Abstracts & Authors’ Biographies

Black Flowers Blossom: Materialism and

Bachelard, Soulages and Intersubjectivity in Cobra
the Material Imaginary of Karen Kurczynski
Abstract Painting The Cobra movement, hailing from the northern
European capitals of Copenhagen, Brussels, and
Natalie Adamson Amsterdam, presented mythic and animalistic imagery
In mid-1948 the artist Pierre Soulages painted through spontaneous and rudimentary processes as
a singular suite of works on glass with tar. an attempt to open a dialogue with diverse audiences.
Experimenting with the particular qualities of the Grounded in the theories of historical materialism, and
materials and the interplay between surface and the writings of Gaston Bachelard, Cobra’s particular
ground, these paintings are the result of a process approach to materialism was to foreground the process
that was paradoxically both materialist and poetic. of materializing – and thus continually transforming
This essay situates the tar-on-glass paintings at a – imaginative forms. Cobra artworks manifest
turning point in Soulages’ early practice as an abstract Bachelard’s notion of the ‘material imagination’ by
painter and within the specific context of a materialist suggesting the continual physical and social evolution
discourse that closely intertwined artistic practice and of images. This essay examines the ways that both
philosophical thought during the 1940s in France. individual and collective works materialize this
Gaston Bachelard’s influential theory of the material particular approach to expression as intersubjective
imagination is aligned with a radical field of artistic and rather than subjective, a social rather than an individual
poetic experimentation exemplified here by Soulages’ process. Cobra’s significant contribution to the
painting practice. In distinct but overlapping ways, discussion of materialism was its understanding of
the abstract artist and the philosopher demonstrate a creativity as an ever-evolving, and inherently political,
commitment to a material imagination whose images dialogue between human subjects and materials.
are excavated by the dual imperatives of objective Karen Kurczynski teaches modern and contemporary art history at the
experience and subjective intuition. University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is the author of The Avant-
Natalie Adamson teaches in the School of Art History at the University of Garde Won’t Give Up: The Art and Politics of Asger Jorn
St Andrews. In autumn 2015 she was a Getty Scholar at the Getty Research (Ashgate, 2014). She is currently planning an exhibition on the Cobra
Institute, Los Angeles. She currently holds a Major Research Fellowship from the movement with NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, called Human
Leverhulme Trust for a book project provisionally entitled Pierre Soulages: Animals: The Art of Cobra, which will open at the University Museum of
A Radical Abstraction. Contemporary Art at UMASS, Amherst, in September 2016.

©Association of Art Historians 2016 636

Makeshift Wholes: Materializing Modernism
Interiority and Texture in in Postwar Italy: Fausto
Postwar British Design Melotti, Gio Ponti, and
Alex Kitnick the 1961 Esposizione
This essay traces the emergence of design in postwar Internazionale del Lavoro
Britain. In particular, it seeks to track ways in which
certain members of the artistic community both Marin R. Sullivan
participated in and resisted the language of design. In In 1961, the Italian sculptor Fausto Melotti contributed a
the postwar moment many artists felt a need to engage massive display of 800 handcrafted ceramic tiles meant
with design work, but they often did so in order to to evoke the ‘Evolution of Form in Craftsmanship’ to the
show their difference from dominant trends. At a Esposizione Internazionale del Lavoro (International Labour Exhibition/
moment when much of England was being made over EIL). The exhibition was one of the main features of
in the image of New Towns, artists such as Eduardo Italia ’61, an even larger event occurring throughout
Paolozzi and Nigel Henderson attempted to transfer Turin that summer, celebrating the centenary of
something of the world of the working-class street into Italy’s unification. Under the supervision of the ruling
the interior. At the same time their company Hammer Christian Democrats and the patronage of corporations
Prints attempted to carry on an artistic legacy initiated like FIAT, the architect Gio Ponti designed the EIL to
by the photographs of Brassaï and the prints of Jean highlight the positive outcomes of industrialization in
Dubuffet. But instead of creating independent works of postwar Italy, while also situating the country within
art, they attempted to assimilate these lessons for the an emergent global, consumer goods-driven economy.
discipline of design in order to transfer texture and a Melotti’s project materially manifested the lofty goals of
sense of interiority back into the world. the exhibition’s organizers, but did so in a paradoxical
Alex Kitnick teaches at Bard College, where he was recently appointed the Brant manner – reflecting the possibilities of modern life while
Foundation Fellow in Contemporary Arts. In 2010 he received his PhD from simultaneously suggesting the destabilization wrought
the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. From 2011 by such rapid social and economic change.
to 2012 he held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Getty Research Institute in Los Marin R. Sullivan received her PhD from the University of Michigan, and
Angeles. Kitnick’s work focuses on the intersection of art and architecture. He is is Assistant Professor of Art History at Keene State College. Prior to her
a frequent contributor to Artforum, October, and Texte zur Kunst, among other appointment, she served as Henry Moore Foundation Post-Doctoral Research
publications. Fellow at the University of Leeds. She recently completed Sculptural
Materiality in the Age of Conceptualism (Routledge, 2017), and
is co-curating a major retrospective exhibition on Harry Bertoia, scheduled to
open at the Nasher Sculpture Center in 2019.

©Association of Art Historians 2016 637

L’Optique Moderne: Terrain vague: Ben Vautier
Daniel Spoerri’s ‘Optical and the Ecole de Nice
Readymades’ Anna Dezeuze
Jill Carrick The street figures as a primary location for Ben Vautier’s
early performances in 1960s Nice. This essay focuses
Daniel Spoerri’s interactive assemblage L’Optique Moderne
on the potential slippages explored by Ben between the
(‘Modern Optics’) of 1961–62 consists of a collection
artist and the ‘man in the street’, whose fundamental
of eyeglasses and optical devices positioned below a
anonymity was hailed as a paradigmatic feature of the
death mask of the French philosopher Voltaire, the
everyday by Maurice Blanchot in 1962. Such theories of
latter’s eyes pieced by scissors. This essay examines
the everyday by Blanchot, and by Henri Lefebvre before
how L’Optique Moderne dialectically engaged with both
him, shed new light on Ben’s original experiments in
ocularphobic trends in twentieth-century French
redefining both his role as an artist and the material
thought and modernist dreams of a technological
status of his artworks. Furthermore, theories of the
extension of vision. Simultaneously playground and
quotidien provide a useful framework for a comparative
minefield, the work stands as a key example of 1960s
study of Ben’s practice and other perspectives on the
experimental re-workings of the visual and conceptual
everyday developed by a number of his contemporaries
heritage of Marcel Duchamp. L’Optique Moderne
affiliated to three different artist groups who were
ingeniously fused two of Duchamp’s artistic strategies –
also active on the Côte d’Azur at the time: Nouveau
the ‘readymade’ and optical play – by deploying found
Réalisme, Fluxus and Supports/Surfaces. In this way,
objects and optical effects. The result, as the work’s title
debates concerning the everyday are shown to have
implies, is an invitation to reflect critically on vision in
touched upon central issues of consumption, leisure
the age of modernity
and revolution that significantly shaped French art and
Jill Carrick is Associate Professor of Art History at Carleton University, thought in the 1960s.
Ottawa. She is the author of Nouveau Réalisme, 1960s France, and
Anna Dezeuze is Lecturer in Art History at the Ecole Supérieure d’Art et
the Neo-avant-garde: Topographies of Chance and Return
de Design Marseille-Méditerranée. Her publications include Thomas
(Ashgate, 2010), as well as articles in Oxford Art Journal, and Art
Hirschhorn’s Deleuze Monument (Afterall, 2014), as well as two
History. Her current research focuses on neo-Dada art in 1960s France
edited volumes: The ‘Do-it-yourself’ Artwork: Participation from
and Europe, with particular emphasis on the pioneering work of artist Daniel
Fluxus to New Media (Manchester University Press, 2010); and, with
Spoerri. Her current article is part of a larger research project funded by a
Julia Kelly, Found Sculpture and Photography from Surrealism
SSHRC Insight Grant titled ‘The Optical Readymade: Duchampian Neo-avant-
to Contemporary Art (Ashgate, 2013). Her forthcoming book, with
gardes in 1960s France’.
Manchester University Press, is titled Almost Nothing: Observations
on Precarious Practices in Contemporary Art.

©Association of Art Historians 2016 638

‘Not Yet’ Materialized: The Longevity of Roman
Carlfriedrich Claus’s Opałka
‘Talking Papers’ Alistair Rider
Sarah E. James Between 1965 and his death in 2011, the Polish artist
Roman Opałka completed one work of art, which he
From the 1950s through to the 1980s, the East German
understood as synonymous with his life. It involved
artist Carlfriedrich Claus produced thousands of
painting every number from one up to infinity on
sheets titled Sprachblätter (‘Speech Sheets’); these often
identically-sized canvases, and, over the ensuing
perplexing semi-transparent papers – covered on
forty-six years, he covered 233 paintings with minute
both recto and verso with dense drawings, patterns
white digits. This unprecedented project has generally
and handwritten texts – are the subject of this essay.
been seen as an existential engagement with lived
The abstract, conceptual and performative nature of
time, but in this essay I also consider Opałka’s practice
Claus’s work was antithetical to increasingly aggressive,
in relation to historical time, as a vehicle of personal
stultifying, anti-modernist and anti-formalist cultural
self-formation. His ongoing work enabled him to
policies. Reading this corpus of work as ‘talking
cultivate a sense of integrity; its extreme rigour was a
papers’, heavily influenced by an idiosyncratic blend
conscientious response to his contemporary society. I
of Marxism-Leninism, oriental mysticism, cybernetic
argue that this model of defiant self-affirmation closely
theories, and, most profoundly, by the utopian thought
resembles that which Albert Camus articulated in his
of Ernst Bloch, I argue that they need to be understood
absurdist manifesto, The Myth of Sisyphus. As with the
as enacting a complex dialectical philosophy which
mythological figure of Sisyphus, Opałka’s self-worth
attempts to anchor the production and reception of art
was maintained through the unrelenting persistence of
in the transformative nature of utopian belief.
an action.
Sarah E. James is a lecturer in history of art at University College London. She
Alistair Rider teaches art history at the University of St Andrews, and researches
is the author of numerous articles and chapters on photography and German
European and North American artists from the 1960s and 1970s. He is the
art. Her book Common Ground: German Photographic Cultures
author of Carl Andre: Things in their Elements (Phaidon Press, 2011)
across the Iron Curtain was published by Yale University Press in
and the co-editor of About Carl Andre: Critical Texts since 1965
2013. This essay is based on research for her current book project Paper
(Ridinghouse, 2006). His current research focuses on the lifelong art projects of
Revolutions, exploring artistic experiments and utopian thought in East
Absalon, Hanne Darboven, Peter Dreher, On Kawara, Roman Opałka and Ad
Germany from the 1950s to the 1980s.
Reinhardt.

©Association of Art Historians 2016 639