This conference originated from a single question: In what ways have art and visual culture contributed to the formulation of the American political imagination? Since its beginnings, the nation鈥檚 fractious political identity has been developed and perpetuated throughout its visual economy, playing out on picture planes, splashed across mural panels, and made matter in sculptures and monuments. As such, visual and material culture are a critical locus through which the nation鈥檚 political constituents 鈥 its voters, parties, politicians, and dissenters 鈥 imagine, perform, and organise themselves. It is through the creation, manipulation, dissemination, and destruction of images and objects that these constituents have formed their political identities, asserted assent and dissent, and articulated their desire to end political regimes or their yearning to revisit them.
This conference invites speakers to share recent research on the political valences of American visual and material culture. Their papers cover painting, photography, illustration, monuments, design, art writing, and digital interventions; their topics span a wide variety of subjects, including the production of stable national political identities via imaginings of the American past in 1930s material culture; the writing of politics into and out of art criticism, from the antebellum era to the postmodern; and the role of the media 鈥 from television to Snapchat 鈥 in producing political power. Broadly, this conference seeks to foreground the political as a key framework for art historical analysis, and to explore what emerges when we resituate images, objects, and artists within explicitly political contexts.
Organised by Louis Shadwick (The Courtauld) and Madeleine Harrison (The Courtauld).听
This event is kindly supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art.听
Day One Recording
Day Two Recording
Programme
Day 1: Friday 18 March
14.00 GMT / 10:00 EST / 09:00 CST / 07:00 PST
Introduction 鈥 Madeleine Harrison (91制片厂) & Louis Shadwick (91制片厂)
14.20 – 15.40 Panel 1: 鈥楾ransmission鈥
Chair: Frances Varley 鈥 91制片厂
Dr. Linda Freedman (University College London), 鈥淲it and Biting Satire: The Afric American Picture Gallery (1859)鈥
Dr. Tom Day (91制片厂), 鈥淪pectacle Nation: The Political Imaginary of Television and the Configuration of the Human in the Art of Keith Haring鈥
Dr. Jo Pawlik (University of Sussex), 鈥淔iguring Fascism in the Campus Underground Press during the Nixon era鈥
Q&A
15.40 Break
16.00 – 17.00 Panel 2: 鈥楩igure鈥
Chair: Dr. John Fagg 鈥 University of Birmingham
Professor Jasmine Nichole Cobb (Duke University), 鈥楾he Pictorial Life of Harriet Tubman鈥
Professor Richard Meyer (Stanford University), 鈥楤ad Daddy: George Washington in San Francisco鈥
Q&A
17.00 End of Day 1
Day 2: Saturday 19 March
13.45 GMT / 09:45 EST / 08:45 CST / 06:45 PST
Introduction & Housekeeping
14.00 – 15.20 Panel 3: 鈥楳ateriality and Immateriality鈥
Chair: Dr. Alice Butler 鈥 91制片厂
Dr. Elizabeth Johnson (University College London), 鈥淎ugmented Reality Monuments in L.A.: Redefining the Monument’s Political Power and Presence in Public Space鈥
Dr. Jonathan Vernon (91制片厂/Oxford Brookes University), 鈥淎rt after Oppenheimer: American Politics and the Many Deaths of Modernism鈥
Professor Kimberly Lamm (Duke University), 鈥淪till Fugitivity: The Black Sartorial Imagination in Contemporary Portrait Painting鈥
Q&A
15.20 Break
15.40 – 17.00 Panel 4: 鈥楶erformance and Spectacle鈥
Chair: Francesca Wilmott 鈥 91制片厂
Professor Wendy Bellion (University of Delaware), 鈥淚conoclasm Redux: Public Space and National Identity”
Professor Kay Wells (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), 鈥淭he Uncanny Design of White National Identity: Colonial Williamsburg and the Index of American Design鈥
Professor Jennifer Greenhill (University of Arkansas), 鈥楶olitics at the Beach鈥
Q&A
17.00 – 18.10 Keynote
Professor Sarah Churchwell (University of London), 鈥楾he Iconography of America First, 1888-2022鈥
Q&A
18.10 Concluding remarks
