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Katy Siegel As contemporary art increasingly becomes a global business and producers are growing in number, artists in training compete not only with peers from other BFA and MFA programs, but with artists around the world—not to mention the dead or forgotten artists being revived like vintage fashions. Siegel’s talk examines how this “crowd scene” affects the individual artist. Katy Siegel is an associate professor of art history at Hunter College, a contributing editor to Artforum and an acclaimed curator. She was recently honored by the International Association of Art Critics with a Best Show award for her work on the international traveling exhibition “High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting, 1967-1975.” She has written widely on a number of contemporary artists, including Takashi Murakami, Lisa Yuskavage and Richard Tuttle. Presented by the BFA Fine Arts and Visual and Critical Studies Departments Klaus Ottmann Art has not always been what we think it is today, and an object regarded as art today may not have been perceived as such at the time it was made. From Jeff Koons’s twisted balloon-dog sculptures to Damien Hirst’s life-size platinum skull inset with diamonds, artists have continued to question the definition of art. Today’s conflation of art, entertainment and global economies has shifted the attention from galleries and museums to auctions and private museums constructed by mega-collectors, with artists increasingly becoming international celebrities and their art, trophies for global billionaires. But, as Leo Tolstoy wrote in his 1896 essay, “What Is Art?”, “In order to define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease consider[ing] it as a means to pleasure and to consider it as one of the conditions of human life.” Klaus Ottmann has curated over forty exhibitions internationally, including SITE Santa Fe’s Sixth International Biennial. He is the Robert Lehman adjunct curator at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, New York, and the author of The Genius Decision and the Postmodern Condition (Spring Publications, 2004) and The Essential Mark Rothko (Harry N. Abrams, 2003). Presented by the BFA Fine Arts Department Jenni Sorkin With its East-West theme, Black Mountain College’s Pottery Seminar introduced its American audience to Zen and brought together three of the most legendary international potters of the postwar period: Bernard Leach (England), Shoji Hamada (Japan) and Marguerite Wildenhain (U.S.). Sorkin will discuss these artists and their significance in the history of the college. Jenni Sorkin is a PhD candidate in the History of Art Department at Yale University and is a Henry Luce pre-doctoral fellow and a visiting critic at the Yale School of Art. Sorkin is a regular contributor to Frieze magazine, and her writing has also appeared in the New Art Examiner, Art Monthly, NU: The Nordic Art Review and Modern Painters. Presented by the MFA Design Criticism Department David Ross A conversation with David Ross, a longstanding champion of contemporary art, on the function of the museum in the 21st century, the changing state of the art world today, and the disconnect between what is happening in “real life” and the kinds of persuasions found in the art world. David Ross has been active in the museum world since 1971, when he was named the first curator of video art at the University Museum in Syracuse, New York. He has held positions at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the Berkeley Art Museum, and the Long Beach Museum of Art, and has served as the director of both the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. After co-founding and managing the Artist Pension Trust, Ross recently opened a commercial gallery, Albion New York, an expansion of Albion London. Presented by the BFA Fine Arts and Visual and Critical Studies Departments Bill Berkson An Iraqi poet interviewed recently on NPR said that for him and his contemporaries the purpose of writing poetry is “to keep the language from going insane.” What now might sanity look like — in poems, in visual art, in other forms of social conduct? Who is reading, looking, and who really cares? Berkson’s talk opens with such questions; a conversation with the audience will follow. Bill Berkson is a poet, critic, teacher and curator who has been active in the art and literary worlds for the last four decades. Berkson has been a frequent contributor to Artforum, Art in America, Aperture and Art on Paper, and his criticism has been published in two collections, The Sweet Singer of Modernism & Other Art Writings (Qua Books, 2004) and Sudden Address: Selected Lectures 1981-2006 (Cuneiform Press, 2007). He is the former director of letters and science at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he taught art history, critical writing and poetry. Presented by the MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department Rob Giampietro In design writing, a strong emphasis is placed on both the way things look and how they are made. In this talk, Giampietro examines recent design history and asks: How do designed objects enter the world? How does the distribution of an object affect our understanding of it? When designed objects are circulated, who sees them, how do their audiences respond, and how are these responses accounted for? Rob Giampietro is a designer, writer and teacher. In addition to founding the studio Giampietro+Smith in 2003, he has worked for Pentagram, The New York Times Magazine and Hearst Publications. He has written essays and design criticism for publications including BusinessWeek, Design Observer, Emigre and Dot Dot Dot. He teaches at Parsons The New School for Design in New York City and has also taught in the graduate graphic design program at Rhode Island School of Design. Presented by the MFA Design Criticism Department Street Art:
Panelists: Marc and Sara Schiller, Wooster Collective; Thomas Beale, Honey Space; Frank Anselmo, art director, BBDO New York and SVA faculty member; ELBOW-TOE, street artist Is all the recent attention given to street art a blessing or a curse? The panel will discuss the history and future potential of street art, including its possible applications as inspiration for fine and graphic artists. Sara and Marc Schiller are New York-based curators and the founders of the Wooster Collective, whose mission is to document ephemeral art experiences via salons, gallery shows and the Web site, www.woostercollective.com, which showcases street art from around the world. Thomas Beale, a New York-based sculptor, operates Honey Space, an independent public exhibition space in Chelsea, where the exhibition “Portrait of Sylvia Elena” was recently presented, featuring a collaborative installation by street artists Swoon and Tennessee Jane Watson. Frank Anselmo teaches the award-winning course “Unconventional: Guerrilla Advertising” in the BFA Advertising and Graphic Design Department at SVA. He is an art director at BBDO New York, where he has worked on accounts for Guinness, FedEx, Ebay and HBO. ELBOW-TOE is a Brooklyn-based artist who has been active in the street art scene for the past four years. His work, while mainly figurative, varies wildly in style and technique, though his primary methods for work on the street are wheat-pasted woodcuts, stencils and large scale charcoal drawings. Moderated by Amy Wilson, artist and SVA faculty member Elyssa Dimant Fashion historian and writer Elyssa Dimant will speak about the nuances of writing a fashion column, specifically addressing the balance between artistic criticism and social commentary, the art of observing a mutating linearity from the haute couture to basic street style and the importance of a running dialogue between fashion history and fashion prophecy. Elyssa Dimant has contributed to publications such as Vogue, Zink and CITY Magazine, for which she is a regular fashion columnist. She co-curated the exhibition “WILD: Fashion Untamed” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and co-authored the accompanying catalog of the same name (Yale University Press, 2004). Presented by the MFA Design Criticism Department |
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Les Grands Magasins and the Petite Magazine: Notes on Arts Journalism Thursday, November 6, 7pm 209 East 23 Street, 3rd–floor Amphitheater Panelists: Sina Najafi, editor in chief, Cabinet; Betsy Sussler, editor in chief, BOMB Magazine; Walter Robinson, editor in chief, artnet.com; Dieter von Graffenried, publisher, Parkett How do art magazines see themselves in the larger context of contemporary art? Warhol himself merged the department store and the museum—he even had his own magazine. How does the art magazine fit into a post-Warholian ongoing drama of production and consumption? The panelists will discuss: the mission of the art magazine; editorial processes; the role of advertising; audience outreach; and their publications’ relationships to the larger glossies. Moderated by Suzanne Anker, chair, BFA Fine Arts Department John von Bergen US-born, Berlin-based artist John von Bergen, an SVA alumnus, works primarily in sculpture, installation, and works on paper. His work has been exhibited in various galleries and venues throughout Europe, including Halle 14 in Leipzig, Wilhelm Hack Museum in Ludwigshafen, Kunstraum Innsbruck in Austria and The Brno House of Art in the Czech Republic. In 2007, von Bergen presented a solo exhibition, “THE ITCH,” at Galerie Lena Bruening in Berlin, and organized the screening series “Trans Video Express: Recent Video Art from Germany,” at Sara Meltzer Gallery in New York. Presented by the BFA Fine Arts Department Carol Becker As forces for social change, both art and design have storied pasts and intriguing futures. Professor Becker will discuss the relationship between the disciplines of art and design, their intrinsic values and how their significance has been overlapping and colliding in the last decade around the shared interest in sustainability, the urgencies of the planet and other pressing contemporary issues. Carol Becker is professor of the arts and dean of the School of the Arts at Columbia University. She is the author of several books, including The Invisible Drama: Women and the Anxiety of Change (Scribner, 1987), Zones of Contention: Essays on Art, Institutions and Anxiety (SUNY Press, 1996), Surpassing the Spectacle: Global Transformations and the Changing Politics of Art (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), and the forthcoming collection of essays Thinking in Place: Art, Action, and Cultural Production. Presented by the MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department James Hyde Known for his imaginative use of materials, such as beach-chair webbing and illuminated Plexiglas, Brooklyn-based artist James Hyde focuses on the perceptual condition of objects. His explorations over the past two decades have taken him from nonrepresentational fresco paintings on Styrofoam to innovative furniture making, as seen in the exhibition “Tracking and Tracing: Contemporary Acquisitions, 2000-2005” at the San Diego Museum of Art. Hyde has been the subject of many solo exhibitions nationwide and his work is included in the permanent collections of the Guggenheim Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Denver Art Museum, among others. Presented by the BFA Fine Arts and Visual and Critical Studies Departments Eugenia Bell A New York-based writer and critic, Eugenia Bell will discuss the role of design and architecture coverage in art magazines, and speak to the challenges and rewards of commissioning and writing on design and architecture for the art press. Bell is the design editor of Frieze magazine, where she writes and commissions articles on design and architecture. Her experience in writing and publishing also includes work for the Princeton Architectural Press, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Walker Art Center and the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Presented by the MFA Design Criticism Department Byron Kim Byron Kim garnered international recognition for his contribution to the 1993 Whitney Biennial, Synecdoche, Presented by the BFA Fine Arts and Visual and Critical Studies Departments Pat Kirkham A design and cultural historian looks at legendary design duos Ray and Charles Eames and Elaine and Saul Bass. Pat Kirkham has written widely on design, gender and film. Her publications include: The Gendered Object (Manchester University Press, 1996); Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century (The MIT Press, 1998); Me Jane: Masculinity, Movies and Women (Palgrave Macmillan, 1995); and Women Designers in the USA, 1900-2000: Diversity and Difference (Yale University Press, 2002), the catalog for the acclaimed exhibition that she curated in 2000. She recently completed a book on the work of graphic designer and filmmaker Saul Bass which includes a study of his short films made in collaboration with his wife Elaine. Kirkham is a professor of design history and cultural studies at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in Decorative Arts, Design and Culture in New York. Presented by the MFA Design Criticism Department W.J.T. Mitchell Scholar and theorist of media, art and literature W.J.T. Mitchell will discuss the work of contemporary French philosopher Jacques Rancière, author of The Future of the Image (Verso, 2007). Rancière’s writings on the relationship between contemporary art and politics have been the subject of much recent attention in the art world. Mitchell is a well-known figure in the fields of visual culture and iconology, particularly for his work on the relations of visual and verbal representations in the context of social and political issues. He is a professor of English and art history at the University of Chicago, the editor of the interdisciplinary journal Critical Inquiry and the author of numerous publications, including What Do Pictures Want? (University of Chicago Press, 2005), Art and the Public Sphere (University of Chicago Press, 1993) and Landscape and Power (University of Chicago Press, 1994). Presented by the MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department Allan Chochinov A frequent lecturer on the impact of design on contemporary culture, Allan Chochinov is a partner of Core77, a New York-based design network serving a global community of designers and design enthusiasts. He is editor in chief of Core77.com, a widely-read Web site focusing on product design; Coroflot.com, a job and portfolio site serving designers and employers across all design disciplines; and Designdirectory.com, an online database linking design firms with corporations seeking strategic design services. Chochinov teaches in the graduate departments of Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts. Presented by the MFA Design Criticism Department |
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