Spring 2010 Session
April 9 - 10, 2010

Generations

In the history of contemporary art the term “generation” is usually temporal and usually refers to a group of individuals. It tends to imply shared qualities and beliefs. It also suggests that the work of the artists associated with a particular generation represent the conditions of their moment. Thus we have the Sixties Generation, the Pictures Generation, Generation X, as well as the various labels ascribed to artistic movements (Minimalism, Conceptualism, Installation Art, etc.), which are also used to classify generational attributes and impulses. Such designations are complicated, however, given the rapid turnover of generations and their tendency to overlap. How do these temporal and aesthetic markers come about? Are they still relevant today, and do ideas concerning generations jibe with current thoughts about “The Contemporary”—itself perhaps a generational term? How do notions of generational time—which might be considered somewhat slow—relate to the accelerated rate of change in our present moment? Finally, to what extent can we say that critics and art historians themselves belong to different generations?

Seminar schedule:

Friday, April 9
2:00 pm. Welcome
2:30 pm. Contemporary Art’s Generations (public session)
5:00 pm. Public reception

Saturday, April 10
10:00 am. Generations of Contemporary Criticism (participants only)
12:30 pm. Break for lunch
2:00 pm. Young Art: Younger than Jesus (participants only)
4:30 pm. Closing tea

Spring 2009 Session
April 24 - 25, 2009

Formalism and Contemporary Art

Much of contemporary art has been understood to reject the formalist critical principles that helped to animate modernism’s discourse and production. But formalism quietly—or otherwise—continues to shade much of our thinking about artistic practice. It is salient as much in the foundations of poststructuralist art history as in the resurgent aestheticism of recent painting and photography. And concerns over composition, flatness, and artistic mode still worry us, if not in the way they did fifty years ago. This CATT seminar brings together specialists with a variety of views on the relevance and meaning of formalism now.

Spring 2008 Session
April 11 - 12, 2008

Resistance in Contemporary Art

Resistance seems to us a key term with which to commence these meetings. For over thirty years now, the notion of resistance has been central to contemporary art discourse, with many writers prizing art for its critique of systems of power. But today we must consider afresh how well this model serves us: the art world is giddy with money, even as the geopolitical situation becomes more precarious. The very term resistance seems at once ubiquitous and ill-defined. Has it lost all political and conceptual force? Or might it still provide a tenable model of artistic and critical agency? How might the notion be modified to fit our time? Resistance presupposes a dialectic between the powerful and the weak: is this framework still useful, and, if so, how can we glean further insights? Finally, the emplottment of resistance as a form of theory – and praxis – is at times devoid of self-reflexivity. What are the consequences of holding a resistant position? How does self-criticality alter the use and belief in resistance?

Session 1. Resistance or Complicity: A Viable Model?

Session 2. Curators, Critics, Art Historians and the Market

Session 3. The Whitney Biennial, 2008