Underskog

PLEASE JOIN US FOR HAL FOSTER’S FORART LECTURE on November 4 and the subsequent FORART SEMINAR on November 5 that revisits the critical legacy of Asger Jorn

THE FORART LECTURE 2011
HAL FOSTER: ON POST CRITICISM

Friday November 4, 18:00 – 20:00
Literaturhuset, Wergeland

Critical theory took a serious beating during the culture wars of the 1980s and the 1990s, and the 2000s were only worse. Under Bush the demand for affirmation was all but total, and today there is little space for critique even in the universities and the museums. Bullied by conservative commentators, most academics no longer stress the importance of critical thinking for an engaged citizenry, and, dependent on corporate sponsors, most curators no longer promote the critical debate once deemed essential to the public reception of advanced art. Indeed, the sheer out-of-date-ness of criticism in an art world that couldn’t care less seems evident enough. Yet what are the options on offer? Celebrating beauty? Affirming affect? Hoping for a “redistribution of the sensible”? Trusting in “the general intellect”? The post-critical condition is supposed to release us from our straightjackets (historical, theoretical, and political), yet for the most part it has abetted a relativism that has little to do with pluralism.

Hal Foster is Townsend Martin Professor of Art & Architecture at Princeton & co-editor of “October” magazine and books. His most recent books are The Art-Architecture Complex (Verso, 2011) and The First Pop Age: Painting and Subjectivity in the Art of Hamilton, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Richter, and Ruscha. Previous books by Foster include The Return of the Real (MIT Press, 1996) and Compulsive Beauty (MIT Press, 1993).

THE FORART SEMINAR 2011
LE FUTUR DU PASSÉ: ASGER JORN REVISITED
Saturday, November 5, 10:00 – 15:30
The National Museum of Art (The National Gallery, Forelesningssalen)

Speakers: HAL FOSTER, MIKKEL BOLT RASMUSSEN, ODA WILDHAGEN GJESSING, HELLE BRØNS, KNUT STENE-JOHANSEN.
The Danish artist Asger Jorn (1914-1973) played an important role in European art during the 1950’s and 60’s, constructing networks all around the continent. Influenced by Munch and Picasso as well as Kandinsky, Klee and Miró, Jorn insisted on the primordiality of painting and the fictional character of artistic creation at a time when avant-garde artists challenged the very concept of art itself. Yet, his interest in old Nordic art and culture shows his desire for an alternative to the classical heritage of southern Europe. One of the last modernists, Jorn was deeply engaged in the politics of his time and preoccupied with the political impact of artistic creation. Through movements such as Helhesten, CoBrA, Mouvement international pour un Bauhaus imaginiste, International Situationism and beyond, Asger Jorn operated on the boundary between art and life. To revisit Asger Jorn today is to discuss the ways in which his works may offer new sensibilities, politics and plateaus for navigating in critical times.

PROGRAM:

10.00 – 10:30 Knut Stene-Johansen: Introduction (Asger Jorn, The Future of the Past and The Security Entrances).

10:30 -11:30 Hal Foster: Animal Jorn, Creaturely Cobra

11:30 -12.30 Lunch.

12:30 – 13:30 Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen: Critique and Crisis: The Avant-Garde in a Post-Revolutionary Time.

13:45 – 14:15 Oda Wildhagen Gjessing: Asger Jorn and Edvard Munch. Regarding the ‘transition leading to the liberation of color, to painterly spontaneity’.

14:15 – 14:45 Helle Brøns: Masculine Resistance. Art, Gender and Desire in the Production of Asger Jorn.

15:00 – 15:30 Roundtable with all participants and Dorthe Aagesen, Senior Research Curator at Statens Museum for Kunst, Denmark