AHCS Speaker Series: Terry Smith "Contemporary Art: World Perspectives"

The Department of Art History and Communication Studies welcomes Terry Smith, Andrew W Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory, University of Pittsburg, to speak at our annual lecture series (follow this link for a complete list of this year's speakers).

Title: "Contemporary Art: World Perspectives"

Abstract: Is “contemporary” the name of an art historical period that has succeeded modernism (and postmodernism), or does “contemporaneity” mean that periodization is past (an anachronism from modernity) both in the general culture and in art? Does it then follow, as many argue, that contemporary art can only be a kind of modernism that has outlived its time? Against this, there is the view that the multiple modernisms and non-modern practices within twentieth century art prefigure the diversity of contemporary art. This implies that shifts from modern to contemporary art occurred in distinct ways in different places, and that tracking these is an urgent art historical task. Looking directly at the present, we might ask whether or not contemporary conditions have reshaped our conception of “the world” (in planetary terms, for example, as worlds-within-the-world), and thus our conception of the currents manifest in global contemporary art? Are the evident interconnections between each region, people, city, even locality in the world today sufficient to enable us to speak of a new, contemporary phase in the “world” history of art? Or have these very connections led to distinctively contemporary kinds of art that, while resisting any fit into a unified, developmental picture, remain nonetheless subject to critical analysis and historical hypothesis? In this lecture Professor Smith will explore these questions in relation to the ideas offered in his recent publications, notably his books What is Contemporary Art? (University of Chicago Press, 2009) and Contemporary Art of the World: Late Modern to Now (Laurence King and Pearson/Prentice Hall, forthcoming).

Biography: TERRY SMITH, FAHA, CIHA, is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh, and a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Architecture, University of Sydney. He is the 2009 winner of the Mather Award for art criticism conferred by the College Art Association (USA). During 2001-2002 he was a Getty Scholar at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, and in 2007-8 the GlaxoSmithKlein Senior Fellow at the National Humanities Research Centre, Raleigh-Durham. From 1994-2001 he was Power Professor of Contemporary Art and Director of the Power Institute, Foundation for Art and Visual Culture, University of Sydney. He was a member of the Art & Language group (New York) and a founder of Union Media Services (Sydney). He is the author of a number of books, notably Making the Modern: Industry, Art and Design in America (University of Chicago Press, 1993; inaugural Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Book Prize 2009); Transformations in Australian Art, volume 1, The Nineteenth Century: Landscape, Colony and Nation, volume 2, The Twentieth Century: Modernism and Aboriginality (Craftsman House, Sydney, 2002); The Architecture of Aftermath (University of Chicago Press, 2006) and What is Contemporary Art? (University of Chicago Press, 2009). He is editor of many others including In Visible Touch: Modernism and Masculinity (Power Publications and the University of Chicago Press, 1997), First People, Second Chance: The Humanities and Aboriginal Australia (Australian Academy of the Humanities, 1999), Impossible Presence: Surface and Screen in the Photogenic Era (Power Publications and the University of Chicago Press, 2001), with Paul Patton, Jacques Derrida, Deconstruction Engaged: The Sydney Seminars (Power Publications, 2001, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2005), Contemporary Art + Philanthropy (University of NSW Press, 2007), and Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, postmodernity and contemporaneity (with Nancy Condee and Okwui Enwezor, Duke University Press, 2008). He is working on Contemporary Art of the World: Late Modern to Now (Laurence King and Pearson/Prentice-Hall, 2011). A foundation Board member of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, he is currently a Board member of the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. See http://www.terryesmith.net/web/