Academic Sessions: Southampton 1999
Problems of Periodisation in Art History
Convenors:
Dr Jonathan Harris (Keele University), Dr Paul Barlow (University of Northumbria), Dr Colin Trodd (University of Sunderland), c/o Department of Visual Arts, Keele University, Staffordshire ST5 5BG. Tel: (01260) 277899.
The problem of periodicity is central to art history: it generates both conceptual possibilities and blockages. What functions, values and qualities are inscribed into readings of change, development and rupture? How are the spaces between different cultural moments framed and formalised? How do particular discursive patterns emerge as classical models for art historical enquiry? What is judged or governed in those readings that endow a particular object, style or school with certain systems of meaning?
This strand will explore these issues. While examining the way in which art history classifies, evaluates and organises the relations between objects and processes, the strand also seeks to engender critical readings of the roles played by cultural institutions in the social and discursive life of artefects. As one of our main aims is to consider how the authority of a movement or style is articulated in specific ways of writing, thinking or organising art, we intend to reassess those legitimating narratives that block, resist or overlook specific forms of making art. By dealing with the cultural traffic in conceptualisations of change, inheritance and progression, we also wish to explore how such distinctions are generated and sustained.
Dr Jonathan Harris (Keele University), Dr Paul Barlow (University of Northumbria), Dr Colin Trodd (University of Sunderland), c/o Department of Visual Arts, Keele University, Staffordshire ST5 5BG. Tel: (01260) 277899.
The problem of periodicity is central to art history: it generates both conceptual possibilities and blockages. What functions, values and qualities are inscribed into readings of change, development and rupture? How are the spaces between different cultural moments framed and formalised? How do particular discursive patterns emerge as classical models for art historical enquiry? What is judged or governed in those readings that endow a particular object, style or school with certain systems of meaning?
This strand will explore these issues. While examining the way in which art history classifies, evaluates and organises the relations between objects and processes, the strand also seeks to engender critical readings of the roles played by cultural institutions in the social and discursive life of artefects. As one of our main aims is to consider how the authority of a movement or style is articulated in specific ways of writing, thinking or organising art, we intend to reassess those legitimating narratives that block, resist or overlook specific forms of making art. By dealing with the cultural traffic in conceptualisations of change, inheritance and progression, we also wish to explore how such distinctions are generated and sustained.
- Jonathan Harris (University of Keele) Marxist Theory and Periodisation in Arnold Hauser's The Social History of Art
- Neil Sharp (London) The History of Art Education as the Social History of Art? Nikolaus Pevsner's Academies of Art: Past and Present
- Eleanor Tollfree (University of Bristol/Victoria and Albert Museum) Caught Within a Tradition: Art History's Problem with Napoleonic Art
- Thomas A. Dowson (University of Southampton) Rock Art & History: From Lascaux to the Louvre
- David Peters Corbett (University of York) Periodisation in British Art after 1850
- Colin Trodd (University of Sunderland) Writing Painting: Values, Identities and National School Discourses in Victorian Culture
- Paul Barlow (University of Northumbria) Just What is it that Makes the Avant-Garde so Different, so Appealing? Manet, Millais and the Moment of Modernity
- Valerie Webb (Kingston University) 'Temporary residence' in the London Art World: a Reconsideration of Artistic Identity and Historical Positioning of the Camden Town Group
- Joanne Morra (University College London) Reciprocal Alliances: The Case of Bruegel and Rauschenberg