In the Foreground: Conversations on Art & Writing

Latest Episodes:

“A Picture of Resilience”: Ashley Lazevnick on Charles Demuth’s "Red Poppies" Feb 01, 2022

Show notes

A still life, like a poem, may be charged with private meaning, and yet it is offered like a gift that the viewer may open for themselves, not unlike the delicate unfurling of a flower. Charles Demuth’s watercolor Red Poppies of 1929 exemplifies this exchange in the way it pictures how vulnerability may still be resilient, as expressed in a contemporaneous poem by Williams Carlos Williams that meditates on loss.

“An Expression of the Poetic Self”: Yuefeng Wu on the Stele Inscription of the Jiu-Cheng Palace Feb 01, 2022

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The Jiu-Cheng Palace Stele inscription, created in China in 632, during the early Tang dynasty, is an influential work of Chinese calligraphy that embodies a skillful balance between liminality and tranquil harmony.

“From Imitation to Evolution”: Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen on Georges Seurat’s "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte–1884" Feb 01, 2022

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Georges Seurat’s masterpiece A Sunday on La Grande Jatte–1884, is the kind of painting that has become so ubiquitous it almost disappears into itself, but within this busy scene of curiously automata-like human interaction lie many clues to the transformations of the period. For one, this picture manifests a shift in thinking from imitation to civilization, mimesis to evolution, insofar as it encapsulates Darwin’s theories of natural selection and their ramifications for the understanding of human psychology at the time.

“An Allegory of Representation”: Byron Otis on Gabriel Metsu’s "View into a Hall with a Jester, a Boy, and his Dog" Feb 01, 2022

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Gabriel Metsu's painting View into a Hall with a Jester, a Boy, and his Dog from c. 1667 subtly upends expectations of Dutch genre painting from this period. Rather than depicting a placid scene of everyday life, Metsu reflexively calls attention to the constructed nature of this illusionistic scene and implicates the viewer within the cast of characters.

"Touching at a Distance”: Ellen Tani on Nadine Robinson’s "Coronation Theme: Organon" Feb 01, 2022

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Nadine Robinson’s installation Coronation Theme: Organon of 2008 uses its monumental sculptural presence and an immersive soundscape to weave complex layers referencing aspects of Black life in America over the past century, from dance halls to sacred and secular oration, to the Civil Rights movement and police brutality.

“Between the Personal and the Historical”: Asma Naeem on Listening to Art and Visual Culture Dec 14, 2021

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In this episode, Caitlin Woolsey (Assistant Director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute) speaks with Asma Naeem, the Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown Chief Curator at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Asma shares her circuitous path into the discipline, from her sensitivity to the visual landscape of her childhood within an Indo-Pakistani immigrant family, to the formative challenges of practicing law in a district attorney’s office in Manhattan, and how her tenacious passion for art history led her to explore the intersections between sound technologies and nineteenth-century American painting and into her current curatorial work.

“The Ethics of Seeing”: Kaira M. Cabañas on Creative Care and Art’s Histories Dec 07, 2021

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In this episode, which continues the miniseries focused on sound, media, and visual art, Caitlin Woolsey (Assistant Director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute) speaks with Kaira M. Cabañas, professor of art history at the University of Florida, where she is also affiliate faculty in the Center for Latin American Studies and Center for Gender, Sexualities and Women’s Studies Research. Kaira describes how her early studies helped her think about the relations and discontinuities between cultural contexts, and reflects on artists who practice film “otherwise.” She shares her most recent project focused on transatlantic exchanges in art and psychiatry, and critiques what is often perceived as the current “crisis” in the discipline, asking: a crisis for whom?

“Grounded by a Set of Relations”: Nancy Um on "Horizontal" Cultures within Art History Nov 30, 2021

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In this episode Caro Fowler (Starr Director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute) speaks with Nancy Um, professor of art history at Binghamton University in New York State, whose research explores the Islamic world from the perspective of the coast, with a focus on material, visual, and built culture on the Arabian Peninsula and around the rims of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. Nancy describes her experience of conducting fieldwork in Yemen, particularly as a young female scholar, and reflects on the constraints of focusing on an area marked by geopolitical instability. She recounts her decision to focus on bodies of water instead of territories, and how this approach destabilizes some of the traditional organizing principles of the discipline, but allows her to pursue global art history on a local scale. Finally, she considers digital art history as a site of access, and as part of a dynamic approach to her own work changing over time.

“To Approach the Object from Outside”: Joseph Koerner on History, Trauma, and Wonder Nov 16, 2021

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In this episode Caro Fowler (Starr Director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute) speaks with Joseph Leo Koerner, professor of art history at Harvard University, who teaches and writes about the history of art from the late Middle Ages to the present day, with an emphasis on Northern Renaissance art. Joseph discusses his early focus on literary studies, psychoanalysis, and romanticism, and how his curiosity about the traumatic core of history has informed his work. More specifically, he describes how themes of fragility and besieging shaped his childhood by way of the physical presence of his father’s paintings in their family home, as well as the role played by visiting Vienna and the Kunsthistoriches Museum there. Finally, he delves into his 2019 documentary The Burning Child, and describes his current book project that explores concepts of siege. What does art do in a state of siege, he asks; how does it flare up?

“To See the Effects of Sound”: Niall Atkinson on Acoustic Topographies of the Early Modern Nov 09, 2021

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In this episode, Caitlin Woolsey (Assistant Director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute) continues the miniseries on sound and visual art in conversation with Niall Atkinson, an associate professor of art history at the University of Chicago. Niall's research concerns the relationship between sound, space, and architecture and their role in the construction of pre-modern urban societies. They discuss his research methods for working on historical soundscapes, and ways of reconstructing sonic relationships in the past even if the sounds and sonic experiences themselves are now lost to us.