2020-21 BIG PAPER in small pieces…

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 for Handling Matters (Zoom)

Download the Poster (PDF)

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.

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

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

Register for On the Same Page? (Zoom)

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.