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In 1962, a performance of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem marked the consecration of the new St. Michael’s Cathedral in Coventry. Designed by Basil Spence as a replacement for the original 14th century structure, devastated in the Blitz, the new Cathedral rose as a Modernist symbol of Britain’s reconstruction. Spence’s design incorporated the ruins of the old Cathedral’s shell alongside the new in a stark juxtaposition of historical and contemporary. Here, the remembrance of tradition, history, and sacrifice is invested in a symbolic dialogue between ruin and reconstruction; a new world rises phoenix-like from the fragments of the old.
Ruins have played a significant role in many aspects of visual culture. As a powerful link to our past, graphic evidence of change, and a sobering vision of possible futures, the idea of decay and disintegration as the inevitable path of history has continually shaped societies’ contemplation of themselves and others. This session will explore the idea of the ‘ruin’ within the visual arts in the widest possible sense. Topics for discussion could include:
• art and absence
• art and destruction
• art and memory
• art and reconstruction
• art and excavation
From the reclamation of a fragmented Antique past in quattrocento Italy to the abandoned landscape of Chernobyl; from Smithson’s Partially Buried Woodshed to Michael Landy’s recent Art Bin, ruins and the sense of absence they suggest have presented fascinating casestudies for art historians. This session aims to suggest new frameworks that consider the ruin as a trope of significant cultural influence.
Please send your paper proposal to the session convenor(s)
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