Call for papers deadline: Wednesday 31 July, 2024
Panel convenor: Gail Hastings
Art historian Bernard Smith contends that a past of unwritten yesterdays does not become history until a historian attempts to write what happened in it. Yet, to find oneself in “apocalyptic jitters” at the thought of writing contemporary art history is to misidentify the need, first, for dusk to fall before the owl of Minerva can spread its wings (Smith, 2007, p. 123). For Smith, in mind of G. W. F Hegel’s philosophy, not until an art-epoch ends does its tenets form a whole worthy of a historian’s attention. At odds, however, with this notion of our contemporary suspension of the present, is its simultaneous saturation with the philosophy of Giles Deleuze. Here the present, instead, eludes existence (e.g. see The Logic of Sense). The present, divided between the past and future to infinity, is at work this way in Smith’s reference to Claude Monet’s Haystack series of 1890-91. The painter’s brushstrokes race against the changing light to become “not so much a record of time present as a personal experience of time past” (Smith, 2007, p. 69). If, however, against this, one still holds for contemporary art’s dusk before its history can begin, then there is E. H. Gombrich to contend with. In 1977, Gombrich dubbed Hegel the father of art history. Then, advocated we free art history of Hegel.
The panel will comprise three 20 minute papers on these matters or the question: Is art history ending because we cannot make historical sense of contemporary art?
Reference
Smith, B. (2007). The formalesque: A guide to modern art and its history. Macmillan.
Propose a paperer the panel here.