Soundings from the Painterly Pacific - Symposium feat. Chriscinda Henry, Jeff Moser, and Angela Vanhaelen
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SOUNDINGS FROM THE PAINTERLY PACIFICĀ - A SYMPOSIUM FEATURING CHRISCINDA HENRY, JEFF MOSER AND ANGELA VANHAELEN (ALL AHCS)
APRIL 12, 2013
ARTS BUILDING, Rm 160, MCGILL
COFFEE AT 9:45, PAPERS 10 AM-12:30 PM, DISCUSSION OVER LUNCH (PROVIDED BY WOODLAND SEA)
āWhat do artists do during wars? ā¦ Is direct confrontation with conflict the only way for art to take war in?ā So asks Svetlana Alpers in The Vexations of Art (2005). Noting the marginal place of war in seventeenth century Dutch art, Alpers appeals to an oblique engagement with conflict that she calls āthe painterly pacific.ā Fluid and suggestive, Alpersās phrase positively invites further thinking. In dialogue with Media@ŗ«¹śĀćĪčās 2012-3 theme of āMedia, War and Conflict,ā this symposium uses Alpersās phrase as prompt for considering ways in which artists, beholders and even objects variously displace or placidly conceal violence. Borrowing our title from Soundings from the Atlantic, Oliver Wendell Holmesās classic meditation on photography, the symposium poses the painterly pacific between mood and place, between medium and liquid geography.
Please RSVP (matthew.hunter3 [at] mcgill.ca) if you wish to partake in the (delicious) lunch.