Academic Sessions: Belfast 2007
Contested Evidence
Convenors:
Matthew Sillence, University of East Anglia matthewsillence@yahoo.co.uk
Amelia Yeates, University of Birmingham amelia@yeates9916.freeserve.co.uk
For art historians, evidence is fundamental to the creation of an argument and can take many forms. This might be visual: the artwork itself, drawings, photographic or video records; oral, such as the artist’s interview or eye-witness accounts or anecdotes; textual, such as interview transcripts, exhibition reviews, sales information, manuscript field notes or diaries. However, many of these sources may not survive, thus preventing corroboration and limiting our interrogation of a work of art. Moreover, extant sources may be contested when we begin to consider the purposes they served around the time of their creation and the degree to which they have been manipulated or altered. One might also consider how revisionist accounts of familiar subjects can change our perception of the evidence before us. This session explores how new theoretical perspectives could be used to re-read existing bodies of work or provide new insights for art historians. It will also examine on what levels certain evidence may be admissible in our work and on what grounds it could be challenged by our peers. Ultimately, in investigating our own working practices, we might consider how our own studies coalesce to form a body of evidence for future scholars.
Speakers:
Aliya Abykayeva-Tiesenhausen (Courtauld Institute of Art, London)
Gender and Childhood in the Soviet East: Painting the Stereotype
Mathias Fubah Alubafi (Reading University)
Rethinking Authenticity in African Art
Jan D. Cox (University of Bristol)
Rodrigo Moynihan and the ‘missing Minton’ – the photograph as agent of revelation and inertia
Michelle Gewurtz (University of Leeds)
Who Gives the Name? The Problematics of Art with No Title
Darrelyn Gunzburg (Open University)
Looking Back: The transgression of social codes explored through the direct gaze in Fra Angelico’s San Marco Altarpiece (The Virgin and Child Enthroned with Angels and Saints c. 1438–40) when compared with Madonna and Child with Eight Saints (also known as Madonna delle ombre c. 1450), San Marco, east dormitory
Kochi Okada (Goldsmiths College, University of London)
The Emergence of Post-Soviet Arts Valuing in Tashkent, Uzbekistan (1991–2004)
Keunsoo Park (Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London)
Fashion Art in South Korea
Helen Rawling (Kingston University, London)
Contested Evidence: Abolitionist Artworks and the International Slavery Museum, Liverpool
Feng Su (University of Central England, Birmingham Institute of Art and Design)
On the interpretation of cloud imageries in Chinese visual culture
Hannah Williams (Courtauld Institute of Art, London)
Coypel’s libertine children: challenging ways of thinking in eighteenth-century France