CAA Preview Talks with Emmanuel Ortega and Christopher Reeves
UIC Art History Colloquium
February 11, 2022
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Location
Zoom
Calendar
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Emmanuel Ortega, "Disciplined by our Disciplines, Art History as Absolution"
"This presentation is in preparation for the Distinguished Scholar session at the 110th CAA Annual Conference, which will honor the work of Art Historian Dr. Kirsten Pai Buick’s achievements in the field of art history.”
Dr. Kirsten Pai Buick opens her book, Child of the Fire: Mary Edmonia Lewis and the Problem of Art History’s Black and Indian Subject, with the following line: “To echo one of the most famous opening lines in the history of cinema, I believe in Art History.” It has been through the comprehensive understanding of pictorial conventions and historical context that she has been able to deconstruct art history’s master tools. I believe that it is in her analysis of the historiography of the field, along with a re-evaluation of its most basic tools that she is able to avoid what she calls “doing the work of the object.”
Ultimately, Dr. Buick’s work is a call, in the spirit of quoting popular media, “to see with eyes unclouded by hate.”
Emmanuel Ortega (PhD, Art History, University of New Mexico) is the Marilynn Thoma Scholar in Art of the Spanish Americas and an Assistant Professor in Colonial Latin American Art at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Recently published essays include, "The Mexican Picturesque and the Sentimental Nation: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Landscape,” published in the June 2021 issue of the Art Bulletin; and “The Sentimental Fantasy of Miscegenation: La Malinche in the Popular Mexican Imaginary,” which will be included in the Denver Art Museum's exhibition catalog titled “Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche,” opening in the Spring of 2022. He is a recurrent lecturer and member of the Board of Directors of Arquetopia Foundation based in Mexico, Peru, and Italy, one of the largest artist residencies worldwide.
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Christopher Reeves, "Musical Freedom in 1970s London: Sun Ra and the Scratch Orchestra"
In November 1970, Sun Ra and his Arkestra performed at London’s Music Now festival, the occasion being the first time Ra and his group had been invited to play in the country. Ra and the Arkestra’s performance, while well received, was nonetheless met with some bewilderment by critics accustomed to Music Now’s more Eurocentric brand of experimental and improvised music and compared the group to The Scratch Orchestra, a mixed ensemble of visual and performance artists and skilled and amateur musicians. In this presentation, I follow this comparison further as a means to look at some general successes and limits of the pursuit of musical freedom and its public reception in 1970s London.
Chris Reeves is a Chicago based creative researcher and artist and received his PhD in art history at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His current work and research is around the interplay between performance art, music making, and the vernacular. His work has been published in various forms and shapes - vinyl LPs, a large cardboard mountain, didactic wall texts, art and academic journals, a whoopee cushion, and numerous artist books. In 2020, his first book, “The World’s Worst: A Guide to the Portsmouth Sinfonia” was released on Soberscove Press and was featured in The Washington Post, Yale Book Review, Hauser & Wirth, and The Wire magazine.
Date posted
Feb 7, 2022
Date updated
Feb 7, 2022