Please note: Registration is full, but we will make open seats available to people on the waiting list so please know it is still possible to attend the event.  There will also be standing room available.

Abstract Painting and Beyond Conference 

History of Art, University of Pennsylvania 

February 9-11, 2012

Let us say, if only for the sake of argument, that abstract painting began with Manet, and ended with Abstract Expressionism, and that there is a “beyond.” How would we conceptualize this “beyond”? Would we say that it is painting’s own return to figuration? The extension of abstraction into other mediums: drawing, sculpture, dance, photography, and digital images?  Or is it perhaps something internal to abstract painting itself—something that our critical paradigms did not permit us to see, but that later painters have rendered visible, and that calls for a different periodization?  These are a few of the questions that this conference will address.

Abstract Painting and Beyond is inspired by, and will coincide with, an exhibition of Charline von Heyl’s paintings and drawings at the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art. The conference will begin with an evening conversation between von Heyl and Kaja Silverman, and continue over the following two days, with talks by a distinguished group of speakers.

Speakers:

Elise Archias

Nancy Davenport 

André Dombrowski

Briony Fer

Rachel Haidu

Michael Leja

Daniel Marcus

Christine Poggi

Anne M. Wagner

Margaret Werth

Charline Von Heyl will also give an artist’s talk on February 8th at 6:30 pm, at the ICA, 118 South 36th Street. 

Conference Schedule

Thursday February 9

Institute of Contemporary Art

118 South 36th Street

6:30 pm

Charline Von Heyl in conversation with Kaja Silverman

Friday February 10

Terrace Room, First Floor, Claudia Cohen Hall 

249 South 36th Street  

10:00 am

Introduction by Kaja Silverman 

10:30 am     

Margaret Werth, “Abstraction Before Abstraction"

André Dombrowski, “Manet, Abstraction, Democracy”

1:30 pm  

Christine Poggi, “The Square and the Vortex: Modes of Potentiality in the Abstractions of Kazimir Malevich and Giacomo Balla” 

Daniel Marcus, “Abstraction from Grid to Face”

Michael Leja, “Barnett Newman's Abstract Beginnings”

5:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Nancy Davenport in conversation with Karen Beckman

Saturday February 11

Terrace Room, First Floor, Claudia Cohen Hall

249 South 36th Street 

10:00 am  

Briony Fer, “As a Glass Eye: Abstraction's Resilience”

Anne M. Wagner, “On the Surface”

1:00 pm    

Rachel Haidu, “Abstraction and Authority--A Case Study”

Elise Archias, “The Quality of Ordinariness in Trio A”

4:30 pm - 5:30 pm

Final Round Table Discussion