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Beyond Boundaries: A Weekend with the Bareiss Collection **

(last revised 29 October 2002)

 

 

 

 

Friday, February 28, 2003

“Text in Contemporary Art”

Panel Discussion

 

 

3:30 - 5:30 pm                         Doermann Theatre, University of Toledo, Bancroft Campus

 

                        Welcome and Introductions -- Julie Mellby, Mysoon Rizk

 

                        Panel Discussion on “Text in Contemporary Art” -- Holland Cotter, Jonathan Fineberg, Joseph Kosuth, Carrie Mae Weems , Xu Bing, and Buzz Spector, who will moderate

 

                        Questions and Comments from audience

 

 

6:00 - 7:30 pm                         Green Room, Toledo Museum of Art, public reception for Beyond Boundaries speakers and audience

 

                        Splendid Pages Exhibition and Toledo Museum open until 10:00 pm

 

 

 

 

Saturday, March 1, 2003

“Symbolism to Surrealism”

Symposium

 

 

9:30 - 12:30 pm            McMaster Family Center for Lifelong Learning, Toledo-Lucas County

2:00 - 5:00 pm                                     Public Library

 

                        Opening Remarks -- Joel Lipman, Mysoon Rizk

 

                        Morning and Afternoon Sessions of Talks, followed by opportunities for audience questions & comments  -- Frédéric Canovas, Mary Ann Caws, Friederike Emonds, Günter Klabes, Todd Sanders, and Pamela Genova, who will also moderate

 

12:30 - 2:00 pm            Break for Lunch at Public Library and in downtown Toledo

 

 

 

 

** Co-sponsored by the Departments of Art, English, and Foreign Languages (College of Arts and Sciences, University of Toledo) in collaboration with the Toledo Museum of Art, and its exhibition Splendid Pages: The Molly and Walter Bareiss Collection of Modern Illustrated Books (14 February - 11 May 2003), and with support from UT Foundation’s Program for Academic Excellence along with the

Ohio Humanities Council, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

 

 

For more information please contact Mysoon Rizk at 419-530-8324 (or [log in to unmask])

Beyond Boundaries: A Weekend with the Bareiss Collection

about the PROGRAM & speakers

(short version / last revised 29 October 2002)

Overview of Program

            A University of Toledo (UT) symposium sponsored by the Departments of Art, English, and Foreign Languages, “Beyond Boundaries: A Weekend with the Bareiss Collection” will complement the Toledo Museum of Art (TMA) exhibition, Splendid Pages: The Molly and Walter Bareiss Collection of Modern Illustrated Books. While Splendid Pages will run from February 14 to May 11, 2003, “Beyond Boundaries” will focus on the days of February 28 and March 1, 2003, with the goal of enriching public appreciation of the works on view by bringing artists, poets, critics, and scholars together for a weekend. In recognition of the project’s interdisciplinary focus and accent on outreach, this UT symposium has  received the support of substantial awards from both the UT Foundation’s Program for Academic Excellence and the Ohio Humanities Council, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. All events will be free and open to the general public at public sites.

            On the afternoon of Friday, February 28, at UT’s Bancroft Campus (Doermann Theatre), a panel discussion on “Text in Contemporary Art” will engage Holland Cotter (New York Times), Jonathan Fineberg (University of Illinois), Joseph Kosuth (Rome, Italy), Buzz Spector (Cornell University), Carrie Mae Weems (Syracuse, New York), and Xu Bing (New York, NY). Throughout the next day, on Saturday, March 1, at the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library’s downtown branch (McMaster Center), a symposium on “Symbolism to Surrealism” will feature Frédéric Canovas (Arizona State University), Mary Ann Caws (Graduate School, CUNY-NY), Friederike Emonds (UT), Pamela Genova (University of Oklahoma), Günter Klabes (Vassar College), and Todd Sanders (Pittsburgh, PA).

            “Beyond Boundaries” speakers will address how the charged relationships between word and image inform us about a particular historical origin. While analyzing dynamic roles played by poets and theorists, artists and musicians, panelists will address the degree to which art changes and is changed by both readers and social contexts. Is the art of a period “in sync” with the literature? How can one compare visual with textual styles? Are there disjunctions between literary movements and visual arts variants? What are the effects of these disjunctions in the reading of the composite text? Moreover, how does early modernism’s vocal investment in immediacy and presence, the “here and now” or the new and revolutionary, compare with current obsessions with notions of reality? Finally, what does it mean to be a reader, especially in today’s Information Age?

            No admission or registration fee will be charged for any event. Following Friday’s event, moreover, the TMA, which remains open throughout the evening, will host a free and public reception for audience and speakers with the opportunity to examine Splendid Pages firsthand, although audience members interested in attending the exhibition itself will be required to pay a special exhibition admissions charge of $5.

“Text in Contemporary Art” Panel Discussants (3:30 - 5:30 pm, Friday, February 28)

            Born in Chicago in 1948, sculptor, book artist, critic, and art theorist Buzz Spector (Cornell University), who will moderate the Friday panel discussion, is one of the nation’s premier contemporary artists who makes use of the book as an expressive medium and is currently Chair of Cornell’s Department of Art. He has examined the book from numerous angles -- as aesthetic object, text, act, social condition, political moment, and as a psychologically, even erotically charged, entity. His works have shown in the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

            Born in Toledo in 1945, Joseph Kosuth (Rome, Italy) attended the Toledo Museum School of Design from 1955 to 1962. After a year in Cleveland, and travel in Europe and northern Africa, he moved to New York . He has served as visiting professor and guest lecturer at various institutions, including School of the Visual Arts, since 1968, and is currently Professor at the Kunstakademie Munich. He is one of the pioneers of Conceptual Art and installation art, initiating language based works and appropriation strategies in the 1960s. His work has consistently explored the production and role of language and meaning within art. His nearly thirty year inquiry into the relation of language to art has appeared in five Documenta(s) and four Venice Biennale(s), one of which was presented in the Hungarian Pavilion (1993).

            Photographer and installation artist Carrie Mae Weems  (Syracuse, New York) was born in Portland, Oregon in 1953. By the time she completed an MFA in 1984 from the University of California, San Diego, she had already arrived at the practice of working in series, combining image with text, as exemplified by her best known and highly regarded Kitchen Table Series of 1990. Weems has exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally, including in the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale of 1997, in South Africa, and the 1998 Biennale of Contemporary Art in Dakar, Senegal. Since the early 1980s, she has held numerous artist residencies and teaching positions, most recently as Visiting Professor at both Harvard University and Williams College.

            Calligrapher, printmaker, and installation artist Xu Bing (New York, NY) was born in Sichuan Province, People’s Republic of China, in 1955, and earned an MFA in 1987 from the prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. One of his first major works, Book from the Sky, featuring a whimsical, invented script he derived from Chinese characters, caused an uproar and led the government to censor the project, shortly after which the artist emigrated to the U.S. His work has been exhibited widely, throughout both hemispheres, and he recently received a MacArthur Award. Especially interested in relationships between language and power, he underscores the critical limits of language systems as well as the extent to which national identities and ideologies are embedded in language and culture.

            Providing a counterpoint to the several artists present, critic Holland Cotter has served as full-time staff writer for The New York Times since 1997. Like Cotter, Jonathan Fineberg (University of Illinois) will offer a critical vantage. Professor of Art History and University Scholar, he has curated major exhibitions and published widely on modern and contemporary art.

“Symbolism to Surrealism” Symposium Speakers (9:30 - 5:00 pm, Saturday, March 1)

            Pamela Genova (University of Oklahoma), who, in addition to presenting, will moderate the Saturday symposium, serves as Associate Professor of French in the Department of Modern Languages and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Genova has published two books, on André Gide and on Symbolist journals, along with many articles concerned with collaborations between poets and artists, for example, Guillaume Apollinaire and Pablo Picasso. She is currently engaged in writing a new manuscript on Japonisme, specifically focusing on the relationship between visual art and the poetics of French decadence.

            Frédéric Canovas (Arizona State University), Associate Professor of French, has written books, articles, and other scholarly work about such figures as J.-K. Huysmans, Maurice Denis, the Nabis, André Gide, René Crevel, Paul Valéry, and Jean Cocteau -- in the case of the latter, regarding the interaction between his texts and illustrations -- as well as with connections between dreams and literature. His next book is about the relationship between Gide and Denis (1892-1900). As a Gide scholar and author of a forthcoming book on French illustrated books, he will speak about Maurice Denis’ book illustrations.

            Mary Ann Caws (Graduate School, CUNY-NY) is Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature and Co-Director of the Henri Peyre French Institute. She is the author, editor, and translator of over forty books in the fields of poetry and the avant-garde, the Surrealist movement in particular. Her works include The Surrealist Look: An Erotics of Encounter, The Surrealist Painters and Poets, and, most recently, Manifesto: A Century of Isms -- an anthology featuring over two hundred artistic and cultural examples of expressive discursive vehicles used to change and reform not only aesthetics but also society since 1885.

            Friederike Emonds (UT) is Associate Professor of German in the Department of Foreign Languages. Many of her recent publications and much of her scholarship have dealt with women and wartime, a topic she was invited to address in relation to Afghani women in the international press. She will be speaking about the work of Surrealist artists Unica Zürn and Hans Bellmer.

            Günter Klabes (Vassar College), Associate Professor of German Studies, has served as Chair of the German Department since 1983 and Director of the Vassar Summer Program in Münster, Germany, since 1975. His academic and research interests lie in German and English Romanticism, Turn-of-the-Century Literature and Culture, German Expressionism and Dada.

            Poet, book designer, and book collector Todd Sanders (Pittsburgh, PA) completed a B.A. in architecture with a minor in poetry at Carnegie Mellon University in 1992, and currently serves as Director for Air and Nothingness Press. He has translated several works of French Surrealist poet Robert Desnos and has published his own collections of poetry. His multi-media education site with biographical information and sample texts on major French literary figures of the 20th century won the 2000 Best American Web Site about French Culture, presented by the French Cultural Ministry (http:www.kalin.lm.com/author.html).