Boris Groys: Communist Art Historian Rex Butler It might seem strange to argue it, but Boris Groys, who made his name with The Total Art of Stalinism (1992), a brilliant analysis of the complicity between the Russian avant-garde and Stalinism, might be our greatest Communist art historian. How? Groys’s critical writing — pursued primarily today through the internet in such journals as e-flux — is transcendental, unsurpassable, indespensible, precisely in its weakness, its unemphaticness, its non-judgementality, even its self-erasure and self-contradiction. In a radical sense, as Groys admits, it is…
Tag Archive for Melbourne University Lectures
Public Lecture | The Archbishop’s Piranesis: an unlikely collection for nineteenth-century Melbourne - Colin Holden
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The Archbishop’s Piranesis: an unlikely collection for nineteenth-century Melbourne? Dr Colin Holden The lecture focuses on the greatest single collection of art among the Baillieu Library’s Rare Books, which is a complete set of the works of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-78) whose images of classical ruins and Roman baroque streetscapes distil much of the culture of the eighteenth-century Grand Tour, and are masterpieces of eighteenth-century printmaking. Besides their intrinsic aesthetic value, the provenance of this set has an interesting connection with the University — they were part of the library…
Public Lecture | Memory, Migration and the Monument: Commemorating the Irish Famine in Ireland and the Diaspora, Emily Mark-Fitzgerald
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Memory, Migration and the Monument: Commemorating the Irish Famine in Ireland and the Diaspora Dr Emily Mark-FitzGerald, School of Art History & Cultural Policy University College Dublin As the watershed event of 19th century Ireland, the Great Famine’s political and social impacts profoundly shaped modern Ireland and the nations of its diaspora, yet for nearly 150 years any sense of a public or collective ‘memory’ of the Famine period has proved elusive. What changed, then, in the mid-1990s, to occasion the remarkable outpouring of public commemoration and sentiment (described in…
Lecture | The Tower of the Winds at Athens: architecture and function - Hermann J Kienast
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The Tower of the Winds at Athens: architecture and function Hermann J. Kienast The Tower of the Winds at Athens is one of the most ingenious creations of ancient architecture. Based on an octagonal floor plan, the marble edifice is decorated immediately below the roof, with a frieze depicting eight winds as personifications. The building’s layout is highly sophisticated and accentuated by unusual technical gadgets: the eight outer wall segments exhibit sundials, while the interior accommodated a fascinating planetarium, the first monumental one we know of. The lecture explains all…
Lecture: Kent Larson ‘Changing Places: Responsive housing, mobility systems, and networked intelligence for future cities’
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Special Public Lecture Changing Places: Responsive housing, mobility systems, and networked intelligence for future cities Professor Kent Larson To meet the profound sustainability, demographic, and health challenges of the future, new strategies must be found for creating responsive places where people live and work, and the mobility systems that connect them. Professor Kent Larson will present the work of his MIT Media Lab research group to explore the intersection of high-performance housing with urban mobility-on-demand systems, including persuasive electric bike-lane vehicles to encourage exercise, the transformable live-work “CityHome” that functions…
Lecture: Dale Kent ‘Images of Friendship from Renaissance Florence from Dante to Michelangelo’
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Joseph Burke Lecture, 2011 Images of Friendship from Renaissance Florence from Dante to Michelangelo Professor Dale Kent The question of whether true friendship could exist in an era when patronage shaped most social relations occupied Renaissance Florentines as it had the ancient Greeks and Romans whose culture they admired and emulated. Rather than attempting to measure Renaissance friendship against a universal ideal defined by essentially modern notions of disinterestedness, intimacy and sincerity, I will explore the meaning of love and friendship as they were represented in Renaissance images, drawn from…
Lecture: The Great Temple at Thanjavur - One Thousand Years, 1010 to 2010 Old Problems, New Thoughts
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The Great Temple at Thanjavur: One Thousand Years, 1010 to 2010. Old Problems, New Thoughts. Special Public Lecture by alumnus and Professorial Associate Dr. George Michell at the Faculty of Architecture Building and Planning. The millennial anniversary of the great temple at Thanjavur has been the occasion for the publication of a splendid Marg volume co-authored by George Michell and Indira Viswanathan Peterson, and illustrated by photographs by Bharath Ramarutham. One of the aims of this work was to re-examine the historical context of the foundation of the temple under Rajaraja…
Lecture: Conservation Challenges of Contemporary Art - Jane Norman
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Melbourne University, Faculty of Arts Public Lecture: Conservation Challenges of Contemporary Art Ms Jane Norman Museums develop standards for protecting works of art under their care and this process, while constantly evolving, is tested most vigorously with the acquisition, installation and collections care of contemporary art. The ephemeral nature of many works, the involvement of living artists, and the questions raised when preserving the integrity of conceptual artwork with replacement components: these are some of the issues facing conservators working to protect and conserve contemporary art. The talk will highlight several examples from American collections where collaboration, compromise and tradition-based conservation training helped find solutions to new challenges in the field…