EMSAH Seminar: What do Caravaggio and Emily Kngwarreye have in common?

Event Details

Date:

Friday, 27 July 2012

Time:

12:00 pm

Room:

601

UQ Location:

Michie Building (St Lucia)

URL:

http://www.emsah.uq.edu.au/index.html?page=181888

Event category(s):

Full Description:: This paper considers what is at stake in comparing artworks by the Baroque figurative painter Caravaggio with canvas paintings by Australia’s 20th century Anmatjerr artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye.
How can we determine an objective basis to describe both of their work as ‘good painting’ in ways that bridge the autonomous difference demanded by postcolonial politics?
The discussion examines the contested ground of aesthetic judgment and objective value in the context of Aboriginal art. I will apply Satya P. Mohanty’s idea of ‘open-textured value’ and the strategy of self-conscious embodiment of error to consider aesthetic value in this context as a dynamic concept for making a better world.

About the presenter: Dr Sally Butler is Senior Lecturer in Art History in the School of EMSAH. Publications include Our Contemporary Aboriginal Art from Lockhart River (UQP 2007), Before Time Today: Reinventing Tradition in Aurukun Aboriginal Art (UQP 2010), and “Translating the spectacle: John Mawurndjul’s intercultural aesthetic” in Between Indigenous Australia and Europe – John Mawurndjul (Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra & Deiter Vermag, Berlin, 2009).