Terra Foundation for American Art Study Day 2021
Department of History of Art and Centre for Visual Studies, University of Oxford
Sponsored by the Terra Foundation for American Art
Belatedness—Modernity—Coloniality
Image: Dianne L. Kim
Belatedness of various kinds has long shaped American art and its historiography. Contextualizing this practice in the United States alongside global modernities, this study day asks: How has belatedness—framed through constructs of being behind, delayed, and not yet arrived—shaped modern art making and art historiography? How and why have art critics spurred claims of aberrations to standard notions of progress that are temporally structured? How are these cases tied to place and time, even as they seek to deny their contemporary moment? In the process, how do these examples re-define ideas of time through cultural production and reception? This study day brings together scholars working on modern art to consider how belatedness has been employed strategically by artists and critics; imposed by the colonial project; and taken up by historians of art.
In some cases, artists trying to shape their own reception or capitalize on perceptions of their national or cultural identity have reinforced the idea of belatedness in their art practice and rhetoric. At the same time, coloniality has exported such a narrative to exoticize, limit the circulation or to control the aesthetics of artists in the context of often violent asymmetrical relationships. Canonical narratives of modernism have also furthered belatedness by using the concept to draw the boundaries between inclusion and exclusion.
Key questions include: Is belatedness necessarily pejorative? Can it be operating simultaneously as control and as transculturation in the same context? Is it necessarily comparative? How does it relate to antimodernism and to primitivism? Is there a materiality of belatedness, in other words, how can belatedness be structured within works of art themselves? Can belatedness be understood as an epistemology, and by framing it in this way, does it encourage a re-writing of the history of modernism?
9.30 AM
‘Introduction: Belatedness as Critique and as Strategy’
Emily Burns, Terra Foundation Visiting Professor, History of Art, Worcester College University of Oxford
Session 1
9.55 AM
Introductions
Chair: Geoffrey Batchen, Professorship of the History of Art, Head of Department, Trinity College, University of Oxford
10.00 AM
‘Antipodean Time and the Ontology of Belatedness: Samuel Butler's Philosophy and Photography’
Paul Giles, Challis Professor of English, University of Sydney
10.30 AM
‘Constantin Guys and the timescapes of Ottoman Istanbul’
Mary Roberts, Professor of Art History and Nineteenth-Century Studies, University of Sydney
11.00 AM
Discussion
11.15 AM
’”The Russian Cézanne”: Mikhail Vrubel and the Invention of Russian Modernism at the Fin de Siècle,’
Maria Taroutina, Associate Professor of Art History, Yale-NUS College
11.45 AM
‘European belatedness in the South Pacific: the case of Gauguin’
Alastair Wright, Associate Professor in History of Art, Tutorial Fellow St John's College, University of Oxford
12.15 PM
Discussion
BREAK
Session 2
2.00 PM
Introductions
Chair: Gervase Rosser, Ertegun Director and Senior Scholar in Residence, Professor of the History of Art & Fellow of St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford
2.05 PM
‘Belatedness, indigeneity, decolonization: stories from Australia, Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand 1980-2020’
Nicholas Thomas, Director, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge / Trinity College, Cambridge
2.35 PM
‘Belatedness of Late’
Keith Moxey, Barbara Novak Professor Emeritus, Barnard College/Columbia University
3.05 PM
Discussion
3:20 PM - BREAK
Session 3
3.45 PM
Introductions
Chair: Emily Burns, Terra Foundation Visiting Professor, History of Art
3.50 PM Worcester College University of Oxford
‘Modernism’s Disjointed Time: Gerard Sekoto from Johannesburg to Paris’
Joshua I. Cohen
Assistant Professor of Art History, The City College of New York
4.20 PM
‘Caribbean Modernism and the Shadow Play of Colonial Time.’
Erica Moiah James, Assistant Professor of Art History, University of Miami
4.50 PM
‘Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe’
Bill Anthes, Professor, Art Field Group, Pitzer College. Claremont, California
Kathleen Ash-Milby, Curator of Native American Art, Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon
5.20 PM
Discussion
To register to receive a link for the online event, which is free and open to the public, please fill out the following form:
