Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Evolving Art History Concepts
Lecturer: Dr. Kuang-Yi Chen | Art Historian
Time: August 9, 2014, Saturday, 14: 30-17: 00
Venue : TFAM Auditorium
The lecture is conducted in Chinese.
In the 1960s not only did Western art experience great diversity of creative expression, but artists also gained acceptance in the market and in institutions at a greatly accelerated pace. In 1961 the premier art agent Leo Castelli only met Roy Lichtenstein once before deciding to sell his works in the gallery. In 1970, when the New York Museum of Modern Art held a “retrospective” exhibition for Frank Stella, the artist was only 34 years old! This phenomenon unique to contemporary art exhibitions has doubtlessly overturned the traditional concept of art history. In reality, in 1983 when Hans Belting published The End of the History of Art?, he meant that “contemporary art is halted at defining itself according to a contradictory relationship with past.” The expansion of the art world has convoluted the relationship between art and history. People seem to enter art history the same way they enter history, leading, as the French anthropologist Marc Augé put it in his book Supermodernity, to the evident democratization of historical relationships in contemporary society. This lecture aims to explore three aspects of the practice of contemporary art – creation, exhibition and discourse – to uncover the mutual cause-and-effect relationships present in the evolving concept of art history.
Chen Kuang-Yi graduated from the National Taiwan Normal University department of fine arts. Living in France for 14 years, she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art history and archeology and a doctorate in contemporary art history (19th and 20th century) from the Universite Paris X Nanterre. After returning to Taiwan, she served as a researcher at the National Museum of History, in charge of curating, catalogue compilation and exchanges with France. She currently serves as an Associate Professor and Chair of the department and master’s program of fine arts at National Taiwan University of Arts, as well as an Associate Professor in fine arts at National Taiwan Normal University and Taipei National University of the Arts. She has curated numerous international and local art exhibitions, and has served as curatorial consultant for the National Museum of History and Taipei Fine Arts Museum; consultant for the Quanta Education & Culture Foundation; jury member for various art museums, juror for the National Culture and Arts Foundation’s art criticism platform and numerous art competitions, both in Taiwan and abroad. Her essays on art history and art reviews have been widely published in periodicals and exhibition catalogues.
About Lecture Series 2014 “(Art) After Conceptual Art”
Do you want to know the story of how a urinal became art? Did you know your home can become a museum? Everyone can be an artist – would you like to be one? These secrets are revealed in the lecture series “(Art) After Conceptual Art”...“(Art) After Conceptual Art” explores the major trends and forms of expression in avant-garde art since the 1960s. By examining the processes of specific contemporary art phenomena, the lecture series provides an organized introduction to the conceptual idioms arising from the recent rapid developments in contemporary art, serving as a reference for viewers to appreciate contemporary art.