Conference

Artists’ Writings 1850 - Present

The Courtauld Institute of Art
Somerset House, Strand
London WC2R 0RN
Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre

14.30 - 18.00, Thursday 4 June 2009 (with registration from 14.00)
10.00 - 17.30, Friday 5 June 2009 (with registration from 09.30)
10.00 - 17.00, Saturday 6 June 2009 (with registration from 09.30)

Despite Matisse’s warning that ‘he who wants to dedicate himself to
painting should start by cutting out his tongue’, artists in the modern
period have frequently expressed themselves in writing (whether memoir,
fiction or theory). This conference will ask what motivates artists to
write, how they view the relation between their visual and textual
practice, and how they use writing to manipulate or challenge the public
reception and critical interpretation of their work. Challenging the myth
of the visual artist as an intuitive anti-intellectual, it will
demonstrate the extent and diversity of artists’ contributions to modern
literature and criticism in various languages. It will also investigate
how scholars interpret these texts: are they works of art in themselves or
simply evidence about the artist’s life and craft? Do they conceal as much
as they reveal? How has the role and perception of artists’ writings
changed over time?

PROGRAMME
Thursday, 4 June

14.00 - 14.30 Registration

14.30 - 16.00 SESSION 1 - Interpreting Artists’ Writings: Intention and
Authority

Nicholas Chare (University of Reading), Matters of Fact: David Sylvester’s
Interviews with Francis Bacon

Christina Rosenberger (Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art,
Harvard University Art Museum), The Last Word? The Role of Artists’
Writings in the Conservation of Modern and Contemporary Art

Anna Lovatt (University of Nottingham), Sol Le Witt’s Automated Art

16.00 - 16.30 COFFEE/TEA BREAK

16.30 - 18.00 SESSION 2 - Correspondence: Between Public and Private

Julie F. Codell (Arizona State University), Private into Public:
Rhetorical and Professional Systems in Victorian Artists’ Letters

John House (Courtauld Institute of Art), Working with Artists’ Letters

Duncan White (Central St Martins) and Dave Smith (artist), Facsimileology:
Artists’ Writing and Mechanical Reproduction in an Age Obsolete

18.00 RECEPTION

Friday, 5 June
09.30 - 10.00 Registration
10.00 - 11.00 SESSION 3 - The Artist as Critic 1

Peter Cooke (University of Manchester),Gustave Moreau, Painter-Writer

James Faure Walker (artist; Camberwell College of Arts), The Origins of
Artscribe

11.00 - 11.30 COFFEE/TEA BREAK

11.30 - 13.00 SESSION 4 - Fact and Fiction

Bridget Alsdorf (Princeton University), Vallotton’s Murderous Life:
Autobiography and the Ethics of Perspective

Lisa Tickner (Courtauld Institute of Art), Artists’ Fiction: George du
Maurier's Trilby and Wyndham Lewis’s Tarr

Sylvia Karastathi (University of Cambridge), Artists’ Papers in
Contemporary Fiction: The Cases of Gwen John and Dora Carrington

13.00 - 14.00 BREAK FOR LUNCH

14.00 - 15.30 SESSION 5 - The Artist as Educator

Grace Brockington (University of Bristol), Walter Crane and the Universal
Language of Art

Julia K. Dabbs (University of Minnesota, Morris), Empowering the
Nineteenth-Century American Woman Artist: May Alcott Nieriker’s Studying
Art Abroad & How to Do It Cheaply (1879)

Ann Compton (University of Glasgow), „How to Do It“: Re-reading the
Sculpture Manual in the Context of Early British Modernism

15.30 - 16.00 COFFEE/TEA BREAK

16.00 - 17.30 SESSION 6 - Writing as Art

Nina Parish (University of Bath), From Mallarmé to Sadin via Broodthaers:
What has Become of the Livre d’Artiste?

Yvonne Kyriakides (artist), The Shadow Speaks: An Artist’s Reflections on
a Fusion of Visual and Textual Practice

Rachel Sloan (independent art historian), In Love with Words: Maurice
Denis, ‘Les Amours de Marthe’, and Amour

17.30 RECEPTION
Saturday, 6 June
09.30 -10.00 Registration

10.00 - 11.00 SESSION 7 - Genre and Identity: Between Word and Image

Richard Hobbs (University of Bristol), Sonnets: Edgar Degas, Claudius
Popelin, and the Poetry of Generic Constraints

Emma Kimberley (University of Leicester), Painted Words and Spoken Images
in the Work of Derek Walcott

11.00 - 11.30 COFFEE/TEA BREAK

11.30 - 13.00 SESSION 8 - Shifting Identities: Writing the Self

Aurélie Verdier (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales), „Ego
Scriptor“: Avant-garde, Polemics and Francis Picabia’s Writing of the Self

Michelle Letowska (artist), Saying too Much: The Artist’s Statement

Peter Maber (University of Cambridge), Painted Letters: The Later Writings
of Roger Hilton

13.00 - 14.00 LUNCH

14.00 - 15.30 SESSION 9 - The Artist as Critic 2

Dina Ramadan (Columbia University), Writing for Art and Freedom:
Understanding Aesthetics and Ideology in 1940s Egypt

Kenneth Bendiner (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Ford Madox Brown:
Word and Paint

Deborah Schultz (University of Sussex), Textual Evidence: Intention and
Insincerity in the Writings of Marcel Broodthaers

15.30 - 16.00 COFFEE/TEA BREAK

16.00 - 17.00 Concluding Discussion

Organised by Dr Linda Goddard

To book a place: £40 (£20 concessions) Please send a cheque made payable
to ‘Courtauld Institute of Art’ to: Research Forum Events Co-ordinator,
Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum, Somerset House, Strand, London
WC2R 0RN, clearly stating that you wish to book for the ‘Artists’ Writings
1850 - Present conference’. For credit card bookings call 020 7848
2785/2909. For further information, send an e-mail to
ResearchForumEventscourtauld.ac.uk.