May 13, 2021: Handling Matters
9:30am-2:30pm Pacific
Handling Matters:
How Format and Scale Constitute Meaning in the Arts
In art history, the term handling mainly refers to storing, shipping or archiving artworks. However, the actual handling also affects the way we perceive art objects haptically, helping us discern their format, scale, and content. Handling, format, and scale interact and constitute an intertwined meaning beyond discursive matter: Format refers to standardized and institutionalized production processes and is often related to normative expectations of the art piece. Scale depends on distributed spatial resources, thus, it is closely linked to processes of appropriating economic and political power. Handling focuses on perception as a durational process beyond the visual. The guiding question of this workshop is: How do handling, format and scale relate, alter or challenge iconic, narrative and/or political webs of meaning? Through different media from different times, the workshop will trace the meaning-making interplay of handling, format, and scale.
REGISTER HERE
Organized by Veronica Peselmann. Sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation and the USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, Department of Art History. Co-Sponsored by Max Kade Institute for Austrian-German-Swiss Studies.
PAST EVENT March 5, 2021: BIG PAPER returns…
March 5, 2021: 9:30am-12:30 PST.
Displaying Big Paper
Speakers:
- Ana Debenedetti, Victoria and Albert Museum
- Alberto Rocca, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana
- Jane Turner, Rijksmuseum
- Gloria Williams, Norton Simon Museum
PAST EVENT: February 8, 2021: On the Same Page?
On the Same Page?
Paper, Design and Communication, c. 1600-1950
9:30-11:30am PDT
To Weave and to Print on Paper
Caroline Fowler, Clark Art Institute
Wastepaper: Refuse and Renewal in Inflation-era Germany
Erin Maynes, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Revolting Papers:
Mass Mediation and the Crisis of Representation in Early Nineteenth Century Britain
Joseph Monteyne, University of British Columbia
Thinking with paper: Douglas Leigh’s evanescent advertising propositions
Jennifer A. Greenhill, University of Arkansas School of Art/Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Response: Veronica Peselmann, USC
Advance registration required for this meeting.
This session presents diverse case studies to help us discern paper’s design and communication roles across the period of its media dominance. Caroline Fowler explores early modern printed model books for woven textiles, differentiating the blank grids that appear in them from the earlier Albertian vela to which they bear some formal similarities. Erin Maynes analyzes works by Georg Grosz and Kurt Schwitters within the framework of paper’s escalating use for disposable or Ersatz objects in Germany’s years of inflation (1914-23). Joseph Monteyne considers the information explosion of early nineteenth-century British print culture that made paper “overwhelming” and even “revolting.” Jennifer Greenhill looks at Douglas Leigh’s mid-twentieth-century designs using cut, torn and colored pages from magazines for large rooftop electrical spectacular signage. Veronica Peselmann will respond.
PAST EVENT: Drawing as Thinking
Part 1: Social Reading Group
Any time September 2020 – October 2020
Before the live zoom meeting, join our community and participate in the ongoing social reading group. Instructions for accessing and discussing the precirculated paper, “Handwriting of the Self: Leonardo” by David Rosand, through at perusall.com will be sent to those who register through the zoom link below.
Part 2: Roundtable Conversation
October 29, 2020
12:30 – 2pm Pacific Time
Lisa Pon, University of Southern California (moderator)
Panelists
Leslie Geddes, Tulane University
Andrea Kantrowitz, SUNY New Paltz
Morgan Ng, Cambridge University
Nick Sousanis, San Francisco State University
Registration required for the synchronous zoom meeting and/or the asynchronous reading group via our zoom registration page. For more information, contact emsi@dornsife.usc.edu
Download poster here
