Contents

Academic Sessions: Glasgow 2010

AAH Annual Conference 2010
15 - 17 April, University of Glasgow

The Modernist Turn: Counter/Other/Alter/Meta Modernisms in Art History and Practice

Sessions Convenors:

Francis Halsall, National College of Art & Design, Dublin, halsallf@ncad.ie
Declan Long, National College of Art & Design, Dublin, longd@ncad.ie
Mick Wilson, National College of Art & Design, Dublin, mick.wilson@gradcam.ie

Unquestionably there is a broad renegotiation of the modernist project within contemporary art history as well as curatorial discourse, art practice and criticism. Examples of this include the leitmotif of Documenta XII ‘Is Modernity our antiquity?’ and Altermodern at Tate in 2009.

If there is a fundamental relationship between the emergence of modernism and the academic discipline of art history - as the art historian Heinrich Wölfflin suggested when he claimed that, ‘Art History and Art run in parallel,’ - then what are the implications for contemporary art history of a ‘modernist turn’? Does it, for example, suggest the consolidation of art historical methods in the face of the critiques levelled at it from positions such as ‘the new art history’ visual culture studies and world art studies?

This panel investigates such questions by exploring the relationships between current art historical enquiries, re-interpretations of modernism and its renewed saliency within contemporary art discourse. Participants explore the relevance of modernism today by looking at a variety of current issues in contemporary art history and practice.

Speakers:

Francis Halsall, Declan Long, Mick Wilson (National College of Art & Design, Dublin)
Opening Remarks

Andrew McNamara (QUT)
Rethinking the 1960s, rethinking modernism: on Ian Burn's late reflections

Sanjukta Sunderason (University College, London)
Anxious Modernisms: Revisiting artistic avant-garde in India, c. 1940s-50s

Ya’ara Gil-Glazer (University of Haifa, Israel)
‘So, What Kind of History Do You Want?’: Complex Separations from Newhall’s Meta-history of Photography

Clare O’Dowd (University of Manchester)
Mike Nelson's A Psychic Vacuum: Installation Art and Reflexive Modernity

Morgan Thomas (University of Canterbury)
Modern Love: Thierry de Duve's Look

Toby Juliff (University of Leeds/Leeds College of Art)
The dangers of 'not-Modernism'

Raphaël Pirenne (Université Catholique de Louvain)
Pushing back the limits: Specificity and Interspecificity in Clement Greenberg’s Modernism

Veronica Tello
After Géricault: Dierk Schmidt and ‘history painting’ in the 21st century

Marianna Wahlsten
Baudelairean legacy – its transdiscursive stage

Owen Hatherly and Olivia Plender
Closing Roundtable Discussion