Going Nowhere?: 1972, or thereabouts

Is this for you?

This conference is part of ‘1972, or thereabouts’, a year-long research theme at the Centre for Research in Visual Culture at the University of Nottingham. Conference to be held at the University of Nottingham on 26 April. In-person talks only.

Inspired by the title of Alvin Greenberg’s 1972 novel, this conference seeks to trace the directions in which art history has moved since the transformations of the early 1970s. Over fifty years have passed since the publication of articles such as ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists’ (Linda Nochlin, 1971) and ‘It is Not Enough to Say Black is Beautiful’ (Frank Bowling, 1971); books such as Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution (T.J. Clark, 1972) and the English translation of Mythologies (Roland Barthes, 1972); and the screening of Ways of Seeing on British television (John Berger, 1972). These works raised vital questions about art and its relationship to the politics of identity, vision, and modernism. However, given the continued urgency and immediacy with which the same questions continue to be posed today, we are interested in asking whether those ground-breaking efforts actually broke new ground, or whether we are still standing on an art-historical landscape established in the early 1970s.