This conference explores the powerful engagement with the social in visual art and media, from the aftermath of the Revolutions of 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871 to the reshaping of the political landscape by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917—a period when the class conflicts of capitalism emerged as central concerns. The visualizing of this social landscape took a variety of forms, ranging from social realism to avant-garde experimentation, painting and photography, to imagery in the printed media.
The conference begins on Friday evening with introductory talks on the conference theme. On Saturday presentations by an international panel of distinguished speakers will be complemented by discussion of the broader issues raised by the conference, including the continued relevance of social art history for our contemporary political period and for cultural history more generally.
The featured speakers are Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby (History of Art, University of California Berkeley, author of Extremities: Painting Empire in Post-Revolutionary France, 2002), Steve Edwards (History of Art, Birkbeck University of London, UK, author of The Making of English Photography: Allegories, 2006), André Dombrowski (History of Art and Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, University of Pennsylvania, author of Cézanne, Murder, and Modern Life, 2013), Marnin Young (Art History, Yeshiva University, author of Realism in the Age of Impressionism: Painting and the Politics of Time, 2015), Andrés Mario Zervigón (Rutgers University, Art History and Center for Cultural Analysis, author of John Heartfield and the Agitated Image: Photography, Persuasion, and the Rise of Avant-Garde Photomontage, 2012), Andrew Hemingway (History of Art, University College London, UK, Emeritus, author of Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement, 1926-1956, 2002); Christina Kiaer (Northwestern University, Art History and Slavic Languages and Literature, author of Imagine No Possessions: The Socialist Objects of Russian Constructivism, 2005), and Gail Day (History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds, UK, author of Dialectical Passions: Negation and Postwar Art Theory, 2010)
For more information please visit the History of Art website.
