REASSESSING EAST GERMAN ART: 25 YEARS AFTER THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL

Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa
Registration Deadline: Sep 12, 2014

Organizers: April A. Eisman and Frank Zöllner

This three-day international conference will bring together sixteen scholars from England, France, Germany, and the US for a reappraisal of East German art and its problematic reception since 1990. It will be one of the first conferences in the United States on the visual arts in East Germany, an aspect of East German culture that has been largely overlooked in English-language scholarship.

Program

Monday 15 September (College of Design Auditorium)

7:30-9:00 PM
Keynote Address & Reception

RECONSTRUCTING EAST GERMAN CULTURE
Stephen Brockmann (Carnegie Mellon University)

Tuesday 16 September (Memorial Union Gallery)

8:30-9:00
Registration and Opening Remarks

9:00-11:00
Panel I: EAST GERMAN ART IN THE EARLY YEARS

Barbara McCloskey (University of Pittsburgh)
A Useable Past for East German Socialist Realism?

Heather Mathews (Pacific Lutheran University)
“Flucht vor der sozialistischen Wirklichkeit”: Art and Reality in the Late 1950s

Katharina Heider (Martin Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg)
From Arts and Crafts to Industrial Design – The Transformation of the Art School Burg Giebichenstein and the Consequences for Painting in Halle, 1945-58

11:00
Coffee Break

11:15
Panel II: SOCIALIST REALISM AND MODERN ART IN EAST GERMANY

Jérôme Bazin (University of Paris-Est Creteil)
Visual Simplicity and its Problems. Modest Art from the GDR

Jessica Backus (Hunter College)
“Real Modern Art” – Werner Tübke and the Question of Modernism in East Germany

12:35
Lunch Break

2:00-4:00
Panel III: CULTURAL POLITICS IN EAST GERMANY

Sigrid Hofer (Philips-Universität Marburg)
The Historicization of the Modern: Museum Politics Respond to Cultural Political Directives in the GDR

Silke Wagler (Kunstfonds, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden)
Commissions Before the Central German Art Exhibitions of the GDR

Kristine Nielsen (Illinois Wesleyan University)
Medium Matters: Berlin’s 750th Anniversary

4:00
Daytime Program Ends

8:00-10:30 PM (College of Design Auditorium)
Film Screening – GOYA
Director: Konrad Wolf, 1971 (134 minutes)
Introduced by Seán Allan (University of Warwick)

Wednesday 17 September (Memorial Union Gold Room)

8:30
Registration & remarks

9:00-11:00
Panel IV: WOMEN ARTISTS AND PERFORMANCE ART IN EAST GERMANY

Angelika Richter (Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig)
Defying the Constraints of Representation: Performing Women Artists in East Germany

Susanne Altmann (Hochschule für bildende Kunst Dresden)
Occupy Erfurt! A Pioneering Women Artists’ Collective in the East German Province Fights the Restrictions of Communism

April Eisman (Iowa State University)
Challenging the State Artist-Dissident Divide: Angela Hampel as Painter and Installation Artist

11:00
Coffee Break

11:15-1:15
Panel V: EAST GERMAN ART TODAY

Sara Blaylock (University of California, Santa Cruz)
The Case of Cornelia Schleime: Reading Signs of Artist Agency in Stasi Files

Gisela Schirmer (independent scholar, Germany)
The Controversy Around Willi Sitte – Will It Ever End?

Frank Zöllner (Universität Leipzig)
Werner Tübke as a Communist Artist: What's Wrong with Painting the History of the Working Class?

1:15
Lunch Break

3:00-4:00
Roundtable Discussion:
THE FUTURE OF THE STUDY OF EAST GERMAN ART

4:00
End of Public Program

This conference was generously funded by Iowa State University: the Office of the Vice President for Research, College of Design, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, World Languages and Cultures, Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Integrated Studio Arts, and a Women’s and Diversity Grants Program.

For more information, or to register for the conference, please contact April Eisman eismanaiastate.edu