Vienna Art Week: Tracking the Routes of Modernism

Samstag, 24. November 2018 - 15:00 Uhr

Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien
Ort: mumok

Krishna Reddy hinter seiner Skulptur, St. Margarethen, Römersteinbruch, Kalksandstein, 1962, Symposion Europäischer Bildhauer, Sebastian Prantl, Obmann, Courtesy: Eva Choung-Fux Krishna Reddy hinter seiner Skulptur, St. Margarethen, Römersteinbruch, Kalksandstein, 1962, Symposion Europäischer Bildhauer, Sebastian Prantl, Obmann, Courtesy: Eva Choung-Fux
Artistic mobility, protagonists, platforms, networks
Internationale Konferenz und Film-Screening im Rahmen der Vienna Art Week 2018

Sprache: Englisch

Saturday, November 24
mumok cinema, Museumsquartier, 1070 Vienna

15:00 Welcome: Matthias Michalka
Introduction: Simone Wille

15:30
Maurita Poole: Hale Woodruff and the Southland
Around 1936, in the midst of the Great Depression, the artist Hale Woodruff completed an oil painting entitled Southland. A depiction of environmental degradation, the work addressed an issue greatly affecting the lives of people residing in rural areas in the South and Midwest of the United States. It is unknown whether Southland was created before, during, or after the artist’s apprenticeship with Diego Rivera in Mexico during the summer of 1936. While stylistically this painting does not share an affinity with Rivera’s work, it includes a political undertone akin to works within the Mexican muralist and
social realist traditions. Here, a critical emphasis is placed on how this fulcrum piece draws upon the artist’s intimate understanding of European Modernisms, an awareness of the African American literary tradition, and the latest trends within the field of American art.

Maurita N. Poole, Ph.D. is director and curator at Clark Atlanta University Art Museum (formerly Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries). As a curator, she has developed exhibitions that highlight the work of artists of African descent. Her current research interest is the role of transnational engagement on the development of African American art.

16:15
Christian Kravagna: The Art of Liberation: Viktor Löwenfeld and African American Modernism
When the Museum of Modern Art in New York opened its first group show of African American artists in 1943, the exhibition was curated by Austrian art educator Viktor Löwenfeld. Young Negro Art displayed the works of eight students from the fine arts class at Hampton Institute established by Löwenfeld shortly after his appointment at the Black College in Virginia. How did it come that an Austrian Jew who fled Nazi-Austria in 1938 would play a major part in the formation of African American modern art? As a case study in transmodern art history, this paper explores the circumstances of the MoMA exhibition and discusses the peculiar position of a Jewish refugee in the educational system of the racially
segregated South by tracing the influence of Löwenfeld’s approach to art and race on artists like John Biggers and Elizabeth Catlett.

Christian Kravagna is professor of Postcolonial Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. His studies in the art history of contact and transcultural thinking have been published in the book Transmoderne: Eine Kunstgeschichte
des Kontakts (Berlin 2017). In 2013 he co-edited the book Transcultural Modernisms.

Q&A moderated by Eva Kernbauer

17:00–17:30 Coffee break

17:30
Gabriele Genge and Angela Stercken: Frank Bowling in Dakar 1966: Framings of an (im-) possible artistic exchange

When the British-Guyanese artist Frank Bowling won the Grand Prize for Contemporary Arts with his painting Big Bird at the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar in 1966, this event wasn’t even brought up in the classical narratives of modernism: Clearly, the artist is known for his challenging the New York School by the painting Who’s Afraid of Barney Newman (1968), but little is known about the circumstances of his contribution for Dakar, where one of the most prominent artists of the Art School of Dakar, the artist Iba N’Diaye, curated the exposition of contemporary art under the title
Tendances et confrontations. This case seems quite typical for the lacks that art history of modernism has to deal with, and it provides an interesting starting point for our investigation of transcultural contacts and their impediments.

Gabriele Genge is professor and chairholder of Art History and Art Theory at the University Duisburg-Essen (Germany). Researches are focused on postcolonialism, sacrality and migration. Among recent publications: Art History and Fetishism Abroad: Global Shiftings in Media and Methods (co-ed. A. Stercken, 2014). Angela Stercken is an art historian, writer and curator. She held a deputy professorship for contemporary art history at the University of Essen. Among her books is Art History and Fetishism Abroad: Global Shiftings in Media and Methods, (co-ed. G. Genge, 2014). Her studies on artistic exchanges in contemporary African and African American art within the research project The Anachronic and the Present: Aesthetic perception and artistic concepts of temporality in the Black Atlantic (DFG-SPP 1688) will be published in 2020.

Q&A moderated by Eva Kernbauer and Christian Kravagna

18:15–18:45 Break/Snacks

18:45
Marta Edith Holecková and Tereza Stejskalová Forgotten Internationalism: Cultural Difference in 1960’s Czechoslovak Film
Film screening and conversation
The focus of Czechoslovak foreign policy on Africa, Asia and Latin America took various forms after the World War II. Apart from economic and military cooperation, a growing number of university scholarships were offered to students from Third World countries coming to Czechoslovakia. The University of 17th November, a special institution for foreign students, was founded in 1961. As a result, the Czechoslovakian society was for the first time confronted with
growing numbers of people coming from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The coexistence of foreign students and Czechoslovak society was not without problems but these were not discussed publicly. Films produced by students of the Film Academy in Prague (FAMU) during the 1960s, however, represent a unique document, a medium by way of which both Czechoslovak and foreign students tackled the issue.

Marta Edith Holecková is a young postdoctoral researcher. Her field of study is the history of Czechoslovak catholic dissent, contemporary history of the Czechoslovak universities and ties established between Czechoslovak scientists and the Global South during The Cold War.

Tereza Stejskalová is a curator working for tranzit.cz and associate professor of art theory at the Film Academy in Prague. Her recent projects include Biafra of Spirit. Third World Students in Czechoslovakia (National Gallery in Prague, 2017; tranzit.sk, Bratislava, 2016).

Termin

Uhu Diskurs
Konferenz, Kunstgeschichte, Globalisierung
Samstag, 24.11.2018 15:00
Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien

Location:
mumok
Museumsplatz 1
1070 Wien
kino
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