This conference explores the powerful and variegated engagement with the social in visual art from the aftermath of the Revolutions of 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871 to the reshaping of the political landscape by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. How did producers of pictures and other forms of visual imagery respond to and assist in the construction of an environment configured by the class divisions and conflicts endemic to developed capitalism? Our aim is to examine how this new social landscape was visualized in artistic initiatives that took a variety of forms, from social realism to avant-garde experimentation.

The conference begins on Friday evening with introductory talks on the conference theme. On Saturday presentations by an international panel of distinguished speakers will be complemented by discussion of the broader issues raised by the conference, including the continued relevance of social art history for our contemporary political period and for cultural history more generally.

VISUALIZING THE SOCIAL - Schedule

Friday September 22, 5pm-7pm
Alex Potts (History of Art, University of Michigan) ‘Introduction: Visual Art and the Politics of the Social’
Geoff Eley (History, University of Michigan), keynote talk ‘Intellectuals, Socialism, and the Social: Germany, 1875-1933’.

Saturday September 23, 9am-6pm

The Age of Capital
9:00-9:15 Introductory comments
9:15 - 10:45
Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby (History of Art, University of California Berkeley) ‘Creole Degas’
Steve Edwards (History of Art, Birkbeck College, UK) ‘Suspended Time: Antoine Claudet's studio at Regent Street and the Shock of 1848’
10:45-11:00 Coffee break
1:00 – 12:30
André Dombrowski (History of Art and Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, University of Pennsylvania) ‘Instants, Moments, Minutes: Monet and Time Discipline’
Marnin Young (Art History, Yeshiva University) ‘Seurat, Spatiality and the Politics of Form’
12:30-1:00 Response paper by Alex Fraser (University of Michigan, History of Art) and general discussion

1:00-2:00 Lunch

Communism, Revolution and the Social
2:00-3:30
Andrés Mario Zervigón (Rutgers University, Art History and Center for Cultural Analysis) ‘The Raised and Mangled Hand of Leftist Solidarity,1911-1933’
Andrew Hemingway (History of Art, University College London, UK, Emeritus) ‘Class Compositions: Visual Forms of the Mass in American Realist Art, c. 1905-35’
3:30-3:45 Break
3:45-5:15
Christina Kiaer (Northwestern University, Art History) ‘Revolution Every Day: Propagandizing Women in Early Soviet Russia’
Gail Day (History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds, UK) ‘Every day, something happens to us: Realism at the crossroads’
5:15-5:45 Response paper by Grant Mandarino (History of Art, University of Michigan) and general discussion
5:45-6:00 Concluding discussion