Futurism and the Avant-Garde - OU Art History Study Days at Tate Modern

Saturday 27 June 2009, 11.00–17.15
Starr Auditorium, Level 2, Tate Modern

This symposium explores the controversial status of Futurist movements in art history, and some of their 'avant-garde' practices. Speakers engage with various forms of Futurist art, performance and film, including the use of manifestos and demonstrations. Italian Futurism will be viewed in relation to other radical art practices across Europe. The Futurists' disdain for traditional values and their pursuit of an 'art of modern life' will be explored in relation to prevailing concepts of modernity and 'avant-garde' utopias.

The seminar has been organised by Tate Modern in collaboration with The Open University

Speakers

• Lutz Becker is a director of political and art documentaries such as ‘Double Headed Eagle’ 1972, ‘Lion of Judah’ 1981 and ‘Nuremberg in History' 2006. A practicing painter, he is also a curator of exhibitions. He collaborated with the Hayward Gallery on ‘The Romantic Spirit in German Art’ 1994, ‘Art and Power’ 1995 and Tate Modern on ‘Century City’ 2001. He is an expert on Russian Constructivism and Italian Futurism. His recent exhibition on European photomontage 'Cut & Paste' was held at the Estorick Collection, London.
• Mary Ann Caws is Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature, Graduate School, City University of New York. She has edited the HarperCollins World Reader, the Yale Anthology of Twentieth Century French Poetry, Surrealist Love Poems, Surrealist Painters and Poets, Surrealism, and authored The Surrealist Look, Glorious Eccentrics, Surprised in Translation, To the Boathouse: a Memoir, Provencal Cooking: Savoring the Simple Life in France, and illustrated biographies of Picassos’s Weeping Woman, Proust, Picasso, James, Woolf, and Dali. She has co-translated volumes of René Char, Tzara, Reverdy, Breton, and Desnos, and held Fulbright, Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation fellowships.
• David Cottington is a Professor of Art History at Kingston University London, and the author of several books on the early twentieth century avant-garde, including Cubism in the Shadow of War: The Avant-Garde and Politics in Paris 1905-1914 (Yale University Press, 1998), Cubism and its Histories (Manchester University Press, 2004) and Modern Art: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2005). He is currently working on two books about the avant-garde.
• Alex Danchev is Professor of International Relations at the Univeristy of Nottingham. He is deeply interested in the interconnections and intersections of art and politics. He is the author of a number of widely acclaimed biographies, among them GEORGES BRAQUE (Penguin, 2007). His most recent books are PICASSO FURIOSO (2008) and ON ART AND WAR AND TERROR (2009). He is currently working on a biography of Cezanne, and a collection of artists' manifestos.
• Matthew Gale is Head of Displays at Tate Modern and curator of Futurism.

For more information and to book see: http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/symposia/18175.htm