The Goethe-Institut is an Arts Partner of Vancouver Art Gallery
Isabelle Graw is a guest of the Goethe-Institut
Renowned art historian and critic Isabelle Graw has an extensive history of engagement with painting. Graw’s keynote lecture will provide an intelligent and provocative voice to the symposium and bring an engaged international perspective to the proceedings. Graw’s familiarity with contemporary artists and painting practices within the global art world will situate the symposium’s ensuing panel discussions within the larger context of art being made internationally.
Painting is usually associated with various aesthetic, emotional, symbolic and economic values. In this talk, “Painting” refers to all those (often non-painterly) artistic practices that employ the picture on canvas in manifold ways. Graw will examine the commodity value of painting, considering paintings as unique material objects that nourish a fantasy that their value is substantial and contained within them - valuable because of their specific materiality, and because of the sphere of reception painting exists within. Graw will argue that despite their materiality, paintings can’t be reduced to their economic dimension; although the luxury industry in particular has tried to learn from painting in recent years, painting’s intellectual prestige has been growing since the early modern times, adding to their status as ideal commodities.
Keynote: September 28, 2017, 7:00 pm
Emily Carr University of Art + Design
Symposium "A Crimp in the Fabric": September 29, 2017
Simon Fraser University, World Art Centre
Isabelle Graw is Professor for Art Theory and Art History at Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste (Städelschule), Frankfurt am Main, where she co-founded the Institute of Art Criticism. She is an art critic and co-founder of Texte zur Kunst in Berlin. She has edited and contributed to many important books on the subject, most notably
Painting beyond Itself: The Medium in the Post-Medium Condition (Sternberg Press, 2016) and
Thinking through Painting: Reflexivity and Agency beyond the Canvas (Sternberg Press, 2012). Her forthcoming book
The Love of Painting: Genealogy of a Success Medium aims to establish where painting can be seen today and to reconstruct the historical origins of its current popularity.
Toronto date tba!
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