CFP: Producing and Consuming the Image of the Female Artist – CAA 2020

We invite proposals for a special session at the upcoming College Art Association conference (Chicago, 12-15 February 2020). Artists and art historians are welcome to contribute, with no restrictions as to geographical range or temporal spans.

PRODUCING AND CONSUMING THE IMAGE OF THE FEMALE ARTIST

American illustrator Zoë Mozert (1907-1993) was the ultimate 1940s “Calendar Girl,” famously serving as her own model for the pin-ups that she so prolifically painted. Newsreels and magazine coverage fostered a fantasy of an artist-model who willingly and flirtatiously revealed herself to viewers; her assertive engagement with commerce and publicity and canny use of her own body helped to sustain her creative career.

Although Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz incisively analyzed and articulated the tropes, “myths,” and “legends” of male artist-creators throughout history, the image of the female artist has not been as extensively investigated. This panel invites explorations of the role of women artists in society and art history, across chronological and geographical boundaries. How have female and nonbinary artists embraced, rejected, or adapted stereotypes of artistic identity and success for their own ends? When the dominant genre of artistic achievement has been the representation of the female nude, how have these artists inserted or adapted the representation of their own bodies? What does it mean to deploy one’s own body in image-making? What does the exploitation through idealization of the artist’s body mean? How might we understand bodies as sites of and vehicles for exploration, experimentation, and even protest?

Co-Chairs: Alison J Carr (ajc@alisonjcarr.net), Ellery E Foutch (efoutch@middlebury.edu)

Proposals (2-pg CV, 100-word abstract, images) due by 23 July. Details here: https://caa.confex.com/caa/2020/webprogrampreliminary/meeting.html