Terra Foundation for American Art Visiting Professorship, May 2010

Angela L. Miller, Professor of Art History and

Archaeology, Washington University in St. Louis.
Mercredi 5 mai 2010, de 15h à 17h, université de Nanterre, salle des conférences du bâtiment B,
conference magistrale :

“Worldly skepticism and the urbane moment in American arts between the wars"

This talk will use the ideas of Kenneth Burke, a key figure of the intellectual left between the two
world wars, to frame the work of Gerald Murphy and others whose art toyed with identity, the
fixity of gender, and philosophical certitudes, in the face of the deeper unsettling of culture that
preceded WorldWar II. This form of "late modernism" in many ways anticipates the
postmodernturn in its awareness of how language and signs frame our understanding of the
world. I will end by considering how the resulting skepticism toward fixed meanings was a
politically enlightened position in a period of retrenching nationalisms.

La conférence sera suivie d'un pot et a reçu l'aimable soutien des institutions suivantes : Terra
Foundation for American Art, ENS de Paris, INHA, université de Paris Ouest Nanterre La
Défence.

Lundis 10 et 17 mai 2010, 11h30-13h, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris, 45 rue d’Ulm, Salle
des Actes :

“The emergence of the avant-garde in the U.S. in the 1950s : John Cage, Robert
Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns”
Part 1. 10 mai / Part 2. 17 mai

Les deux séances s’intègrent dans la problématique des cours de Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel sur la
fin des avant-gardes après 1945, et plus spécifiquement sur la question du renouvellement des
modèles avant-gardistes hérités de la fin du XIXe et du début du XXe siècle par les générations
artistiques américaines des années 1950 et 1960.

Mardi 11 mai 2010, 19h-20h30, Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art, 2 rue Vivienne, Paris, salle
Vasari, conférence publique :

“Nature’s History: Nineteenth-Century American Landscape

Art and Environmental Thinking”

What do we learn from the great works of nineteenth century American landscape painting,
examined through the lens of contemporary environmental concerns? How did landscape art
shape and reflect public attitudes toward nature, place, andnation? Did Americans 150 years ago
worry about sustainability, or consider the human impact on the natural world? Did nature ever
carry its own authority in their eyes, apart from human intentions and ambitions? This lecture
will focus on nineteenth century American landscape art, discussed alongside a range of American
cultural voices from the nineteenth century.

20-21 mai 2010, INHA et Terra Foundation for American Art : participation auxjournées d’études
"Current problematics in transatlantic art histories" :

"The German Connection:

Expressionism in Germany and the U.S. before World War I"

This paper will consider the ways in which German expressionism –especially that of Der Blaue
Reiter and Franz Marc—fused with the influence of the nineteenth century American romanticism to
shape the early work of Marsden Hartley during his Berlin years. I will also look at the impact
German ideas about culture and nation had on Alfred Stieglitz, the influential promoter of modern
art, and the manner in which emerging avant-gardes in NYC humorously deflated Stieglitz’s brand of
mystical and charismatic modernism.