The persistence of painting is an art-historical conundrum, one that the Centre for Research in Visual Culture is considering throughout the academic year 2023-2024. Painting has survived many assaults, blows that-at the time-were deemed to be fatal. By tracking the continuity of painting in the face of these challenges we are as interested in exploring the possibilities posed by chemical and material innovations as we are the pressures of stylistic and transmedial shifts.

Drawing on current scholarship on the time and temporalities of art and art history, this conference will capture the many ‘times’ contained and sustained within painting, taking on the temporalities involved in its production, display and reception, as well as those citational and allegorical references that pull individual paintings across time and space.

The conference is divided into three panels (chaired by Will Atkin, Chloë Julius and Mark Rawlinson respectively), which each tackle painting's persistence from a different formal angle.

PROGRAMME
A48, Clive Granger, University Park Campus

9.30-10.00 Teas and coffees
10.00-10.05 Welcome (Will Atkin, Chloë Julius, Mark Rawlinson)
10.05-10.15 Introduction (Will Atkin)

PANEL ONE: The persistance of painting since 1900

10.15-10.35 Manet After Neoliberalism (Saul Nelson, University of Cambridge)
10.35-10.55 What if I used Printing Press Like A Paintbrush? Helen Frankenthaler’s Painterly Perseverance (Cora Chalaby, University College London)
10.55-11.15 Abstraction, Appropriation, & Representation in the paintings of William T. Williams (Christa Noel Robbins, University of Virginia)
11.15-12.00 Discussion

12.00-12.30 Curator’s talk: Fiontan Moran (Tate Modern) on Mike Kelley’s Paintings

12.30-13.30 Lunch

13.30-13.40 Introduction (Mark Rawlinson)

PANEL TWO: Painting against photography

13.40-14.00 Painting the Movie of Life: Rosalyn Drexler, Kathe Burkhart, and the Ambivalence of Appropriation (Beni Muhl, University of Fribourg)
14.00-14.20 “Down with all this modern junk that takes thinking to understand”: Bringing Readers of Playboy Round to Abstract Painting (Jason Derouin, Carleton University)
14.20-14.40 An ‘Exhilarating Tension’: Situating Paul Klee’s Facture and Materiality in the Painting versus Photography Debate (Charlotte Healy, The Art Institute of Chicago)
14.40-15.15 Discussion

15.15-15.45 Teas and coffees

15.45-15.55 Introduction (Chloë Julius)

PANEL THREE: Paint, write, repeat

15.55-16.15 Surrealism Africanus? Ellen Gallagher’s Black Fantastic, abstract art and the question of literature (Amna Malik, Independent art historian)
16.15-16.35 Having Words with Painting: October contra Neoexpressionism (Matthew Bowman, University of Suffolk)
16.35-16.55 Modes Under Investigation: Abstract Painting and Art Writing in France, c.1968. (Natalie Adamson, University of St. Andrews)
16.55-17.30 Discussion

17.30-17.45 Plenary

17.45-18.30 Drinks reception

This is an in-person conference only taking place at the University of Nottingham's main campus. Registration is free. For the full programme and timings, please visit the conference website: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/conference/fac-arts/clas/and-painting-continues/index.aspx