Brightness begins: Encountering mortality in Jay Defeo's last paintings
Ein Vortrag von Prof. Dr. Richard Candida Smith (University of California,
Berkeley)
Ort: Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut, Goethestr. 31, 45128 Essen
(Öffentliche Veranstaltung)
Mit anschließender Podiumsdiskussion: Prof. Dr. Luisa Passerini
(Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut, Essen/The European University Institute,
Florenz), Prof. Dr. Alexander von Plato (FernUniversität Hagen), Prof. Dr.
Harald Welzer (Universität Witten-Herdecke/Kulturwissenschaftliches
Institut, Essen)
In his lecture he uses aging, maturation, and mortality as three contrasting lenses for looking at the career of abstract painter Jay DeFeo (1929-1989) after she turned 50. He argues that "thing-ification" effected through art is a key for understanding mortality as a social relationship rather than as a biological or even psychological event. As DeFeo confronted the limits of her own life, she put the habits of family and sexuality behind her to inhabit more fully the professional institutions that made her work, hence the life she chose, meaningful.
Richard Candida Smith is professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also directs the Regional Oral History Office. He is the author of Utopia and Dissent: Art, Poetry, and Politics in California and Mallarme's Children: Symbolism and the Renewal of Experience