Postwar Art Conference at the Haus der Kunst, Munich

Postw ar – Art between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945- 1965 Conference, 21-24 May, 2014, H aus der K unst, Munich

 May 21

Welcome Note, Okwui Enwezor, 6:00-6:30

Keynote 1, 6:30-7:15

Boris Groys, New York University, Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung, Karlsruhe, and Bauhaus University, Weimar, “The Thaw: Soviet and Eastern European Art before and after the Death of Stalin”

Opening Reception @ HDK

May 22

Registration, 8:00 onwards

Keynote 1, 9:30-10:15

Iftikhar Dadi, Cornell University, “Calligraphic Abstraction”

Panel 1: Non-Aligned Networks. 10:30-12:30

A “third” alternative to the bipolar politics of the Cold War, the Non-Aligned Movement generated a vast transcontinental political and ideological network that cut across Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America. Formed in 1961 under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and Sukarno of Indonesia, the Non- Aligned Movement included over thirty countries that did not subscribe to the Cold War’s seemingly hegemonic capitalist/socialist binary. Collectively, they represented more than half of the world’s population. While the political and economic resonances of the Non-Aligned Movement are by now well known, its art historical corollaries remain comparatively obscure. This panel examines the ways in which non-alignment may have exerted pressure on postwar aesthetic and ideological arrangements.

• Armin Medosch, Independent Scholar, Vienna, “Non-Aligned Modernism - The International Network and Art Movement New Tendencies (First Phase, 1961-1965)”
• Devika Singh, University of Cambridge, “Indian Artists and the Soviet Fine Arts Exhibition”
• Paula Barreiro Lopez, Université de Genève; Jacopo Galimberti, Independent Scholar, Berlin, “Southern Networks. The Alternative Modernism of the San Marino Biennale and the Convegno internazionale artisti, critici e studiosi d’arte”
• Amanda Katherine Rath, Goethe University, Frankfurt/Main, “Competing constructions of ‘Indonesian’ modern art and artistic identity in a politically fraught terrain, 1950-1959”

Lunch Break, 12:30-1:30

Panel 2: Ground Zero. 1:30-3:30

Hiroshima, August 6, 1945. Nagasaki, August 9, 1945. The apocalyptic imaginary invoked by the unprecedented devastation caused by the explosion of the atomic bomb accumulated into the image of the mushroom cloud and seeped into all aspects of cultural production. As such, the detonation of the atom bomb presents a fundamental rupture in the temporal, spatial, and political fabric of the postwar decades, resonances of which reverberated across the Atlantic and the Pacific. This panel brings to the foreground probing questions that triangulate ethics, ecology, and technological excess to examine dematerialization and void as artistic and aesthetic propositions in a post-atomic world.

• Majella Munro, Tate Research Centre: Asia-Pacific, London, “Nuclear Reactions: Towards a Critical Artistic Practice in Japan’s Long Postwar”
• Reiko Tomii, Independent Scholar, New York, “Matsuzawa Yutaka’s Art of Immaterialization: An Empty Gallery as an Apparatus”
• Tara McDowell, Monash University, Melbourne, “The Work of Salvage: Jess, the Atomic Bomb, and Allegory”
• Sohl Lee, University of Rochester,“Nam June Paik, Before the Pioneer of Video Art”

Coffee Break, 3:30-4:30

Panel 3: Refracted Tradition, Reconstituted Modernism. 4:30-6:30

The artistic practice and art historical discourses that emerged in the aftermath of the Second World War’s devastation were both diverse and dissonant. Through specific case studies, this panel thus examines the differing conceptions of artistic modernity that emerged in the Asia-Pacific region. The aim is to re-engage seemingly transparent and purportedly established art historical nomenclatures such as abstraction, realism, traditionalism, and modernism to examine the heterogeneities that both structured and delineated postwar modernism’s global itineraries.

• Lingling Amy Yao, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, “New Mural and Politics: A Case Study of the New Mural Campaign in Peixian in 1958”
• Patrick D. Flores, University of the Philippines, “War After War in Southeast Asia: Revisiting Church and State and the Emergence of the Modern Form”
• Terry Smith, University of Pittsburgh, “Antipodean Visions; Postwar Art in Australasia and the South Pacific”
• Ming Tiampo, Carleton University, Ottawa, “Remapping the Postwar City as International Event”

 Break, 6:30-6:40

Keynote 2, 6:40-7:30

Catherine David, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou “Title TBD”

May 23

Registration, 8:00 onwards

Keynote 1, 9:30-10:15

Walter Grasskamp, Akademie der Bildenden Künste, München, “Paolozzi in Post-War Paris: The Second American Invasion”

Panel 1: Concrete Visions, Transatlantic Worlds. 10:30-12:30

Adopting an approach that is both regionally specific and cross-culturally comparative, this panel situates the production and reception of Concretism within transatlantic networks that stretched from Paris to Buenos Aires, São Paulo to Munich. A focus on Latin America further brings to surface complex negotiations between the social and the aesthetic, offering critical perspectives on radical and intractable realignments of artistic centers and peripheries during the tumultuous decades following  the conclusion of the Second World War.

• Abigail McEwen, University of Maryland, College Park, “Cuba’s Concretos: The Constructivist Revolution”
• Federico Deambrosis, Politecnico di Milano, “Time, Space, Borders: A Possible Map of Concrete Art from an Argentinean Perspective”
• Susanne Neubauer, Freie Universität, Berlin, “Political Entanglements of Brazilian Modernism and its Reception in Postwar Germany, 1951– 1959”
• Gerardo Mosquera, Independent Curator, Havana and Madrid “Title TBD”

Lunch Break, 12:30-1:30

Panel 2: Nation(s) Seeking Form, 1:30-3:30

How might artistic and intellectual movements from the former colonies and peripheries impact our understanding of postwar modernism? Through specific case studies, this panel presents a social- historical and critical understanding of postwar aesthetic practices in Africa and the Middle East. In doing so, the panel repositions art historical debates on authenticity and derivativeness, questions West/non-West dichotomies, examines the porosity of purportedly national and ostensibly transnational aesthetic formations, and probes the fissures between nationalist and avant-garde constructions of culture.

• Sam Bardaouil, Art Reoriented and Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, “I See Wonderful Things! The Art and Liberty Group and Manifestations of Surrealism in Egypt 1939 – 1945”
• Nada Shabout, University of North Texas,“‘Enemy of the People’: The Baghdad Group of Modern Art”
• Chika Okeke-Agulu, Princeton University, “Uche Okeke, Ibrahim El Salahi, and Postcolonial Modernism in the 1960s”
• Burcu Dogramaci, Institut für Kunstgeschichte - LMU München, “A Look Back to the Future: Art in Turkey in the 1950s”

Coffee Break, 3:30-4:30

Panel 3: Form Matters. 4:30-6:30 @ Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, München

Traveling exhibitions and biennales not only formed an intrinsic part of postwar cultural diplomacy but also became potent sites for the display of ideology and politics. This, in turn, politicized formal aspects of art as conduits that made ideology and politics visible. Needless to say, form mattered. This panel examines the exhibition as a discursive site to explore the political aspects of postwar display cultures and art historical strategies.

• Dorothea Schöne, Kunsthaus Dahlem, Berlin, “Moderated Movements - Presenting German Modernism in America after 1945”
• Alessandro Del Puppo, Università degli Studi di Udine,“Formalists and Marxists. Renato Guttuso, Venice Biennale, and the Quest for Realism in Cold War Italy”
• Alessio Fransoni, Independent Scholar, Rome, “Optical, Kinetic, Programmed: The Short Season of the ‘Political Quality’ of the Art Object”
• Serge Guilbaut, University of British Columbia, “Colors of Utopia or Post-War Paris/New-York Dream of Universalism.” 

Break, 6:30-6:40

Keynote 2, 6:40-7:30

Mari Carmen Ramirez, International Center for the Arts of the Americas, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston “Title TBD”

Reception @ Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, München

May 24

Registration, 8:00 onwards

Keynote 1, 9:30-10:15

Alexandra Munroe, Guggenheim Museum “Title TBD”

Panel 1: Communism, Socialism, Aesthetics. 10:30-12:30

How did artists, critics, and intellectuals reinforce and bolster, negotiate, or even subvert and resist political ideologies? To what extent did the ideologies of Communism and Socialism discursively shape critical modernist practices? This panel attempts a cross-cultural examination of the aesthetics and political dimensions of artistic forms in communist and socialist contexts. Special attention is paid to both “official” and “dissident” forms of art practice in Eastern Europe, Soviet Russia, and China.

• Nikolas Drosos, Graduate Center, CUNY, NY and CASVA, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, “Re-form: Eastern Europe in 1956”
• Gregor H. Lersch, European University Viadrina Frankfurt/Oder, “Abstraktion, Realismus und die Durchlässigkeit des „Eisernen Vorhangs“ – Das Beispiel polnische Kunst in Bundesrepublik und DDR von 1955-1965” [Translation: “Abstraction, Realism and the Permeability of the ‘Iron Curtain’ based on the example of Polish Art in the FRG and GDR between 1955 and 1965”]
• Eva Forgacs, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, “Restoring Modernism 1945-1965: The Role of the New Left in Shaping the Narrative”
• Vivian Li, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, “The Creation and Definition of Artistic Value in Communist China”

Lunch Break, 12:30-2:30

Panel 2: New Practices in/of the Social. 2:30-4:30

The late 1950s and 1960s presents a turning point in artistic production, with a number of artists turning to mutable materials and pioneering an altered relationship with the social. The concluding panel turns to this crucial historical juncture to examine the theoretical and conceptual challenges that such practices presented for the strictures and closures of the art world, both during and beyond the postwar decades.

• Nicholas Cullinan, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, “Arte Povera: Against the ‘First World’”
• Midori Yamamura, Pratt Institute, New York, “‘Zero on Sea’: An International Crossroad of the Art of Active Social Engagement, 1955-1965”
• Lara Demori, University of Edinburgh, “Redefining Neo-avantgardes at the Margins: Manzoni and Oiticica’s Subversive Practice”
• Isobel Whitelegg, Nottingham Contemporary, London, "At the Crux of the Postwar - Collective Exhibitions at Signals London (1964-66)"

Concluding Notes, Okwui Enwezor

Closing Reception @ HDK