ArtCenter Talks: Graduate Seminar, The First Decade 1986-1995

(Paperback)

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The transcripts in this volume are taken from the Graduate Seminar, which organized over 300 artist and critics talks. They reveal not only the influential pedagogy behind ArtCenter, but also paint a portrait of the student body - a group that includes numer ous influential contemporary artists. Discussions between students and faculty members range from what it means to be an artist and the changing role of art in society, to how artists function within an academic setting. Introduced in 1986 as an initiativ e by Richard Hertz (Chair, Academic Studies, 1979 - 2003), the ArtCenter College of Design Graduate Art Department celebrates its thirtieth anniversary in 2016. This book documents the first decade of the department's existence by presenting a selection from over three - hundred talks. This volume also includes reproductions of slides used by participants at the time. Bringing the presentations to life, these archival images offer a sense of the context and spirit of the original seminars. Together, an introduc tion by Stan Douglas - acclaimed contemporary artist and ArtCenter Graduate faculty member - and a foreword by Diana Thater and Jason E. Smith, Chair and co - chair of Graduate Art, present this volume as a crucial introduction to the pedagogy of contemporary ar t.

Reviews

Recent Press on Stan Douglas

"Since the 1980s, when he was a key figure among a group of emerging photo-conceptualists in Vancouver, Stan Douglas has depicted the social fissures of the postwar period."--Harel Rintzler "Art in America"

Author Bio

Since the late 1980s, Stan Douglas (b. 1960, Vancouver) has created films, photographs, and installations that reexamine particular locations or past events. His works often take their points of departure in local settings, from which broader issues can be identified. Making frequent use of both analog and digital technologies, Douglas appropriates existing Hollywood genres and borrows from classic literary works to create ready-made contextual frameworks for his complex, reimagined narratives that pertain to specific places or historical events. Since 2009, Douglas has been a core faculty member of the Graduate Art Department of ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California.

Jason E. Smith is currently associate chair of the Graduate Art MFA program at ArtCenter College of Design. His writing and research are largely concerned with contemporary art and aesthetics, philosophy, and political thought. He has published in Artforum, The Brooklyn Rail, Critical Inquiry, Parrhesia, Radical Philosophy, and South Atlantic Quarterly, among other journals and publications.

Diana Thater is a Los Angeles-based artist who has created pioneering film, video, and installation-based works since the early 1990s. Her primary emphasis is on the tension between the natural environment and mediated reality, and by extension, between tamed and wild, and science and magic. Thater earned her MFA from the ArtCenter College of Design. She now serves as chair of ArtCenter's Graduate Art MFA program.