Back to Opportunities

CFP: CAA 2018 – A Second Talent: Art Historians Making Art

CFP: CAA 2018 - A Second Talent: Art Historians Making Art

Session Chair: S. Hollis Clayson (shc@northwestern.edu)

The material turn has intensified the call for hands-on studio training for art history students at all levels. It has also increased the pressure on art museums to include highly technologized object analysis in exhibitions. A SECOND TALENT seeks contributions from art-making art historians who will scrutinize the connections between their immersion in a medium (making) and the complex particularities of interpretation (talking and writing). The session seeks papers that will actively query and pinpoint the value for art history of specialized artifact knowledge, focusing specifically upon the benefits of literal engagement in the production of art. Once an art historian (young or old) learns the technical details of an art process and gets her hands dirty by entering the absorptive sphere of art-making, what is the effect on her practice of art history? Does immersion in art process change art historical interpretation? Should it? It is hoped that contributors will question the self-sufficiency of materiality through the lens of their own experiences of the links between matter and meaning. A consideration of making as research would be welcome. Papers are expected to combine a self-aware narrative (“here’s my art”) with an interrogation of the hermeneutic gains or losses caused by the acquisition of a second talent.

Please send an abstract of no more than 250 words and a shortened CV to the session chair by August 14, 2017.
[ssba]

Leave a Reply