NASHER MUSEUM OF ART

Picasso and the Allure of Language
August 20, 2009 - January 3, 2010

Man Ray, Picasso at rue La Boetie, c. 1912. Photograph. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Copyright 2008 Man Ray Trust/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY/ADAGP, Paris. Copyright 2008 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Last Chance to See Picasso!

Last chance to see Picasso and the Allure of Language at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke.

Open New Year's Eve, December 31 - 10 AM to 8 PM
Open New Year's Day, January 1 - 10 AM to 5 PM
Open January 2 and 3 - 10 AM to midnight

EAST DUKE CORRIDOR GALLERY INSTALLATION

Merrill Shatzman, ART poem, 24" x 30", digital print.

A new multimedia installation by artists Raquel Salvatella de Prada and Merrill Shatzman (Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies) and poet Deborah Pope (Department of English) will be on view in the East Duke Building Corridor Gallery on Duke's East Campus starting in January 2010. 

Supported by a Council for the Arts Collaboration Development Grant and the Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies, this multi-faceted project displays the collaborative work of these Duke professors in exploring the interactive relationship between original visual artwork with original creative text. The installation features the poetry of Pope, the letterforms and digital prints of Shatzman, and the animation of Salvatella de Prada, highlighting the potential of digital media in translating the written word.   

The resulting exhibition, ART, reflects the artists' own interactive, interdisciplinary, individual, and collective dynamic, aspiring to simultaneously enact and celebrate the essence and process of creating itself:  Art in all its rhythms of paradox, play, persistence, its rough turns and joys; its restless circling, transcendent moments of ephemeral poise, and ceaseless seeking.

AAHVS Business Manager to Retire

Betty Rogers, Business Manager for Art, Art History & Visual Studies, will retire from Duke University on January 31. Betty has been at Duke for twenty-two years and has been a member of the department for the duration of her time at the university.  She first served as undergraduate/graduate secretary then assistant to the chairperson and business manager. The AAHVS faculty, staff, and students extend their deepest appreciation for her many contributions to the success of our programs and wish her all the best in this next phase of her life.

NEW SPRING 2010 COURSES

Late Addition!
Experimental Art & Its Ethics Since 1945
ARTHIST 168, cross-listed as ICS 101A, WOMENST 177, LIT 133B
Instructor: M. Routh, Ph.D. Candidate, AAHVS
Tue & Thu 2:50-4:05 108 East Duke

Matthew Barney, Still from Cremaster Cycle 3, 2002

Experimental art and its avant-garde movements of the post-World War II era, covered globally, from abstract expressionist painting to multimedia interactive art, all of which concentrate on the social, political, and cultural impact of experimental art after the atomic age and in the aftermath of the Holocaust, continuing into the post-biological age of genetic engineering.

The course will focus on the vast changes that have occurred in art and its media since 1945 and the moral and ethical roles that art plays in shaping culture and in reflecting its social exigencies.

Special Topics in Visual Studies: The Ongoing Moment: Presentations of Time in Still and Moving Images
VISUALST 260S-03, cross-listed as ARTSVIS 269S-01
Instructor: W. Noland
Time: Wed 4:25PM - 6:55PM

This is a project-driven studio course exploring time primarily through video and still photography. The management, presentation and trace of time will be discussed in relation to various forms of art, followed by a more in-depth examination of the concepts of duration, aura, silence and thought as they pertain to still and moving images.

Throughout the semester, a series of individual and group projects will investigate various manifestations of stillness and movement in video and photography. Sound will be an integral part of some of these assignments, while others will be designed for silence. In both video and photography, slices of time will be examined for their properties of continuity, discontinuity and fissure, with an emphasis on rendering meaning in and through both time and space.

While there will be periodic short writing assignments, the bulk of the work will be in the form of projects and their revisions. The course will culminate in a longer, finished individual project examining an aspect of time developed by the individual student during the course of the semester.

Prerequisites: Two 100-level photography or film production classes, consent of instructor. (mailto:william.noland@duke.edu>william.noland@duke.edu)

Images as Agents
ARTHIST 288S, cross-listed as VISUALST 288S
Instructor: A. Wharton
Time: 7:15-9:45 PM Mon

In periods of widespread functional illiteracy-e.g. the West in pre-modernity and in the present-publics are produced by images rather than texts. Understanding the power of images in Antiquity and the Middle Ages provides insight into the contemporary world as well as into deep history. Through the study of specific ancient and medieval works-speaking statues, miraculous icons, ambulating paintings-the seminar will address the question of artistic and pictorial agency. The course readings will include theoretical texts on thing theory, agency and fetishism; primary sources describing the life of images; and scholarly studies investigating the formal attributes of images in the context of their function.

VISUAL STUDIES INITIATIVE

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Please refer all relevant departmental information for inclusion in our bi-weekly email announcement to John Taormina, Director, Visual Resources Center, at taormina@duke.edu.