America 1945-1949

Call for Papers

Starting from Scratch.

Art and Culture in Europe and America 1945-1949.

International conference

Send proposals to Eric de Chassey, Université François-Rabelais, Tours
(eric.de.chasseyuniv-tours.fr) and Jean Kempf, Université Lyon 2 - Louis
Lumière (Jean.Kempfuniv-lyon2.fr)

Max.: 500 words

Duration: 20mns

Deadline: October 15, 2008.

This interdisciplinary conference will be held on January 12-13, 2009 at
the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyons, France.

It is organized as a follow-up of the exhibition Repartir à zéro, L'art en
Europe et en Amérique après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, 1945-1949
<http://www.mba-lyon.fr/mba/sections/fr/expositions-musee/prochainement/repartir-a-zero>

(October 22, 2008 - February 2, 2009 at the musée des Beaux-Arts in
Lyons). It follows previous conferences on art after World War II in
France and the United States, especially Be-Bomb: the Transatlantic War of
Images and All that Jazz. 1946-1956
<http://www.macba.es/controller.php?p_action=show_page&pagina_id=34&inst_id=21710>

, Barcelona (October 2007). The pervading notions of tabula rasa, clean
slate, new departure, anno zero, Stunde Null, will be questionned from the
perspective of their specific realizations in different media, cultures
and countries.

For a very short period of time, between the end of World War II
(1944-1945) and before the advent of the Cold War (1948-1949), most
Americans and Europeans were united in a feeling of "starting from
scratch". Very soon though, this period ended, as more traditional ways of
organizing the world and the cultural scenes returned, with a vengeance,
polarizing the situations (East/West, Paris/New York, Social
Realism/Abstraction, etc.).