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Afternoon panel 2; “New Practices in /of the Social and Concluding Notes of the Conference by Okwui Enwezor

The late 1950s and 1960s present a turning point in artistic production, with a number of artistic experimenting with mutable materials and pioneering an altered relationship with the social. The concluding panel turns to this crucial historical juncture to examine the theoretical and conceptual challenge that such practices presented for the  strictures and closures of the art world, both during and beyond the postwar decades.

panelists: Nicholas Cullinan, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, “USA;Arte Povera; Against the ‘First World’; Midori Yamamura, Pratt Institute, New York, “USA: Zero on  Sea”; An International Crossroad for the Art of active Social Engagement, 1955-1965″; Lara Demori, University of Edinburg, “redefining New-avantgardes at the Margins:Manzoni and Oiticica’s Subversive Practice”; Isobel Whitelegg, Nottingham Contemporary, “At the Crux of the Postwar – Collective Exhibitions at Signals London (1964-66)”

A great day at the conference with some amazing papers presented by wonderful scholars

9.30-10.15 am  Keynote: ” Paolozzi in Postwar  Paris: The Second American Invasion”  presented by Dr Walter Grasskamp, Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich

“…Eduardo Paolozzi, born in 1924, stands for a dramatic blend of twentieth-century migration. In 1947 Paolozzi lived in postwar Paris, visiting french heroes of prewar modernism. He also joined the  local colony of remaining GIs, who supplied him, an expatriate still accustomed to austerity, with magazines and films filled with colorful impressions of a consumer paradise across the Atlantic. Here, Paolozzi became the first artist to map the second American invasion, one of consumer goods and media cliches, which would transform European everyday culture in the decades to come – insufficently, but not completely wrong, labeled pop culture. “

Continued with Panel 1: Concrete Visions, Transatlantic Worlds

Adapting an approach that is both regionally specific and cross-culturally comparative, this panel situates the production and reception of Concretism within transatlantic networks that stretching from Paris to Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo to Munich. A focus on Latin America further brings to surface complex negotiations between the social and the aesthetic, offering critical perspectives on radical and intractable realignments of artistic centers and peripheries during the tumultuous decades following the end of the Second World War.

panelists: Abigail McEwen, University of Maryland,  “Cuba’s Concretos: the Constructivist Revolution”  ; Federico Deambrosis, Politechnico di Milano, “Time, Space, Borders: A Possible Map of Concrete Art from an Argentinian Perspective ” ; Susanne Neubauer, Freie Universitat, Berlin “Politicla Entaglements of Brazilian Modernism and is Reception in Postwar Germany, 1951-1959″and Gerardo Mosquera, Independent Curator, Havana and Madrid, “Brazil: Disarranging Concretism”

In the afternoon, “Nation(s) Seeking Form . How might artistic and intellectual movements from the former colonies and peripheries impact our understanding of postwar modernism? Through specific  case studies, the panel presents a socio-historical and critical understanding of postwar aesthetic practices in Africa and the Middle East.

panelists: Sam Bardoui, Art Reoriented and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat, Munich ” I  See Wonderful Things! The Art and Liberty Group and Manifestations of Surrealism in Egypt 1939-1945″; Nada Shabout, University of North Texas, “Enemy of the People: The Baghdad Group of Modern Art”; Chika Okeke-Agulu, Princeton University, “Ucke Okeke, Ibrahim El Salahi, and Postcolonial Modernism in the 1960s” and Burcu Dogramaci, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat, Munich “A Look Back to the Future: Art in Turkey in the 1950s”