill Balaskas, Director of Research, School of Art & Architecture, Kingston University, London: B.Balaskaskingston.ac.uk

You should use the Paper Proposal Form that is available on the Association For Art History website.
You need to provide a title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 25-minute paper, your name and institutional affiliation (if any) by Monday 21st October 2019.

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[2] Craft and War

From: Jennifer Way
Date: 10 July 19

Session convenor: Jennifer Way Jennifer.Wayunt.edu

Abstract:
This session investigates relationships of craft and war and considers how they compel a reappraisal of central themes in craft history. Although we may not readily identify craft as a cultural form associated with war, nevertheless, since its emergence during the 19th century as a hand-based fabrication valued especially for its differences from machine-made goods, craft has been engaged with civil and foreign wars, cold wars, and police and military actions. This session asks: what historical examples, theoretical frameworks, and interdisciplinary approaches illuminate how and for whom craft has mattered in these contexts or address craft’s connections to the politics of wars and to wars’ subjectivities and affects – rage, boredom, loneliness, shock, traumas of dislocation and loss? Why has craft featured in halls of diplomacy, home fronts, battlefields, internment camps, prisons, sites of rehabilitation, and spaces of memorialisation? How have technologies of war informed craft practices? What has the mobility of craft contributed to its performance of the cultural and social work of wars? There is also the question of why the long association of craft and war remains untheorised and understudied. What does its emergence during the era of Western modernity suggest about connections between craft and geographies of modernity and their conflicts? How does studying craft and war privilege or trouble West/non-West binaries of culture and power? Craft historiography emphasises times of peace and prioritises themes of the domestic, feminine, and indigenous. What new narratives for craft histories might attention to craft and war propose?

Please email your paper proposal directly to the session convenor, Jennifer Way at Jennifer.wayunt.edu. Provide a title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 25-minute paper, your name and institutional affiliation, by Monday, October 21.

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[3] Exploring the Plurality of Artists’ Practices: Artists as dealers and agents

From: Marie Tavinor
Date: 11 July 19

ropes from the Romantic era depicted artistic practice as an expression of the artists’ ‘isolated genius’ which, in sociological terms, translated into the ‘autonomisation of intellectual and artistic production’, as a form of ‘auto-normativity’. This session, however, aims to subvert such compartmentalisation of artistic activities and think about artistic practices- in the plural- which extend beyond the intellectualisation of ‘disegno’. In particular, we would invite papers which seek to bridge seemingly disparate areas of artistic practice and explore the activities of artists as commercial agents.

Artists were involved in negotiating the complex art worlds of their day, cultivating patrons, creating support networks or supplementing their incomes through dealing in art. From the Renaissance, artists often acted for the patrons in both the primary and secondary market for collecting, shaping the taste and opportunities for artists other than themselves. Indeed, their knowledge and experience as artists was highly valued as Giovanni Maria Sasso or Gavin Hamilton operated simultaneously as restorers, dealers, agents or collectors.

This session thus invites papers covering all periods of art history and exploring plural notion of ‘artistic practices’ as means to expanding its meaning and application. We are particularly interested in how artists’ shaped taste and collections, acted as dealers, or revised their own practices in response to an increasingly international art market.

Session Co-Convenors:
Adriana Turpin (IESA, Paris), adrianaturpingmail.com
Marie Tavinor (Christie’s Education, London), marietavinorgmail.com

To Submit a Paper:
Your proposal should be submitted at: pluralpracticesgmail.com by Monday 21 October 2019, using the Proposal Form available on the Association for Art History website.

Please make sure that your proposal contains a title, and abstract (max. 250 words), your name and affiliation (if applicable).

The Proposal Form may be downloaded at: https://forarthistory.org.uk/our-work/conference/2020-annual-conference/exploring-the-plurality-of-artists-practices/