Fall 2011 Lecture Series
Art History Faculty Lectures
Kevin Chua, Ph.D. (September 7th at 6:30 PM; Art B-01)
“Greuze and the Image of Incest”
Irascible, proud, anti-social: negative judgments on the 18th-century French painter Jean-Baptiste Greuze abound. Though interest in his work has been revived by recent, post-1970s art historical criticism, his art has tended to be hammered into the category of "social reform" - a view that finds his painting coded with an Enlightenment sentiment, striving for the moral betterment of society. This talk takes a different tack to Greuze's art, by unpacking one painting: his "Girl Throwing a Kiss" of 1769. By setting the painting within a long history of images of suffering female saints, Chua aims to redescribe the stakes - the ecstatic politics - of Greuze's incestuous art.
[image caption: Greuze, Girl Throwing a Kiss (detail), c. 1764, drawing on paper.]
Carolyn Tate, Ph.D. (September 14th at 6:30 PM; Art B-01)
“Tomb C at La Venta: Commemorating an Olmec Woman with Jade”
Tomb C was one of the five “pseudoburials” of La Venta, a pilgrimage site of the Olmec culture (900 - 400 BC). This "tomb" contained several hundred small jade sculptures centered on a stone figurine of a female. This presentation examines the possible identity of the woman commemorated here and contends that she was a prominent midwife and healer.
[image caption: Drawing of Tomb Offerings for an Olmec Woman.]
Jorgelina Orfila, Ph.D. (September 21st at 6:30 PM; Art B-01)
“Knowledge as Landscape: On the Use of Site Photographs for the Study of Cézanne’s Landscape Paintings”
Art historian John Rewald established the practice of using photographs of the sites painted by Paul Cézanne as methodological tools for the study of the artist’s landscape paintings in the 1930s. This paper argues that, as the normative component of art historical comparisons, site photographs determine art historians’ visual understanding of Cézanne’s landscapes and their approach to the sites that inspired him.
[image caption: Orfila’s composite of a Rewald photograph and a Cézanne painting.]
Landmark Arts Visiting Artists
Judy Rushin, Associate Professor of Art, University of Tallahassee, Florida
(October 6th at 7:00 PM; Art B-01)
Constance Lowe, Professor of Art, UT-San Antonio
(October 19th at 7:00 PM; Art B-01)
Art History Visiting Scholar Lectures
Susan Platt, Ph.D., art historian, critic, curator, Seattle, Washington
(September 27th at 7:00 PM; English 106)
“Art and Politics Now: Cultural Activism in a Time of Crisis”
In this presentation Platt will discuss strategies and media that artists use to address social issues based on a selection of the 80 artists, from throughout the world, in her recent book Art and Politics Now: Cultural Activism in a Time of Crisis (Midmarch Arts Press, 2011). Topics include opposition to war, terrorism, racism, and globalization. The lecture demonstrates the power that artists have to make a difference when they thoughtfully engage with social concerns.
John Paul Ricco, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Contemporary Art, Media Theory, and Criticism, University of Toronto at Mississauga
(November 1st at 7:00 PM; English 106)
“Hides, Knots & Other Frayed Edges”
Subtitle: On Felix Gonzalez-Torres, queer video, and sex & ethics in the classroom
Description: A number of works of contemporary queer video, installation and photography (by Doug Ischar, Dierdre Logue, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres) are presented as parts of a so-called “knowledge archive” for how we might go about teaching sex & ethics. Furtther, in their peri-performative (Sedgwick) staging of a space that is “around” the performative, that is, as the frayed edges that outline the knots and hides of sex & ethics, they are also taken to be pedagogical scenes—images of spaces that are created when we teach sex & ethics.
2011 Texas Jewelry & Metals Symposium
Saturday, October 22nd; English 106; 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Kathleen Browne, Professor in Jewelry/Metals, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio
Paulette Myers, Professor and Head of Jewelry & Metalsmithing, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville
Robert K. Liu, Ph.D.,Co-Editor, Ornament Magazine
Deb Stoner, studio artist, designer, metalsmith, Portland, Oregon
Fall Art History Senior Symposium
(Friday, November 18th; 4:30 – 6:30 PM, Art B-01)
4:00 PM: ELI PATTON - "Counted Offerings in the Borgia Group Codices"
4:30 PM: CHARLES COWDEN - "Veronese's The Wedding at Cana: A Painting and Its Audience in Late Renaissance Venice"
5:00 PM: DANIELLE TEAM - "Beyond Surrealism: Joan Miró and the Monochrome Epic"
6:00 PM: Announcement of prizes
Presiding judge: Dr. Stacey Jocoy, Assistant Professor of Musicology, TTU.
Exhibitions and visiting speakers programs at the School of Art are supported by generous grants from the Helen Jones Foundation and The CH Foundation, both of Lubbock. Additional support comes from Cultural Activities Fees administered through the College of Visual & Performing Arts.