The Courtauld Institute of Art
Somerset House, Strand
London WC2R 0RN
Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Despite Matisse’s warning that ‘he who wants to dedicate himself to painting should start by cutting out his tongue’, artists in the modern period have frequently expressed themselves in writing (whether memoir, fiction or theory). This conference will ask what motivates artists to write, how they view the relation between their visual and textual practice, and how they use writing to manipulate or challenge the public reception and critical interpretation of their work. Challenging the myth of the visual artist as an intuitive anti-intellectual, it will demonstrate the extent and diversity of artists’ contributions to modern literature and criticism in various languages. It will also investigate how scholars interpret these texts: are they works of art in themselves or simply evidence about the artist’s life and craft? Do they conceal as much as they reveal? How has the role and perception of artists’ writings changed over time?
Programme:
Thursday, 4 June
14h00 – 14h30 Registration
14h30 – 16h00 Session 1 – Interpreting Artists’ Writings: Intention and Authority
Nicholas Chare (University of Reading), Matters of Fact: David Sylvester’s Interviews with Francis Bacon
Christina Rosenberger (Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art, Harvard University Art Museum), The Last Word? The Role of Artists’ Writings in the Conservation of Modern and Contemporary Art
Anna Lovatt (University of Nottingham), Sol Le Witt’s Automated Art
16h00 – 16h30 Coffee/Tea break
16h30 – 18h00 Session 2 – Correspondence: Between Public and Private
Julie F. Codell (Arizona State University), Private into Public: Rhetorical and Professional Systems in Victorian Artists’ Letters
John House (Courtauld Institute of Art), Working with Artists’ Letters
Duncan White (Central St Martins) and Dave Smith (artist), Facsimileology: Artists’ Writing and Mechanical Reproduction in an Age Obsolete
18h00 Reception
Friday, 5 June
09h30 – 10h00 Registration
10h00 – 11h00 Session 3 – The Artist as Critic 1
Peter Cooke (University of Manchester),Gustave Moreau, Painter-Writer James Faure Walker (artist; Camberwell College of Arts), The Origins of Artscribe
11h00 – 11h30 Coffee/Tea break
11h30 – 13h00 Session 4 – Fact and Fiction
Bridget Alsdorf (Princeton University), Vallotton’s Murderous Life: Autobiography and the Ethics of Perspective
Lisa Tickner (Courtauld Institute of Art), Artists’ Fiction: George du Maurier’s Trilby and Wyndham Lewis’s Tarr
Sylvia Karastathi (University of Cambridge), Artists’ Papers in Contemporary Fiction: The Cases of Gwen John and Dora Carrington
13h00 – 14h00 Break for Lunch
14h00 – 15h30 Session 5 – The Artist as Educator
Grace Brockington (University of Bristol), Walter Crane and the Universal Language of Art
Julia K. Dabbs (University of Minnesota, Morris), Empowering the Nineteenth-Century American Woman Artist: May Alcott Nieriker’s Studying Art Abroad & How to Do It Cheaply (1879)
Ann Compton (University of Glasgow), „How to Do It“: Re-reading the Sculpture Manual in the Context of Early British Modernism
15h30 – 16h00 Coffee/Tea break
16h00 – 17h30 Session 6 – Writing as Art
Nina Parish (University of Bath), From Mallarmé to Sadin via Broodthaers: What has Become of the Livre d’Artiste?
Yvonne Kyriakides (artist), The Shadow Speaks: An Artist’s Reflections on a Fusion of Visual and Textual Practice
Rachel Sloan (independent art historian), In Love with Words: Maurice Denis, ‘Les Amours de Marthe’, and Amour
17h30 Reception
Saturday, 6 June
09h30 -10h00 Registration
10h00 – 11h00 Session 7 – Genre and Identity: Between Word and Image
Richard Hobbs (University of Bristol), Sonnets: Edgar Degas, Claudius Popelin, and the Poetry of Generic Constraints
Emma Kimberley (University of Leicester), Painted Words and Spoken Images in the Work of Derek Walcott
11h00 – 11h30 Coffee/Tea break
11h30 – 13h00 Session 8 – Shifting Identities: Writing the Self
Aurélie Verdier (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales), „Ego Scriptor“: Avant-garde, Polemics and Francis Picabia’s Writing of the Self
Michelle Letowska (artist), Saying too Much: The Artist’s Statement
Peter Maber (University of Cambridge), Painted Letters: The Later Writings of Roger Hilton
13h00 – 14h00 Lunch
14h00 – 15h30 Session 9 – The Artist as Critic 2
Dina Ramadan (Columbia University), Writing for Art and Freedom: Understanding Aesthetics and Ideology in 1940s Egypt
Kenneth Bendiner (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Ford Madox Brown: Word and Paint
Deborah Schultz (University of Sussex), Textual Evidence: Intention and Insincerity in the Writings of Marcel Broodthaers
15h30 – 16h00 Coffee/Tea break
16h00 – 17h00 Concluding Discussion
Organised by Dr Linda Goddard
To book a place: £40 (£20 concessions) Please send a cheque made payable to ‘Courtauld Institute of Art’ to: Research Forum Events Co-ordinator, Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN, clearly stating that you wish to book for the ‘Artists’ Writings 1850 – Present conference’. For credit card bookings call 020 7848 2785/2909. For further information, send an e-mail to
ResearchForumEvents@courtauld.ac.uk.