Course objectives:

1)    To understand how our ways of seeing visual arts engage with time, and further, how visual arts embody time

2)    To think about time as not just calendrical, but as it is embedded in culture, feeling, and belief

3)    To respond to and launch arguments about time and temporality in writing (blog posts, an exhibition “label,” an abbreviated 2600-word research paper in the form of a catalogue entry, and its various elements) and in conference with each other (workshopping, conference discussion, research presentations in a symposium at the end of the term)

4)    To practice writing as a way of seeing

5)    To conduct original research on an image of your choice and produce a focused 2600-word catalogue essay with support from your colleagues in conference, Professor Claypool, and the UA librarians

6)    To co-curate a Google Arts & Cultures exhibition and publish your curatorial writing

WEEK 1. September 3 INTRODUCTIONS: WHY TIME?

“Begin at the beginning ... and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

                                                                                    Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Blog 1.0: Introduce yourself to colleagues in the conference by posting a photograph of a thing or place that caused time to stop for you. Please come to conference on Tuesday prepared to share your thoughts about it. Post before Tuesday, September 3 at noon (12 pm) MST.

Read

Alexander Nemerov, “Introduction: Experience,” in Experience (Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2019), 10-23.*

Key terms/concepts

• moment

• stillness vs movement

• anachronic

• achronic

• nonsynchronous

• heterochronic

• chronology

• modernity

• ontology

• crisis

WEEK 2. September 10: WESTERN ABSOLUTE TIME

“You see, my friend,” Mr. Bounderby put in, “we are the kind of people who know the value of time, and you are the kind of people who don’t know the value of time.”

                                                                                    Charles Dickens, Hard Times

Blog 2.0: Look carefully the five paintings listed below under IMAGES. They are linked to Google Arts & Cultures or museum websites so that you can zoom in to see the details. Choose one. Where does your eye first go? Why? Show us what you see first in 2-4 sentences.

Read

Hélène Valance and Tatsiana Zhurauliova, introduction to “About Time: Temporality in American Art and Visual Culture,” Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 8, no. 2 (Fall 2022), https://doi.org/10.24926/24716839.15008

Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space 1880–1918 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1983), “The Nature of Time,” excerpt pp. 10–15.*

André Dombrowski, “Impressionism and the Standardization of Time: Claude Monet at Gare Saint-Lazare,” The Art Bulletin 102, no. 2 (2020): 91–120. (eJournal)

OPTIONAL: Phillip Thurtle, The Emergence of Genetic Rationality: Space, Time, and Information in American Biological Science, 1870–1920 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007), introduction. (eBook)

OPTIONAL: André Dombrowski, Monet’s Minutes: Impressionism and the Industrialization of Time (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023), “Introduction,” pp. 1–20.*

Images

William Harnett (b. Ireland, d. New York City, 1848–1892), The Last Rose of Summer, 1886, Oil on canvas, 61 x 50.8 cmCincinnati Museum of Art

John Haberle (New Haven, CT, 1856–1933), Time and Eternity, c. 1889–90, Oil on canvas, 35.5 x 25.4 cm. Collection of the New Britain Museum of Art

Claude Monet (b. Paris, d. Giverny, 1840–1926), The Gare Saint-Lazare: Arrival of a Train, 1877. Oil on canvas, 101.3 x 83 cm. Harvard.

George Elgar Hicks (b. Lymington, UK, d. Oldham, UK, 1824–1914), The General Post Office: One Minute to Six, 1859–1860, Oil on canvas. The Museum of London [90.276]

Key Terms

• Chrononormativity

• Judeo-Christian Time

• Enlightenment

• Linear time

WEEK 3. September 17: TIME AS TECHNOLOGY

“To all appearances, the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing.”

Marcel Duchamp

Blog 3.0: Write a one-paragraph visual analysis of one of the pictures listed below. They are linked to Google Arts & Cultures/MoMA so that you can zoom in to see the details.

Read

Keith Moxey, Visual Time: The Image in History (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013), introduction. (eBook)

Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space 1880–1918 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1983), “The Nature of Time,” two excerpts, 16–35; 143–152.*

Lewis Pyenson, “The Einstein-Picasso Question: Neo-Idealist Abstraction in the Decorative Arts and Manufactures,” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 43, no. 3 (June 2013): 281–333. GRADUATE STUDENTS read full article; UNDERGRADS read abstract and pp. 304 (Abstract Ornamentation of Rooms)–333.

OPTIONAL: Dawn Ades, “Art and Time in the Twentieth Century” in The Story of Time, edited by Kate Lippencott (London: Merrell Halberton, 1999), 202–211.*

OPTIONAL: Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), pp. 26–27 for simple definition of Enlightenment time. (eBook)

Key terms

• modern, modernity, modernization

• “now” point

• technology

• general relativity

• fourth dimension

Study Images

Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907. Oil on canvas; 244 x 234 cm. MoMA.

Marcel Duchamp (b. Normandy, d. Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1887–1968), Nu descendant un escalier (Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2), 1912. Oil on canvas; 147 x 89.2 cm. Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Giacomo Balla (b. Turin, d. Rome, 1871–1958), Dinamismo di un cane al guinzaglio (Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash), 1912, Oil on canvas, 89.8 x 109.8 cm. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

WEEK 4. September 24: WORKSHOPPING THE EXHIBITION

The challenge for the curator today is how to resist essentialist constructs of artistic otherness without succumbing to the temptation to withdraw into the self-protection of a prejudicial and false universalism. And as diverse cultural systems jostle for space and recognition in the processes of migration and globalization, post-colonialism and multiculturalism, so do the intensities of their differing self-awareness enhance the inevitable crises of confidence in the benefits of a common associational life in the contact zone. This requires that the cognitive framework of curatorial fieldwork remains alive to these intensities.

                                                                                                Okwui Enwezor

Blog 4.0. Explore Google Arts & Cultures and locate one online exhibition that speaks to you because of its design. Post the link to the blog. Today we will discuss decolonizing time as a curatorial project, the exhibition, label, and catalogue essay writing.

Read

James Clifford, “The Times of the Curator,” in Intense Proximity: An Anthology of the Near and Far, edited by Okwui Enwezor (Paris: Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Tour Atlantique and Artlys, 2012), 70–8.

CURATORIAL PROJECT

There are four sections to our Google Arts & Cultures exhibition about decolonizing time: the “West,” China, Western Asia (Palestine), Mesoamerica (Mexica)

THE WEST

1.     One painting from Week 2 that we will choose together that defines mechanized, linear, “absolute” Western time dating to the Enlightenment

2.     Marcel Duchamp (b. Normandy, d. Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1887–1968), Nu descendant un escalier (Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2), 1912. Oil on canvas; 147 x 89.2 cm. Philadelphia Museum of Art. OR Giacomo Balla (b. Turin, d. Rome, 1871–1958), Dinamismo di un cane al guinzaglio (Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash), 1912, Oil on canvas, 89.8 x 109.8 cm. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

CHINA

3.     A Chinese handscroll in the UA Mactaggart collection TBA.

4.     Song Dong (Beijing, b. 1966), Writing Time with Water

WESTERN ASIA

5.     Persian ornament to be chosen in class

6.     Hazem Harb (Gaza, b. 1980), Map of Land Series, one or two images from it

MESOAMERICA

7.     Frida Kahlo (Mexico City, 1907–1954), Autorretrato en la frontera entre México y los Estados Unidos (Self-portrait on the Borderline between Mexico and the United States), 1932, Oil on canvas, Private collection

8.     One of the objects in Kahlo’s painting or another object to be selected together

Google Arts and Cultures exhibitions to think with:

Power, Propaganda, and Persuasion in Mesoamerican Art

Colonial Background: The Museum of Ethnology Hamburg

WEEK 5. October 1: UNFIXED TEMPORALITIES: TIME AS WATER IN CHINA

“Worlds and particles, bodies and beings, time and space: All are transient expressions of the Dao.”

                                                                                                Laozi 老子, Huahujing 化胡經

Blog 5.0: Define time as Sarah Allan or Yuk Hui discuss it.

NB: Today we will discuss the articles in the first hour and then visit the Mactaggart Art Collection

READ

Sarah Allan, The Way of Water and Sprouts of Virtue (Albany: State University of New York, 1997), excerpt. (eBook)

François Jullien, “Gaze or Contemplation?” in The Great Image Has No form, or On The Nonobject through Painting, translated by Jane Marie Todd (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), excerpt 159–167.*

GRADUATE STUDENTS: Yuk Hui, Art and Cosmotechnics  (eBook) or Yuk Hui, The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics (Falmouth: Urbanomic Media Ltd, 2016) (eBook)

OPTIONAL: Eugene Wang, “Time in Early Chinese Art,” in A Companion to Chinese Art, edited by Martin J. Powers, Katherine R. Tsiang (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2016), 212–31. (eBook)

OPTIONAL: David Leong, The Chinese View on Time – A Reflection on The Concept of Time in Dao/Yijing And Modern Science

Discussion facilitators (#1):
For study images, key terms, and questions about the reading, see blog

WEEK 6. October 8: CHINA: TESSERING THROUGH TIME

“Oh, we don’t travel at the speed of anything,” Mrs. Whatsit explained earnestly. “We tesser. Or you might say, we wrinkle.”

                                                                        Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

Blog 6.0 Write a one-paragraph visual analysis of one of the pictures that we viewed during the field trip to the Mactaggart Art Collection last week.

READ

Lisa Claypool, “An Artist Paints Humanity’s Pain: Lin Fengmian’s Late Paintings,” draft article, please do not circulate.

Jiang Tianyue, “Cubism Revisited: The Late Work of Lin Fengmian,” Yishu 9, no. 4 (July/August): 46–62.

Michael Loewe, “Cyclical and Linear Concepts of Time in China,” in The Story of Time, edited by Kate Lippencott (London: Merrell Halberton, 1999), 76–79

OPTIONAL: Danian Hu, China and Albert Einstein: The Reception of the Physicist and His Theory in China 1917–1979(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005), Prologue and Chapter 2 “China Embraces the Theory of Relativity”

IMAGES

See images in Lisa’s draft article

WEEK 7. October 15: WORKSHOP: CATALOGUE ESSAYS

“Time is the best author.”

                                                                                                Charlie Chaplin

Blog 7.0 2600-word Catalogue Essay, first act. Formulation of a question about the visual object you have elected to write about for our curatorial project. Spend some serious time mulling over what you see. What I would like you to do is to carefully think through and develop a meaningful, provocative question that you wish to pose of it. The work should suggest the question, and not the other way around. In your short essay, first write a visual analysis and then detail the process you used in devising the question, the problems you foresee in answering it, and why you think it is meaningful in relationship to time and temporality. That is to say, do not simply draft a generalized, simple statement of the question; I want to see evidence of your deliberate and reasoned approach to developing a good question. Why are you asking this question? Do NOT attempt to essay uninformed, generalized (and therefore uncompelling) answers to your own question. One lengthy paragraph or two, please post to the blog with an image by 10 pm on MONDAY so that we can read them before the workshop.

WEEK 8. October 22: WESTERN ASIA, Persian Cosmophilia
Blog 8.0 Define cosmophilia. Then redefine it in your own words, taking into account King’s and Stowasser’s writing on the nature of time in the Islamic world.

READ

Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom, “Ornament and Islamic Art,” in Cosmophilia (Boston: Boston College, 2006), 9–30.

James Trilling, Ornament: A Modern Perspective (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003), preface and endnote on cosmophobia.*

David A. King, “Time and Space in Islam,” in The Story of Time, edited by Kate Lippencott (London: Merrell Halberton, 1999), 56–59.

Barbara Stowasser, The Day begins at Sunset: Perceptions of Time in the Islamic World (London, New York: IB Tauris, 2014), excerpt of chapter “Time Sticks,” pp. 160–165. (eBook)

OPTIONAL: Carol Bier, “Art and Mithal: Reading Geometry as Visual Commentary,” Iranian Studies 41, no. 4 (September 2008): 491–509.

IMAGES

Funerary Stele, 1050–1640-41, Glazed terracotta, Musée de l’institut du Monde Arabe, Paris [AI 86-03]

Dish with eight-pointed star, 1640–1670, fritware with painted and incised underglaze porcelain. Asian Art Museum, San Francisco.

Discussion facilitators (#2):
For study images, key terms, and questions about the reading, see blog

WEEK 9. October 29:  WESTERN ASIA, PALESTINIAN TIMES

زمانه به جز زمانه ما را نمی‌آزارد
Translation: "Time does not torment us, except for our own time."

                                                                                    Saadi (13th-century Persian poet)

No blog post today. The redrafted exploratory along with an annotated bibliography of four sources is due today, Tuesday, October 29, at 10 pm.

Read

What is Palestine Time? – Fellows’ seminar by Greg Burris

Greg Burris, The Palestinian Idea (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2019), chapter 4 “Hollow Time” (eBook)

Norah Abokhodair, “Time in Design: Cross-Cultural Exploration of Time in the Arab World”

Images
Hazem Harb, Map of Land Series #1, 2019, Collage of archival materials, photography on wood, 200 x 120 cm. Contemporary Art Platform, Kuwait

Hazem Harb, Map of Land Series #2, 2019, Collage of archival materials, photography on wood, 200 x 120 cm. Contemporary Art Platform, Kuwait

Hazem Harb, Map of Land Series #3, 2019, Collage of archival materials, photography on wood, 200 x 120 cm. Contemporary Art Platform, Kuwait

Hazem Harb, Map of Land Series, #4, 2019, Collage of archival materials, photography on wood, 200 x 120 cm. Contemporary Art Platform, Kuwait

Discussion facilitators (#3):
For study images, key terms, and questions about the reading, see blog

WEEK 10. November 5: MESOAMERICA: MEXICO
“Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away.”

                                                                                    Frida Kahlo

Blog 9.0: Post draft of label.

Read

Nancy Deffebach, “Revitalizing the Past: Precolumbian Figures from West Mexico in Kahlo’s Paintings,” in María Izquierdo and Frida Kahlo: Challenging Visions in Modern Mexican Art (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2015), 69–86. (eBook)

Anthony Aveni, “Mesoamerican and Andean Timekeeping,” in The Story of Time, edited by Kate Lippencott (London: Merrell Halberton, 1999), 52–55.*

The Ancient Future: Mesoamerican and Andean Timekeeping

OPTIONAL: Harley Shaiken, “Diego and Frida: Art Transcends Borders,” Berkeley Review of Latin American Studies(Spring 2015): 30–35.
Key terms

• Mexica/Aztec/Maya

• Mesoamerican timekeeping

Images

Frida Kahlo, Autorretrato en la frontera entre México y los Estados Unidos (Self-portrait on the Borderline between Mexico and the United States), 1932, Oil on canvas, Private collection

Objects in painting:

Aztec temple at Malinalco

Precolumbian figure of woman and child, Jalisco culture, in the collection of Museo Nacional de Antropologa in Mexico City but not available online

Anthropomorphic vessel from Casas Grandes, see Lisa’s ppt (Médioni and Pinto, Art in Ancient Mexico)

To consider:

Coronation Stone of Motecuhzoma II (Stone of the Five Suns)

Teocalli de la guerra sagrada

Figure of Xipe Totec

Serpiente de cascabel

Xuihcoatl, 1507, Dumbarton Oaks

Discussion facilitators (#4):
For study images, key terms, and questions about the reading, see blog

WEEK 11. Reading Week November 12–November 15

WEEK 12. November 19: GLOBAL CHRONOPHOBIAS

Art and technology rarely works, I think, and it has to do with the element of time, the surprise situation when timing becomes absolutely the most important thing.

Maurice Tuchman (curator)

Blog 10.0: Post a photograph of a time-based work of art of your choice. No prose needed.

Read

Meiling Cheng, Beijing Xingwei: Contemporary Chinese Time-Based Art (London, New York, Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2013), 25–33, 412-415.*

Pamela Lee, Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960s (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2004), 1–31. (eBook)

OPTIONAL: Elizabeth Freeman, “Introduction: Queer and Not Now,” in Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories (Duke University Press, 2010), 1–20. (eBook) https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1198v7z.5.p. 3

Images
Joseph Kosuth, Clock (one & five), English/Latin version, 1965, mixed media. Tate Gallery, London [TO 7319]
Hsieh Teh-ching
Shi Wenhua 史文華
Song Dong

Discussion facilitators (#5):
For study images, key terms, and questions about the reading, see blog

WEEK 13. November 26: WORKSHOP LABELS

Blog 11.0. Post your label, as close to the final version as possible.

WEEK 14. December 3: ABOUT TIME: Symposium

Blog 12.0. Post a short 3-4 sentence abstract of the talk that you will be giving in our symposium this week on the work of art you have been focusing on for your catalogue entry by Monday at 10 pm so that we have time to read them beforehand

The University of Alberta acknowledges that we are located on Treaty 6 territory, and respects the histories, languages, and cultures of the First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and all First Peoples of Canada, whose presence continues to enrich our vibrant community.