Rearranging Abstraction
Session Abstract: Rearranging Abstraction
The session seeks a new understanding of abstraction in contemporary art. Much has been said in the academy about the “difficulties” of making abstract art today, and artists have been grappling with these contradictions in their practice. While giving modernism its due, the evolution of abstraction can be traced both backward and forward. In the global context, new abstract references and tendencies come from outside purely modernist aesthetics. A delicate balance of content and process has begun to drive some abstract work in specific ways. Sources for abstract art have become peculiar, mundane, spectacular, and Pop what are the results of this? How has the liberation of materials influenced new abstraction? How are questions of authenticity and originality fielded? How has content been infused into abstract form? Exhibitions such as Comic Abstraction: Image Breaking, Image-Making at the Museum of Modern Art in 2007, as well as The Uncertainty of Objects and Ideas Recent Sculpture at the Hirschorn in 2007 and Unmonumental at the New Museum 2008 are examples of new ways of thinking about the legacy of abstraction while acknowledging the dynamic force that abstraction holds. Panelists will present papers and works of art that straddle these forces with humor, passion, and curiosity.
Chair: Ms. Kim Anno, California College of the Arts
Co-Chair: No co-chair entered for this session.
Speakers
Paper title: Pretext & Context: Abstraction and Representation in the 21st Century Speaker: Clarence Morgan, University of Minnesota Abstract: It is time to take a close look at the pretext of abstraction in contemporary art. As one of many instruments used to advance modern art, abstraction provided painting a mechanism to reinvent itself as needed by cloaking or updating this practice in order to remain current. Painting fluidly moves backward and forward through pictorial history. Abstraction has always functioned as a strategy of engagement-reengagement by allowing painting to equip itself with various conceptual strategies. Post-modernism cleared the way for multiple perspectives in which no hierarchy or privileged stance was required. The blurring of boundaries and fixed stylistic distinctions brought about by pluralism opposed the notion of a single arbiter of aesthetic quality. Categories of painting have become fuzzy and distinctions are no longer pertinent in a world where all sorts of lines and geographic boundaries are being crossed, if not dissolved altogether. |
Paper title: Looking From Underneath the Counter: Rearranging Abstraction in Our Daily Lives Speaker: Stephan Hillerbrand, University of Houston Abstract: Abstraction is an integral element of our visual landscape that is woven into our daily lives. Quotidian functions such as stirring cream into a cup of coffee, eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or making cookies can become larger than life, cinematic and abstract with the slight turn of a camera lens. Simple tools yield momentous abstract imagery. |
Paper title: Queer Abstraction/Queer Narration Speaker: Tirza Latimer, California College of the Arts Abstract: Art that engages with sexual politics frequently references the body. There are reasons for the prevalence of this theme. First, the body, we are taught, is the place where sexuality resides. Second, in societies that have labored to suppress non-normative sexual expression, the languages of dissident bodies have played a crucial counter-cultural role. This paper departs from the figural arena, however, to explore what Judith Halberstam has called “queer abstraction.” While Halberstam, in her book In a Queer Time and Place, argues that artists such as Linda Besemer have adapted “the non-narrative potential of abstract art into an oppositional practice,” I investigate, instead, the oppositional implications of queer forms of content and narration made available by abstraction. With this emphasis, I discuss work by important abstract artists such as Agnes Martin, Harmony Hammond, Louise Fishman, and Byron Kim, considering reverberations of their practices among emerging artists. |
Paper title: A Sense of Place: Abstraction, Trauma & Release Speaker: Liam Kelly, University of Ulster Abstract: In his essay The Opposite of Emptiness ( Art Forum, 1989 ) Thomas McEvilley claimed that abstraction was always related to life, that it was never merely a search for pure form. In Northern Ireland during the political troubles the critical climate called for more socially and politically engaged art. As a consequence those artists who worked in an abstract idiom felt challenged and in some cases guilty. That critical challenge and guilt affected their work which, while remaining abstract, became more emotionally charged and physically gestural. |
Paper title: Radiance: Abstracting With a Little "a" Speaker: Kim Anno, California College of the Arts Abstract: As Modernism has been transformed or adjusted by the dynamics of Post-Modernism so too is the identity of abstraction. When abstracting with a little “a” one accepts the notion that the lens of Modern abstraction is only part of the bigger picture. This can be clearly seen in contemporary art and music. One of the most provocative qualities present in these is the idea of “Radiance”. Unpacking “Radiance” is parallel to problematizing beauty as Elaine Scarry and others have done. Revelry, recognition, unfamiliarity, conflict, movement, and ecstasy are all qualities of Radiant abstraction. These become riveting in visual sensation or tone. Like the presentation of beauty, radiance embodies both intellectual and physical or sensual qualities. This paper will examine the work of several visual and audio artists whose work revolves around various qualities of radiance while creating an abstracted work. |
