Georgia O'Keefe Center Symposium "Challenging 1945: Exploring Continuities in American Art"

What was challenging about the conference? It was a great opportunity for me to learn more about American modernism, and to think about the ways that older approaches to art history (the connoisseur  model largely taught in traditional art history courses, the aura of an artwork developed by Walter Benjamin and later by Alfred Gell) inform and largely differ from today's approaches, methodologies that aim to explore the social, political and historical context of art, create new frameworks to tell suppressed histories, the personal as political etc. 

The keynote speaker William Agee gave a talk informed largely by his aesthetic preferences for certain artists such as Mondrian and Hopper. He aims to contribute to the "monoculture" that is American modernism and further develop an American nationalist sensibility. While he clearly has spent many years in looking at these works, he did not have archival research to back up claims, but rather channeled an approach that i would call "old school art history" namely one making judgments about art based on aesthetics with no real social context discussed. This opening was somewhat alarming to myself and other participants who wondered if this would set the tone for the conference. At one point during the evening, a friend and i exchanged notes "do you think they will talk about Indian Art?" she scribbled on a pad, i wrote back "maybe but probably not." While i remained hopeful that someone might discuss issues at stake for Native artists and the whole notion of "modernism" no one discussed this. Art history is about power, about who defines what. Clearly more work needs to be done!

Some of the highlights for me included Erika Doss's discussion of the impact of religion (organized or not) for artists Agnes Pelton, Charles Burchfield and Kandinsky. Ideas of spirituality (nature and god-based) have impacted the emotional, physical and artistic lives of many American modernists. 

Huey Copeland's talk was also well crafted, using "sisterhood" as a methodology to explore the work and impact of black female artists during the late 19th and 20th century. He discussed the work of Lewis, who traveled to Rome in the late 19th century and used her marble sculptures to portray the struggles and triumphs of black women. There were many other interesting talks and ramblings, i enjoyed listening to the artists Audrey Flack, Barkley Hendricks and Robert Bechtle discuss their art and the memories of Flack's time in New York City hanging out with Jackson Pollock..