Untitled: What's in a Name?
Student Session
Association of Art Historians Annual Conference
University of Glasgow 15-17th April 2010
As art historians, critics, and researchers we are
surrounded by titles, names, and classifications. Names
secure and give substance to our critical operations; but names can also constrain investigation if one relies on
given solutions without reassessing historical objects and
methods.
But what happens when the title is questionable,
anachronistic, or purposely absented? From
collaborative works that lack designated authors to the
untitled work, the enquiring viewer is prematurely left
alone to fill in the blanks - a productive insecurity in the
face of that which cannot be named, grasped, or
conveyed that leaks into, and has an impact upon, the
doing and teaching of art and its histories.
We would like to invite papers on naming as a activity
shared by art historians, critics, curators, and artists;
thereby also addressing questions of authority, validity,
critique, and resistance that become integral to the act
of giving - or retracting - titles. Possible areas of enquiry can include: measuring the name: navigating
classification and reconfiguring value; the untitled work
as a site of frustration, opportunity, and challenge; the
function of names and classifications in reception,
historiography, and methodology; legitimising
nomenclature: claiming and re-claiming the utility of art
and history; and choosing names and choosing sides: the
vocabulary of cross-disciplinary studies.
With this session, we hope to open up a space for critical
reflection on the work of art history, wherein the validity
and function of the name/title must be constantly kept in
check, while navigating research through identification
and classification that we see ourselves reconfiguring.
If you would like to offer a paper, please contact the
session convenor directly (Catriona McAra c.mcara.1@research.gla.ac.uk), providing an abstract of your proposed paper in no more than 250 words, your name and institutional affiliation (if any) by 9th November 2009.
|
