Late last week, SVA sent out an announcement of the Spring 2012 schedule for Art in the First Person, an ongoing series of talks in which notable artists, critics and writers will examine a variety of topics, including their own works and the current state of the art world. This semester’s calendar includes a wide range of lectures, panel discussions, and other events sponsored by several SVA programs, including the MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department, the MPS Digital Photography Department, the BFA Fine Arts Department, and the MFA Photography, Video and Related Media Department.
As part of this semester’s schedule, our own BFA Visual & Critical Studies Department will be sponsoring five lectures dealing with artmaking, writing, art history, and art criticism. The first of the VCS-sponsored events for the semester will be a reading by poet Jeremy Sigler, to take place next Tuesday, January 24 at 6:30 p.m. in Room 101C at 133/141 West 21 Street. I will post a reminder of this event early next week.
Here are descriptions of all of the VCS-sponsored events in the Spring 2012 Art in the First Person lecture series, taken from the SVA event announcement:
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Tuesday, January 24, 6:30pm
Jeremy Sigler: A Reading of Selected Poetry
133/141 West 21 Street, Room 101C
Jeremy Sigler is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, including Crackpot Poet (Black Square Editions, 2010), Mallet Eyes (Left Hand Books, 2000) and To and To (Left Hand Books, 1998), as well as the digital book, Math. A senior editor at Parkett and a contributor to The Brooklyn Rail, Sigler was recently awarded a Lannan Foundation residency in Marfa, Texas. He is a lecturer in the sculpture department at Yale University.
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Thursday, February 16, 7pm
The Case for Appropriation:
A Panel Moderated by Joy Garnett
SVA Theatre, 333 West 23 Street
Artist and NEWSgrist blogger Joy Garnett is joined in conversation by curator Christopher Phillips, art historian and attorney Virginia Rutledge, critic and curator Robert Storr and artist Oliver Wasow to discuss the creative methods and ideas associated with appropriation art today, as issues of appropriation enter the broader public and legal debate and copyright infringement lawsuits between artists are on the rise. The panelists will discuss why appropriation and other forms of visual referencing are important elements in art making and how to defend these practices in and beyond the courtroom.
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Tuesday, February 28, 7pm
Fixing Shadows: Milagros de la Torre
in Conversation with Charles Traub
and Carla Stellweg
SVA Theatre, 333 West 23 Street
In conjunction with the exhibition “Observed: Milagros de la Torre” on view at the Americas Society Gallery, Peruvian artist Milagros de la Torre will discuss the many facets of her research. She will be joined in conversation by photographer Charles Traub, chair of the MFA Photography, Video and Related Media Department at SVA, and art historian and curator Carla Stellweg, faculty member in the Art History program at SVA. De la Torre is one of the foremost conceptual photographers active today. Her images often project an eerie beauty and visual seduction that precedes their thoughtful and at times haunting proposal. “Observed: Milagros de la Torre” is on view at Americas Society Gallery, 680 Park Avenue, February 8 – April 14.
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Monday, April 2, 7pm
The Gertrude Stein Paradox: Michèle Cone heads a panel of renowned Stein scholars
SVA Theatre, 333 West 23 Street
Coinciding with the exhibition “The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso and the Parisian Avant-Garde” on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, historian and SVA faculty member Michèle C. Cone will lead a roundtable discussion on the sometimes problematic and mercurial figure of Gertrude Stein as a writer, thinker and patron of the arts. Dr. Cone will be joined by Mary Ann Caws, distinguished professor of English, French and comparative literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York; Catharine Stimpson, professor and dean emerita of the Graduate School of Arts and Science at New York University; and Barbara Will, professor of English at Dartmouth College. With each panelist weighing in on a particular aspect of what Dr. Cone calls the “Stein Paradox,” the discussion will range from Stein’s early embrace of Picasso and Gris and her own cubist writings to her later collecting of works by theater designer neo-Romantics, her absorption in detective stories and her attraction to the fascist regime of Marshal Pétain during WWII.
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Tuesday, April 17, 7pm
Yes, You Don’t Know Me—Susan Hefuna in Conversation with Bettina Mathes
SVA Theatre, 333 West 23 Street
If truth is never naked and facts are always dressing up, what does it mean to be an expert? If to find ourselves we must get lost, what do the patterns, grids and notations we invent to navigate our inner and outer worlds look like? If space is a corporeal map, where do we draw the lines? Author and cultural critic Bettina Mathes will talk with German-Egyptian artist Susan Hefuna about disguise and dis/orientation as formal strategies and about Hefuna’s collaboration with choreographer Luca Veggetti for the dance performance “point-move-line” at The Drawing Center.
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As the semester progresses, I will post additional updates and announcements on each of the events listed above. I will also be attending some of the lectures and writing blog posts about them, and asking some of the VCS students who will be attending for their responses.
For more information about the events above and listings for the other entries in the Spring 2012 Art in the First Person Lecture series, visit its SVA website. The page includes a full schedule of all of the talks in the series, with locations, dates and times, and information on how to sign up to receive SVA’s weekly e-newsletter and monthly calendar.
(Top image: Susan Bee, Recalculating, 2010, oil on linen, 16 x 20 inches, from the collection of Richard Deming & Nancy Ku.)
