Art, Life & Politics: American Printmaking from the 1960s to Today at Fondation Custodia

June 4 & 5, 2018
Fondation Custodia, Paris

This international conference looked at the ways printmaking engaged with and often challenged American society and politics from the 1960s to today.

Special attention was given to print workshops, collaborative practices, and the ways in which the print media encouraged art activism. Focusing on the specificity of materiality and creative process, the conference sought to examine how the various layers of these works could be socially and/or politically encoded. Among the questions speakers addressed: how was the meaning of artistic authorship redefined through printmaking? Who were the audiences? How did artists use original multiples at a time when the personal and the political became increasingly intertwined?

This conference was held in conjunction with the exhibition Le Rêve américain: du pop art à nos jours. Estampes du British Museum, a collaboration between the Fondation Custodia, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the British Museum.

The embedded video features the conference’s keynote by Stephen Coppel. Please click here to view all of the presentations on Youtube.

Speakers:

  • Stephen Coppel, Curator, Modern Prints and Drawings, British Museum
  • Jacqueline Francis, Associate Professor and Chair, Graduate Program in Visual and Critical Studies, California College of the Arts
  • Élisabeth Lebovici, Independent Art Historian & Critic
  • Laurence Schmidlin, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne
  • Richard Shiff, Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art at the University of Texas at Austin
  • Susan Tallman, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago & Editor-in-Chief, Art in Print
  • Hervé Vanel, Assistant Professor, Art History, The American University of Paris

Moderators:

  • Katherine Bourguignon, Curator, Terra Foundation for American Art
  • Catherine Daunt, Hamish Parker Curator of Modern & Contemporary Graphic Art, British Museum

To view and download the full program, please click here.

Videography by Romain Grésillon.