CALL FOR PAPERS

"Modernist Games"
College Art Association
22-25 February 2006, Boston

The intense period of experimentation in which modernist art developed
has often been characterized as serious and earnest research. By contrast,
this panel will investigate the ways in which the era was fascinated with
games and play. Games are, at base, representational activities, and
artists and critics saw the game as an analogue to art practice, a metaphor
for creativity, or a model for art criticism. Possible topics include
Surrealist games, play as metaphor or method, Duchamp and chess,
Giacometti, Cornell, artistic movements as teams, installations as
playgrounds, and play as aesthetic experience. Emphasis will be placed
on global modernism from the first half of the twentieth century, but
all relevant papers discussing art or criticism from the 1890s onwards
will be considered. Note: the panel is not concerned with Game Theory
as practiced in such fields as economics but rather with the study of
games and play from methodological, cultural, anthropological,
psychoanalytic, and other theoretical perspectives.

submit c.v. and one-page abstract before 13 May 2005

e-mail (preferred) to:
dgetsyfas.harvard.edu

or post to:
David Getsy
Dept. of History of Art and Architecture
Harvard University
485 Broadway
Cambridge, MA 02138
USA

further details on conference participation and forms for submission of
abstacts at:
http://www.collegeart.org/pdf/2006_conference_call.pdf

_____________________________________________
David J. Getsy
J. Paul Getty Postdoctoral Fellow, 2004-2005

mailing address:
Associate of the Dept. of History of Art and Architecture
Harvard University
Sackler Museum; 485 Broadway; Cambridge, MA 02138; USA
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~dgetsy