In conjunction with Picasso Black and White, the first major exhibition to focus on the artist’s lifelong exploration of a black-and-white palette, on view October 5, 2012–January 23, 2013, the Sackler Center for Arts Education issues a call for papers to scholars working at the graduate level or recent PhD recipients from within the last year.
While the work of Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) is often seen through the lenses of his diverse styles or powerful portrayal of subjects, the recurrent motif of black, white, and gray and the artist’s attachment to the drawn line have been less-recognized. Picasso Black and White demonstrates how the artist continuously investigated, invented, and drew in somber and austere monochromatic tones throughout his career. Building on the same methodology as the exhibition—through new research by emerging scholars—this symposium considers parallel explorations of a particular formal or thematic element in the work of Picasso, his contemporaries, or other artists whose careers have spanned the 20th century.
Monographic Motifs presents fresh examinations of a persistent arc within an artist’s oeuvre; hypothetical topics include the following:
Francis Bacon: Reworking the Triptych
Giorgio de Chirico: Pictures Within Pictures
Hannah Höch: Old Heads/New Bodies
André Masson and the Methods of Automatism
Joan Miró and the Cosmos
Piet Mondrian: The Grid Reconsidered
Pablo Picasso and the Circus
Antoni Tàpies: Letters and Symbols
The Sackler Center for Arts Education seeks innovative scholarly proposals, covering the period 1900–1970, that concern artists who lived or worked in Western Europe. Papers addressing painting and/or sculpture are encouraged. This ongoing series of programs dedicated to emerging scholars demonstrates the Guggenheim Museum’s commitment to research that deepens, reexamines, or problematizes the work of artists and art-historical currents surrounding the founding collection established by Solomon R. Guggenheim and the museum’s first director Hilla Rebay as well as subsequent acquisitions throughout the 20th century. The program is hosted by Kenneth Silver, Professor of Modern Art, New York University, and Anne Umland, The Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Curator of Painting and Sculpture, Museum of Modern Art, with Guggenheim curators Tracey Bashkoff, Carmen Giménez, Vivien Greene, and Karole Vail.