Getty Graduate Symposium 2024: Session III (Video 3 of 3)

welcome back everyone to our audience here and our audience online the day is flying by we're ready to begin our third session this afternoon starting with our first Speaker Muhammad Raa Mirai who will be introduced by Sven speaker both joining us from the University of California Santa Barbara welcome thank you so much I'd like to thank the organizers of this wonderful event for having us it's been a wonderful experience I'm s speaker from UC Santa Barbara and it's my great honor to introduce Muhammad RAR misai who is a PhD candidate in the history of art and architecture department at UC Santa Barbara mamed resar specializes in global post-war art with an emphasis on Iran his dissertation is entitled bahman moases and the visual politics of 1960s Iran and it examines the motivations and implications of bman Mo's shift from abstraction to figurative painting in the 1960s by analyzing moresi's career and key works from 1963 to 1969 mmed resar addresses the underexplored role of figuration within Iran's then primarily formalist art community that was heavily influenced by pavi patronage m critical and scholarly contributions have been published in various journals including art margins and Italian Modern Art his accomplishments also include literary translation most notably his 2012 Persian rendering of Stefano Ben's collection of short stories entitled La grammatica thank [Applause] you thank you San for for the kind introduction and also the gri for organizing and hosting this wonderful event amidst the severe censorship of mid-60s Iran and newly imposed restrictions on book publishing the painter bahman masses employed diverse strategies to establish connections with Iranian poets writers and intellectuals this paper aims to discuss the overlooked facets of Mass's political engagement and its connections to the literary sphere by examining Massa involvement with committed culture in 60s Iran marked by the imperative to take a stance and advocate for societal transformation this study explores the ways in which moases highlighted the limitations of politically politicized modernist art practice in postar Iran as argued here moases utilization of allegories serves as a means for him to express opposition in a highly restricted time during the 60s a decade shaped by the aftermath of the 1953 British American orchestrated coup Iran witnessed a remarkable proliferation of magazines and Publications in spite of new regulations that govern book publishing historian negin naavi in her book intellectuals and the state in Iran argues that Iranian intellectuals during the 60s struggled with the daunting challenge of addressing critical social issues within authoritarian constraints dominated by the control of the bahav regime this situation prompted a re-evaluation of the role of the intellectual leading critics of the regime to seek inspiration from Western thinkers particularly Jean Paul S s's writings and speeches translated and disseminated in Iranian periodicals in the early 60s ignited a fascination with the concept of tud person or commitment among Iranian intellectuals tahod or commitment signifi the dedication to society rather than searching for individualistic freedoms according to start committed writers actively employed their literary talents to engage with their times pressing social political and moral concerns they took a St stands and advocated for social change consequently commitment became an intrinsic quality within Iranian intellectual culture during the mid-60s shaping the identity of the new generation of Iranian intellectuals and demanding more active engagement from the producers of culture in Iran this paper explores the pivotal role played by the artist bahman masses in the transformative shift of artistic commitment during this critical period following his departure from Iran in 1953 for studies at the Academia de bella art in Rome masses renowned for gestural abstractions underwent a significant transition to figuration in his first solo exhibition Upon returning to tan in 196 5 this shift encountered a steep resistance within the then formalist tan art community where he was labeled as unmodern and regressive despite this paradoxically moases viewed figuration as a means to create more socially engaged paintings while the call for artist to embrace the notion of commitment originated in intellectual ual circles its incorporation into art scene lagged behind its prevalence in literature this delay can be attributed in part to substantial support from the pavi regime for art institutions endorsing various forms of abstraction as a progressive Paradigm evident in Awards one at the tan BNL and the state curated exhibitions of Iranian painting at at the Venice bada through his shift to figuration moases sought to distance himself from such manipulative influences the artist further distinguished himself from the majority of Iranian painters through active engagement with intellectuals writers and Poets his a strategies included depicting instances of Highly political Shero or new poetry in his works collaborating with committed writers translating socially oriented Italian and French literature and addressing subjects such as the third world a reference much in favor among oppositional intellectuals challenging the Sha's regime in this presentation the focus will be on one of Mass's key strategies his engagement with new poetry share and all this literary movement emerged in the 1920s by the 60s it symbolized resistance against the political uh against political oppression utilizing among other things allegorical imagery for example the noted poet Nima yich the movement's founder with whom moas maintained a close relationship until nar's death in 60 in 1960 employed imagery from the northern Iranian environment infusing it with allegorical Dimensions to reflect on the realities of the country allegory in this context involves presenting one thing in words and another in meaning nimas coded allegories crafted in response to the restrictive situation served as a mode of expression with the assistance of critics and interpreters of nimas poetry these allegories become more accessible for Iranian readers for instance according to their interpretation in imma's poetry the night becomes an allegory of Oppression while morning represents freedom this approach intering new poetry with the social aspirations of Iranians played an instrumental role in shaping the understanding of the political potential inherit in indirect or coded expression for many poets writers and artists like masses during the 1960s while moases created several all paintings in response to Nima's imagery and poetry a notable manifestation of his engagement with nar's allegories is evident in the artwork blind Eagle this piece depicts a scene based on nma yit's 1930 poem eagle of the Nile which narrates a fable about an aging and sightless Eagle seeking rejuvenation through its offers spring who are destined to guide it to a future of Promise in Mo's painting The Blind Eagle commands the composition with its imposing and a statuesque presence occupying a confined space that evokes a sense of thermal the Eagles idealized physic reminiscent of classical GRE Roman sculptures is starkly contrast with its absent eyes creating a j opposition of perfection and powerlessness while exuding power the eagle remains unable to perceive its surroundings infusing the scene with a pervasive sense of danger the intricately andin Twigs forming the Eagle's Nest resemble intangible snakes suggest in a potential threat to the vulnerable yet to be born eaglets the blind Eagle powerless to protect its unborn Offspring conveys a profound sense of defenselessness to protect his unborn Offspring uh and uh conveys a profound sense of defenselessness and impending Peril sorry this Alle orical elements in moas painting are all derived from Nemos poem the eagle of the Nile was written in 1930 this era presented a mixture of Promise as the incompetent gajar rule came to an end and uncertainty with the rise of the authoritarian leader Ras sha the founder of the pavi dynasty n eag representing the country captured this Duality through the aging egole and its Offspring despite the blindness of the once a strong ego Nemo conveyed a sense of optimism and engagement for the future through the potential of the upcoming Generations represented by the young iglet in the poem moases intentionally utilized Iz the imagery employed by Nema to make the work accessible to an Iranian audience already familiar with nar's allegorical language the year 1968 when masses painted blind Eagle marked a distinct period compared to Nemo's creation of eagle of the Nile this year witnessed a surge of discontent with the SHA regime a sparked by by the sudden death ofam R TTI a 37-year-old nationally beloved wrestling champion the regime's assertion that TTI died from suicide was met with a skepticism the mning ceremony for TTI led to the widespread protests and demonstration Across the Nation with Iranian students playing a pivotal role displaying political engagement and activism against this backdrop blind Eagle emerged as a powerful response that acknowledges the significance of the emerging generation while also encapsulating the dangers and risks they may face symbolized by the transformation of the Eagle's Nest into a snakes an image absent in the reference poem the reception of Massa alliance with committed literature such as nimas and his utilization of allegorical imagery elicited diverse responses within the visual arts community in tan some critics and Painters perceived it as a Resurgence of outdated Western artistic approaches deeming them neither Progressive nor relevant in the Contemporary context this sentiment was particularly evident during a 19 68 Round Table discussion organized by critic Javad mojabi featuring influential figures from the artistan experimental Iran Gallery including Muhammad RZA Jad ruin PB and Farid Maliki in this round table mojabi highlighted the conflicting approaches within Iranian art distinguishing between artists emphasizing formal elements in a sensibly self-reflexive works and those advocating for painting to address broader social and philosophical concerns aking to literature notably the soulle artist implied as exemplary in the second group during mojabi round table was bahman masses the critic questioned the idea that painters should be committed to subjects beyond the material and formal consideration ER ation of painting Jo that a vocal critic and a vangard painter responded to this with irony stating quote in Europe and America we see a singular approach to painting however if we consider the expressionistic or surrealistic approaches of the past then your question becomes valid should we revert to the Past unquote jat a statement dismisses maji's suggestion of social commitment among painters as irrelevant to contemporary painting revealing his preference for formalism as a superior and supposedly Universal approach applicable both in Iran and the West against the backdrop of discontent with the SHA and social unrest jat statement reflected separation if not antipathy to toward the political involvement of painters like moases as evident in his paintings from the period such as Untitled joat himself embraced highly visual post for paradigms of painting in particular he questioned the conventional use of the brush in the painting process opted for placing the canvas on the floor and emphasized the role of chance in the creation of the image this approach garnered harsh criticism from many intellectuals who condemned the depoliticized nature of the work of artist like lat in a critical article in 1972 the influential figure of new poetry Ahmed shamlu voiced confusion stating quote I have tried extensively yet I failed to grasp the consequences of Mr jat nonexist existence unquote moases overtly and Sly aligned himself with the critic of formalism articulated by Iranian literary figures an illustrative example example of his alignment can be found in a 1968 interview with mojabi where the critic discussed the inaccessibility of Iranian painting to the masses in response masses potic Ally remarked what quote what was once a source of Pride now becomes a means of deceiving unquote here moases suggested that Iranian art once a symbol of national dignity had evolve into a tool of manipulation and deceit this comment hinted at the pavi regime's use of Iranian art as propaganda instrument projecting an image of Iran as a progressive and modern Society masses deliberate use of the word deceiving oring person likely Drew inspiration from Jalal Al Ahmed a charismatic intellectual and Aid supporter of commitment in Iranian culture as this term was commonly uh was not commonly used in colloquial language in 1962 Al Ahmed employed this term to caution Iranian abstract painters uh warning them that their art lacking substance could exploit it in the state apparatus to deceive the public you see Al ahmad's quotee on the screen through this reference moases appears to express profound criticism of the inaccessible depoliticized and formalist approaches prevalent in Iranian art in conclusion this paper discussed the often overlooked political dimensions of bahman moases artistic practice in the 1960s on the example of his painting blind Eagle utilizing various strategies moases forges meaningful connections with the intellectual and the literary community in Iran at the time as I have argued moases perceived indirect allegorical expression as a critical means of communication within the challenges of a constrained era his body of work not only reflects the political responses of the Iranian engaged cultural scene during a crucial period in Iran's history but also illuminates the int cases of the locally specific approach to post for figuration within a community situated on the margins thank [Applause] you good afternoon I'm Jason Williams professor at the University of California Riverside um like everyone I'd like to join in the um set in the excuse me in the in thank yous to the Getty for putting on this um event which surprises and delights me I have to say year after year after year speaking of um if not surprises at least Delights it's my pleasure to introduce um Homer Charles Arnold a PhD candidate at of course the University of California Riverside Charlie as we call him and as he calls himself um took his ba from Lawrence University also holds a master of Fine Arts degree from Claremont um in addition to being a um an active and rambunctious graduate student student Arnold is also working as a research assistant at the Getty Research Institute and he's the archive manager for the trust of the late Los Angeles sound artist Michael Brewster on whom he wrote his UCR Master's thesis and curated a um groundbreaking sight specific ex exhibition of Brewster's works at the Mount Wilson Observatory in 2022 um although Charlie hailes from Texas his roots it seems in um Los Angeles have gone deep as evidenced by his dissertation entitled taking it to the streets carp a gorilla gallery for Los Angeles this dissertation focuses on karp the Los angeles-based woman run Arts enablement um Collective as a sort of group Homespun group that facilitated the realization of over 20 public art projects between 1975 and 1978 in Los Angeles and Southern California in particular his research examines how this private Enterprise um Collective put in place you could say really a sort of new form and structure um for supporting the Arts and um in particular public art in Southern California one that I think um causes us to look at the production of art slightly differently we tend to think of art um in terms of makers and artists what Charlie suggests in stead is that it's important to look at what we might call what he in fact calls the Arts enablement infrastructure in other words those forms and forces from funding to essentially kind of services that a sort of broader Community might provide to artists in order to facilitate and and indeed allow for um the creation of important and meaningful public works so with that um I give you Charlie thank you [Applause] okay let's go to Los Angeles for a little bit um thank you Dr Williams for that warm welcome way here we go and um I'd like to thank the rest of the of my fell fellow Getty Research Institute staff for the opportunity to be here excuse me it's really great to be I think presenting here at a place where so many people are thinking very hard about art from so many different perspectives it's also exciting to be presenting with a group of Scholars who I think are right on the edge of our discipline so I feel like I'm in good company um so to begin on January the 28th 1976 the artist Kim Jones performed wilshar walk by traversing the entire length of Wilshire Boulevard dressed as Mudman as Mudman Jones wore shorts and combat boots a panty hose stocking over his face and a headdress made from foam and rubber dried mud covered his body and strapped to his back was a crisscrossing lattice appendage made from sticks and cheesecloth covered with wax and resin along his journey he entered a gas station and he asked the attendant if he could use the bathroom the attendant looking at his appearance was taken aback and said no Jones exited the gas station urinated on himself in an act of protest and continued his 18m Trek to the Pacific Ocean uh Jones a Vietnam veteran intended Wilshire walk as a reflection of the long marches he made while deployed as Mudman Jones visualized the psychological trauma confronting many young vets returning home to a country that actively shunned them one year later on June the 24th 1977 Shoppers at the arop plaza shopping Court in downtown Los Angeles were greeted by the odd sight of Eileen CV's video installation California C casual five life-size two-dimensional cutouts or standies as we call them in the ad business and that's what these characters are right here um surrounded a television set and these standies were middle-aged men dressed in leisure suits playing on the screen on the television set was a video of Housewives regaling the joys of wash and wear clothing they addressed the audience directly explaining how they haven't ironed in years and pointing offscreen to different standies identifying as their husbands and giving personal antidotes about them the women also described living in California and the freedoms they are afforded one explained that she had a private pilot license and that she taught uh modern dance at UCLA another explained that the differences between California and New York Lifestyles where in New York it was all run run run and in California they can unwind and take the starch out of their collars and themselves as the evening arrived these house wives and their husbands actually materialized and joined the Shoppers at the shopping Court bringing this sort of California life you know image to life now Willshire walk and California casual are some of Jones's and seag glove's most unique pieces they are sight specific they are ephemeral and they speak to very distinct social realities that exemplified Los Angeles during the 1960s and 1970s yet they would not have happened had it not been for the newly formed Los angeles-based arts service management team karp karp was established in 1975 by Barbara Burton and Marilyn Nicks with the mission to assist artists in the production of their Works operating as an art service creating projects entailed co-opting corporate nonprofit and philanthropic practices such as Logistics management public relations advertising fundraising and educational initiatives project development also entailed providing locations and event planning carp was not a brick and mortar Gallery in the traditional sense of the world nor was it like an alternative space running in a warehouse somewhere carp didn't have space it had spaces it operated without a permanent location using sites afforded by its very rich network of artists and creative entrepreneurs Beyond wilard bullet Ard in the arop plaza exhibitions happened at the Dixon Auditorium in UCLA the home of business magnetes and curators galleries artist Studios local televisions broadcasts magazines uh and The teral Pedestrian tunnel way up in San Francisco and you can see here they lie primarily in sort of the western side of Los Angeles there's terl and something almost at the Getty but not quite here so to head off the usual question I get whenever I talk about carp is what does their name mean um no it's not an acronym sorry um according to burden the name was picked at random much like the spirit of Dada carp could in fact mean anything and as I hope to show that is perhaps the best definition of the organization anything goes besides performances and site specific installations carps collaborations involved avantgard Cinema in the case of sponsoring a screening of Bruce nman and Frank Owens film Pursuit Truth at UCLA or funding Chris Burton's incursion into television poem for La providing a schedule of showtimes for it and hosting a viewing party at the builtmore hotel during a national museum conference to promote it or securing Diane bl's one-page ironic jab at the emerging Los Angeles Punk scene in the National Punk magazine slash this media pluralism demonstrates that karp had the capacity to work work across of numerous platforms creating projects in various non-traditional formats now I contend that what karp does is it compels us to reframe our understanding of postmodern art by upending the premise that art exists independently from its support structure Nixon Bon's organization demonstrate demonstrate quite the contrary art depends on its infrastructure and these infrastructures will take a hand in the works material its setting and its completion during the 1970s art among other things became disseminated by a surge of media and capital and the old model of the independent artist the autonomous artwork in the sterile Gallery was just simply not able to operate in a postmodern world karp's co-authorship and projects actually safeguarded and expanded the freedom of expression for artists enabling them to engage with America's various social and economic issues these included the the emerging service economy post fordism insecurity in the government civil rights and eventual neoliberal globalism in other words as America shifted from the industrial-based society that it was to the service-based society that it has that it is now karp provided the service industry to artists so to paraphrase Marshall mclo it's not so much that the medium is the message it's that the service structure is now Maryland Nick came to the art world with an investment in California art and a personality that could light up the room the art critic and curator Peter Frank uh once recalled meeting her at a show in New York where she convinced him to come to Los Angeles when he arrived she took him on the rounds and introduced him to many of the artists that he would go on to build his West Coast career from her career began actually at the Millard sheets Home Savings and Loan Bank where she was the assistant publicity director and managed the bank's art collection and ran its purchase prize award after this was she was the pr director for the bower art museum for the artist Ed Moses and was the director of The tjb Gallery in Orange County by the time she and Burton sat down to write carp's mission statement Nicks was working at USC's contract and grant department Barbara Burton came to the art world through her social network she had graduated from Pomona College and taken a job at UC at the UCLA Library working in their rare books department when she met Nicks Burton was connected to the West Los Angeles art crowd through her affiliation with UC Irvine's MFA program the infamous f-space gallery and her ex-husband her passion for contemporary art particularly performance art and Southern California artist brought her and niy together in the fall of 1974 so by the time K met Jones the organization had been running for one year mainly creating projects and donated locations with artists who had already shown professionally Willshire walk was a break in that format when actually Jones and Burton sat down to discuss the piece we need to remember that Jones was one a Vietnam vet who was two a local site or regular site around his home turf of Venice California dressed as Mudman where he three largely felt out of step with the other artists and hippies that he shared the streets with Jones had been interested in the idea of doing an official Mudman performance for quite some time and it actually considered an extended walking piece along Willshire to kind of Debut Mudman however he was hesitant could he carry the apparatus for that long uh would weather interfere would he be harassed by pedestrians would police arrest him to avoid these potential problems Jones's proposal his initial proposal involved making the journey at the dead of night on his birthday January the 28th the same day that he actually returned home from military service in 1969 karp wanted to make the event more public a strategy to actually gain notoriety for their projects and demonstrate their eagerness to reach a larger Audience by providing professional support Burton compromised with Jones and convinced him to make the walk during the day when more people would see it and then to do a night performance later on February the 4th now the question becomes who's going to see this thing and how are they going to know what's going on right so in order to do this by this time karp had a very extensive mailing list thanks to nx's Adept skill at social networking karp designed the mailer and sent them to over 150 art professionals thus sanctioning the performance the mailer's minimal design that you see here created a sense of mystery around the W around the work to know what it referenced you'd have to be in the no or at least be familiar with Jones in Mudman only a street name was provided and the recipient was left to figure out the rest this design was unique to karp's early advertising intended to create hype as opposed to a traditionally defined exhibition flyer the mailer proved actually essential to the performance during the walk Jones grew tired he took off his apparatus he sat down to rest near a bank five police officers surrounded him and asked him what he was doing Jones explained he was an artist he was making a work of art and one of the police officers was kind of skeptical and actually called Otis College of Art to figure out what was going on the receptionist who knew Jones and it would seen the mailer said oh no no that it's it's art it's fine it's art police officers were like you're good carry on your way just watch your step and they let Jones go um the night performance took on a much different feel um Jones was left alone and he spent the majority of the trk on Willshire City the street was empty it was very quiet um and instead of the police Jones actually contended with the weather uh the temperature ranged on February 4th was between 55 to 51° which is chilly by Los Angeles standards um and Jones ended up putting on his army trench coat and his pants to keep warm along his walk buron and Knicks along with the artist Scott Greger and Bruce nowman considered the long distance that Jones was walking the late hour and they were sympathetic to him they also considered the weather as well and they decided to meet up with Jones at different places along the walk can provide him physical support okay burden and Greger purchased Jones a meal at a 24-hour diner as you see there on the left and on the right there's Marilyn and Bruce nowman with Jones toward the end of the Walk they brought him some whiskey to keep him warm on the home stretch here's the thing Mudman visualizes in congruities between American ideals and realities with his combat boots and his army trench coat he appears as the American Soldier back home celebrated in the idealized images of Norman Rockwell and the cultural memory of World War II but with his thorny exoskeleton his mud covered body his obscured face he's not embraced he's ignored if not actively rejected by Society described as a pariah and an outcast carps insistence on the day performance brings these incongruities of historical idealism and the reality of the mid1 1970s into contact with each other observable in the photographs mud man's en ERS are wary glances from pedestrians who keep their distance and against these cautious meetings in the backdrop of the highend stores of Westwood supported by the affluent karp was actually able to reveal the alienation caused by neoc colonialist policies that deploy the human body as Expendable labor and the result and therefore karp exposed those who could afford to be shielded from these realities of America's lust for Global power to face that cost without karp and their insistence on the day performance these issues would have been lost under a night sky now let's go shopping affordance and globalism are things also at the heart of Eileen seov California casual seov found carp through another art service named some serious business or SSB at the time when seov approached SSB the organization was preoccupied with other projects and they referred seal of to carp NY was eager to work with SE glove and she jumped at the opportunity up until this time carp's videos installations had not yet reached the larger public like their sponsored performances and installations had California casual provided that opportunity because this piece dealt with fashion NYX realized it belonged in a shopping mall and through her contact with the Union 76 Oil Company executive she was able to rent the shopping court at the Arco Plaza in downtown Los Angeles the Arco Plaza was a beacon of new LA and part of an attempt to establish a downtown as an urban center they were the tallest Twin Towers in the nation and their tenants were leaders in postmodern globalist capitalism and energy including Banks and oil companies the dynamic aspect of this Plaza was at Su tranan shopping Court being one of the first cities of the malls in the first city being one of the first malls in the city uh the building combined various aspects of postmodern Society into one spot seav would not have used the space had it not been for ncks having navigated board rooms and men in business suits NYX knew how to speak the lingo and access corporate spaces her background enabled the placement of a work critical of Corporations and a temple recently erected to them now as with um wsh walk karp designed a mailer to promote the piece aided by a grant from the Nea carp was karp designed a bfold card following seag glove's directions according to seag glove it was very important that the mailer have a photograph and of the work and a key which is up here of the Silhouettes of the figures their names and sort of a description of the general ethos of the piece this was to provide context and information but this mailor is much more than just a piece of ephemera okay it was an essential element of the work Beyond just providing information the mailer displays a high gloss sophistication equivalent to the advertisements one would imagine populated the high-end stores of the shopping Court this visualizes an equivalency between karp and the mall where karp and seov become associated with the commercialism of Los Angeles and here karp and seov infiltrate that world through the tactics it uses to infiltrate our world and then poke fun at it from within that structure now as to the overall installation this is undeniably a feminist piece the housewives Proclaim they are Unbound I quote from the domestic chore of ironing they are no longer and again I quote again chained to their ironing boards their husbands displayed as two-dimensional facad stand silent and motionless made to sell the polyester clothing that they wear and here women are actually selling products and even a lifestyle to other women and this illustrates a shift in the workforce at this time as more women took paying jobs and there's so there's three registers of Labor here ironing shopping and the paid Workforce and these three registers are occupied by these women simultaneously carps placement of the of the of the installation into the Arco Plaza actually expands California casual into commentary on foreign interests and these leisure suits become much more than just a lifestyle choice and a thing bought and sold polyester is a fabric made from oil this is the very thing that Arco and Union 76 turn into gasoline and that other corporations turn into numerous plastic household marbles so this piece then reveals how oil is moving through America from the car to the driver's wardrobe and elsewhere so what we're seeing in California casual then in addition to second wave feminism is the United States dependency on oil growing and becoming ubiquitous within America's products and its policies as developers of the art service industry KP Blended corporate tactics and artist lives seamlessly their annual thank you card visualizes this fact listed are the names of artists and financers gallery owners committees and others that supported Nixon burden during their first year documents like this emerge from corporate development offices all the time but here there's no hierarchical structure of donor Circle one or donor Circle two instead listed alphabetically all persons are represented equally under this sort of single unified heading carp finally their card in their various projects prove how a socioeconomic base underlies art at all levels and as carp folded that Foundation into the works themselves they reconfigured the exhib exhibition as a medium into a Nimble and flexible form that um excuse me that allowed art to transform into whatever was required much like how modern businesses constantly adapt to survive and thus karp gives artists A postmodern Edge in many ways I think what karp really does and I think karp's approach strength is that it has potential to lead art out of its isolated Eddy that it all too often finds itself in sitting in a near empty gallery or a museum somewhere thank you well um many thanks to the Getty uh for hosting us and staging these really incredible presentations and for the stimulating conversations that have emerged from them my name is Albert nth and I'm based at UC Santa Cruz uh fitting our beloved University mascot the banana slug we have arrived to the conference program slowly namely last it is my pleasure to introduce Leslie lodwick Leslie is currently a PhD candidate in visual studies at UC Santa Cruz where she is uh completing uh a fascinating dissertation that builds on her research interests in the visual culture and design of Education Childhood and play and her previous training in both the history of art and architecture and education her project revolves around an analysis of the school construction systems development program this was an influential yet almost completely unstudied experiment in 20th century public education and school architecture despite its ubiquity public Public School architecture has played an uneven and often times silent role in architectural histories either overlooked as a familiar quotidian background to educational debates or in cases where a building or campus was designed by a well-known figure inserted into pre-existing and often outdated narratives about the evolution of architectural modernism ENT tracing the network of Architects local and National political actors teachers educational institutions and factories that drove the SCD project and in turn helped determine the form of school buildings across the post-war Suburban built environment Leslie not only sheds light on an overlooked building type uh but also convincingly positions architecture within a wider field of Economic and political forces which continue to shape critical educational debates today Leslie has presented her work widely in talks and her Publications include contributions to journals such as boom and visual studies as well as as an essay for the volume paths to prison on the architectures of carcerality published by Colombia so I welcome Leslie thank [Applause] you let's see here hi everyone good afternoon thank you so much for being here today um thank you also to all of the organizers at the Getty I'm very grateful to be here um thank you also to all of the other speakers and all of the other panelists today um your speaks your uh presentations were excellent and I just really appreciate your camaraderie and I'm glad to be a part of such a wonderful group of uh Scholars so all right uh let's see here so in 1961 a young architect named Ezra Aon CR began soliciting interested interested parties to participate in what he believed would be an Innovative and efficient way of building new schools fresh out of MIT architecture and recently returned from a Fullbright Fellowship in hartfordshire England where he worked with the class clasp system of pre-fabricated schools Aaron CR began to formulate a way of building that would rely on flexibility and the creation of a large network of school product manufacturers he shoed The Proposal around to various school districts across the United States to other Architects and educational funders eventually the editors of architectural Forum took an interest in Aaron cr's system and proposed a meeting to be facilitated at their headquarters in New York with some of the most influential Educators School Board superintendents philanthropic institution and school architects of the period from Across the Nation their interest in attending the meeting was no doubt the result of outsized public concern over the huge numbers of babies born after World War II who would soon be school-aged children and the lackluster state of America's school buildings both in terms of quantity and quality they drew Collective of inspiration from the clasp School building program of pre-fabricated parts in hartfordshire which had faced similar population and aging School stock concerns those who attended the meeting debated the merits of Aon cr's proposed system and eventually agreed that the experiment should proceed Aaron CR proposed a series of schools composed of interchangeable and prefabricated Parts each of the parts the walls the lighting and the HVAC systems and the steel frame could all be interchangeable across the schools that would be part of the system the parts were be to the were to be the result of research and development performed by independent manufacturers who would design these interchangeable components and then propose a bid on the project to individual Districts The Districts could then decide which contractor to move forward with based on the number of schools that would be built using that particular system and the cost efficiency of the proposals the most Innovative component of the system was to be the so-called ceiling sandwich or or the steel-framed lighting HVAC and Electric Systems anchored to the ceiling throughout the school buildings Not only would this regulate the lighting and air flow in these School spaces it would create a fully controllable interior environment to facilitate teaching and learning the other notable component of the system and this is an advertisement from architectural Forum were the movable walls the walls were designed to be quickly and freely moved by teachers in order to accommodate various types of learning environments from smaller more intimate settings to laboratory classrooms to large open plan environments these schools were designed to adapt to changing inst instructional and technological needs of educational environments in the meeting it was decided that the project was to be adapted in California Not only was there a massive need for school buildings due to the influx of suburban residents across the state and the Nationwide Baby Boom but the Architects believed that the building codes were looser in California and the space would be ample for experimentation the project was named School construction systems development or scsd and would ultimately result in 13 new school buildings built in low density or Suburban areas across the state this paper looks to two of those schools in the program both built in Southern California Sonora High School and Fountain Valley High School in order to examine how schools in the scsd program became architecturally linked with spaces of military production and research as well as spaces of consumption in order to normalize both ideologies in the region particularly as part of new experiments in Suburban living and housing developments in the 1960s Southern California became a main sight of industrialization and Rapid technological change in the US shifting away from the manufacturing belt in the Northeast industry's expanded role showcases the larger pattern of economic transformation in the region to that end numerous manufacturers pivoted from military production to participating in information technology or what historian Alan J Scott calls technopolis Scott writes after World War II the aircraft industry blossomed into a great Aerospace Electronics manufacturing complex whose growth was fueled by large scale Federal defense spending over the post-war decades by the early 1960s the complex had become the dominant element of the entire local production system this industry that developed was to be nearly entirely dependent on defense contracts and sought to produce the most technologically advanced electronics through attracting the best scientists and engineers in the US to the region architectural historian Stuart Leslie analyzes the architecture of such high technology Regional industry through what he describes as Aerospace modernism or a style type of building and work environment that is distinguished from architectural modernism and predates the Contemporary Silicon Valley Tech campus while considering scholarship from historian Peter hailes uh who reconfigured the Manhattan Project through interpreting the communities of Los Alamos oid and Hanford as urbanized domestic environments which included Laboratories factories homes and schools Leslie argues that the built environment of Aerospace modernism offers a reframing of the Cold War by viewing it through the lens of architecture and design Leslie describes the way that only the correct kind of buildings scientific industrial and residential could attract the kind of creative talent and it's Inspire the kind of think required for state-of-the-art aerospace engineering similarly this style would be distan from the kind of button-down organization man of the east coast and sought to define the industry architecturally as quote a pastoral capitalism of aluminums and glass open air corridors broad Courtyards shallow reflecting pools Green Space and Gardens unquote which were private and isolated from the outside world while mimicking public spaces architect Albert C Martin's corporate campuses built in the 1950s and early 60s integrate survey responses collected by The Architects uh and completed by scientists and Engineers for which these companies sought from the funding Partners on down employees preferred a campus-like setting with a number of separate smaller buildings rather than a single large structure multiple buildings offered the further advantage of providing some spatially derived autonomy for different directions within the company without losing economies of scale and also made future expansive less expensive in essence the architecture should clearly and self-consciously reinforce the philosophy of systems engineering Martin's designs reflect his belief that the that the quote Best conditions for the advancement of knowledge are those in which they are free to roam intellectually and physically within only those limitations set by their own self-discipline unquote while balancing this openness with the secrecy around highly classified scientific research many of these corporate complexes also included residential areas directly adjacent which also sought to appeal spatially and stylistically to the employees they sought to attract these new developments sometimes featuring homes by Joseph Iker or others showcased features of California living at its finest which uh was hoped would attract folks from out of state fleeing Urban metropolises elsewhere the mostly single family homes were modern in design with open floor plans outdoor patios updated appliances and sometimes R restrictive purchasing covenants though it is uh well documented that Iker opposed uh race-based covenants Sunny Hills High School seen here built on land next to Hughes corporate campus itself offered a school-based version of the concept of idealized California living evidenced in the nearby housing stock while mirroring the campus-like setting of The IND individual architecture or sorry the industrial architecture this illustrates not only the importance of public schools to prospective employees but also directly shows the ways that architecture and spatial design were to unite education and Industry together in uh George Rand and scsd project architect Christopher Arnold's 1979 look back at the scsd system uh this article evaluation a look back at the sexiest system Rand describes the technological euphoria that surrounded the project that could only capture the nation's imagination in the way that it did because of the ways in which California was imaged in the media as the next great Frontier that the system should be part of the same impulse drawing the nation's top engineers and scientists Westward was not lost on anyone least of all the school project Architects ran describes quote the approach was ahead of its time in understanding the peac meal way in which technological innovations are adopted end quote and thus signified the capacity of Californian industry that could be made available to students via the scsd buildings and leveraged by families looking to maintain or move to upper middle class status Rand writes quote American high schools of this vintage were substantial corporate Enterprises they tended not to be very Innovative environments colors and materials were typically selected select to resist wear rather than to express or induce pleasure the facades of the schools are indistinguishable from Electronics plants commercial offices and warehouses on adjacent Lots the technicist style is carried over to the Stark Interiors of buildings in which illumination by commercial office standards is a far cry from chandeliers hanging from vaated ceilings and wooden Library tables outfitted with individual reading lamps in British universities scsd was the final crystallization of the school influenced by the post Corporation the electronics Industry and the IBM computer these schools share exterior and interior features with the Aerospace technopolis of Orange County including Central Courtyards concrete slabs large Open Spaces exposed materials and sometimes the most creative Architects included natural indoor features like skylights or interior Planters reminiscent of the gazing Gardens of these industrial campuses and we'll at those in a second through replicating post-war industrial architecture the schools link the language of production and Suburban development with the scsd vision and thus function in more nuanced ways than the Architects could have imagined and the stories on the ground at the individual scsd schools reflect these themes in Myriad complex ways the first High School built in the scsd system was Fountain Valley High School in the Huntington Beach Union High School District and built by Architects Neptune and Thomas in 196 63 I think it opened F FS was built on top of an asparagus field prior to building the field had to be chemically treated to prevent the perennial vegetables from regrowing and destroying the foundation sidewalks and the parking lots of the school site the exteriors were constructed of red brick because of the school's proximity to the potentially damaging Salt Air of the ocean and allegedly between 1966 and 1968 the first two years the school was open fvhs had the Lar lest population of any High School West of the Mississippi the school was also built in proximity to Hughes aircraft Huntington Beach Space Systems Center and Douglas space and missile systems later McDonald Douglas and more recently Boeing which provided jobs for many families arriving newly arriving to the city in the late 1950s Huntington Beach company which was uh chevron's Land Development Branch owned most of the land in rural Huntington Beach realizing that the thousands of scientists and Engineers that the space system center would need the company bankrolled half a dozen new housing developments that were quickly erected in order to quote transform Huntington Beach from a gritty neighborhood built by big oil to a Seaside Community surrounding a country club unquote the developments featured three four and five bedroom uh houses with two full baths open floor plans massive Stone fireplaces master bedroom suites marble fls and sliding glass doors opening into a patio the model homes featured the same kind of mid-century modernist aesthetic as the Space Systems Center lobby the homes were a mix of mid-century modern and traditional Picket Fences and Gables which was designed to appeal to those recently arrived transplants looking for homes more reminiscent of Americana the space system center was well known for developing multiple advancements in the United States Space Program in the 1960s including the Saturn 4B which elevated the Apollo 11 astronauts to the moon this jux deposition between traditional American values in architecture and Space Age Technology came to be perfectly normalized in Huntington Beach and the surrounding areas the space system center designed by Architects Daniel Med man Johnson and mendenhal who later went on to design an scsd School in SEI Valley was designed to quote create a campus atmosphere conducive to the complex human acts of thinking and design while at the same time providing for the Manu facture assembly and testing of Great Space Vehicles Fountain Valley High School's brick buildings were built in a rectangular shape around a central Courtyard and this is a plan of Fountain Valley High School at the middle of the courtyard is a tree rimmed Amphitheater here called the bowl you can see kind of an image of it uh from a yearbook that I found the entrance of the school like all scsd schools is anchored by a central administration building which feels weighty and symbolic while Central izing all educational operation through the central administrative Wing other Wings arranged by discipline flank either side of the central Courtyard and there's a large outdoor swimming pool toward the back of the campus while the facade of the building that faces the street is consumed by Brick the interior facing Administration Wing has steel and glass windows that face the shared Courtyard classrooms are formed from exposed red Bri red brick floor ceiling chalkboards and these accordion partitions there are a few classroom windows in a nod to the fully there are few classroom Windows excuse me in a nod to the fully controllable interior environment with instead an advanced air conditioning system the courtyard is bordered by lockers on some walls windows and covered breezeways and the Amphitheater seating took the place of cafeteria seating and provided places for students to gather and eat lunch um Athletics seemed to have been a fairly large emphasis at the time of construction with SP space devoted to larger than usual gymnasiums ample lockers and a large Athletic Field the exterior of the campus and interior historic and contemporary photographs and this is from the day the school opened show similar aesthetic choices to some of the nearby technology companies the large Courtyard rev Rivals the contemplative and landscap likee interior spaces of the technology campuses of AC Martin and Daniel man Johnson and mendenhal meant to be gazed upon but not interacted with the relationship with outdoor space is one of pure utility while the classrooms have few if any Windows the trees surrounding the courtyard are for shade the natural landscape has been resurfaced entirely with concrete and the open air setting of the auditorium is more for economy of space and noise reduction than nurturing any specific interaction with the natural world there is a space of there is a space of movement between clearly demarcated and intentional spaces with little room for deviation from the schedule of the day and this large open quad mimics the large Open Spaces of both these uh technological campuses and the Aerospace designed warehouses this is Sonora High School in La Habra California located in Northern Orange County that feels more remote than the rest of urbanized and densely organized Orange County uh Sonora High could be another industrial building were it not for the school Marquee outfront and the brand new Athletic Facility is visible from the road inside Sonora has one of the most uh unique architectural designs and layouts of any school in Southern California its Architects intentionally compared the shared Central Courtyard to a shopping mall and its layout concretizes disciplinary relationships through its unique floor plan which conate concentrates disciplines together in offshoot hallways off the central shared Courtyard area each hallway has a series of skylights nestled over built-in concrete Planters Each of which when the school opened in 1966 were full of tropical house plants and it was one of the last schools built as part of the scsd portfolio the development of La Habra began through Mexican land grants and were managed by wealthy families aligned with Elite Mex Mexican families in the 19th centuries the area was plagued by drought but when irrigation systems were constructed to bring water from the San Gabriel River the area was converted to Industrial agriculture with Groves of citrus walnuts and avocados lahabra was quickly converted to low density Suburban developments in the late 1950s and was part of the same the same wave of transformation that brought the electronics and Aerospace Industries as well as Disneyland in adjacent Anaheim documentary footage of Disneyland under instructions so shows the clearing away of orange groves for the creation of Landscapes as diverse as futuristic Utopias with rows of identical flowers and the recreation of South American jungles this language and imagery of Disneyland was not lock lost on local housing developers as shown by Barbara Lane Miller's houses for a new world uh Builders and buyers in excuse me Barbara Miller Lanes um Builders and buyers in American suburbs home buyers were lured by specific stylistic features that mirrored Disneyland's Fanny Fantasy Land which itself was evocative of oldw world French and German fairy tale architecture developer Ross cortiz well known for creating the Wald community of Rossmore near Seal Beach and the Leisure World older adult communities advertised his contemporary home developments as being uh imagineered for you in a nod to Disney imagineers while making apparent the connection between the aerospace engineers and scientists who would live in many of these upper middle class developments the Allure and fantasy of Disneyland is a framework for Lifest style allowed for common critiques of orange countians which was as much about identifying with the Farmland on which their homes once stood as well as being a cusp being a place on the cusp of innovation and the defense industry and the scsd schools in Orange County as intended by The Architects were sealed and insulated from outside influence meant to be self-reliant and self referential in an attempt to operate as part of these adjacent housing developments not to function more organically and in this way these schools reflected the official Municipal vision for development and reflect this architecturally this is the Sonora High School uh floor plan this technocratic vision for schools which was harnessed by architect William Blue Rock and employed here in service of Sonora came to align more with industrial production and the manufacturing of this kind of mall-like consumption in the setting especially in their grandest gestures um Sonora like fbhs is anchored by a central administration building um facing outward toward the street the main interior architectural differences between the two schools are the central Courtyard of each School scsc Architects called these large academic courts that was what the bowl was in uh Fountain Valley and they were used intended to be used in innovative ways per School needs While most of these courts were quickly made into private spaces Sonora High School's Courtyard has remained functional since opening yet while originally it was meant to evoke a mall Courtyard it has since become a Gathering Place and you can see in the top image here this um uh cour the central shared Courtyard here so nor Courtyard and its architecture in general is the most exciting of all the scsd schools on the exterior the original building was made from lighter brick and featured the same planted the same painted columns creating an entryway into the main Administrative Building this is also an image of the courtyard there is a separate entry into the covered Courtyard which is evocative of an airplane hanger or production facility or a shopping mall skylights are situated over the corridors that extend from the central elevated Courtyard which lead to classrooms affiliated with different academic disciplines concrete Planters are placed two per hallway and were filled with tropical house plants Sonora as well as the other scsd schools in Orange County are sealed which offers a highly controlled relationship with the natural world um being architecturally reminiscent of both a shopping mall and a factory or production facility offers a much different purpose than the contemplative Electronics campus and instead suggest production and consumption La Habra remained relatively Rural and its developers may have envisioned a different family than those of Huntington Beach while Huntington Beach sought to attract engineer scientists and managers lahabra has more factories and spaces of production affiliated with the agricultural industry Sonora retains its Agriculture and as animal husbandry program in addition to this Farm program and the core subjects um larger areas inside of the school at the time of opening were designated for Commerce art home economics shop and kitchen so in conclusion this paper argues that the school architecture emerging from the scsd uh program in California in the 1960s articulated spaces that revealed the unique labor landscape of the region and normalized spaces tied with technological production as well as consumption furthermore the schools were tasked with working in tandem with housing developments to attract a new type of white collar suburbanite to the region and this has important implications for Suburban studies more broadly with respect to the role of the school building in conveying powerful message that supported waves of suburban de development in California and the United States more broadly thank [Applause] you thank you Mohammad daa Charlie and Leslie for three really generative papers I'd like to invite you all back to the stage now along with Cheryl Finley who will be moderating our discussion Cheryl Finley is the inaugural director of the Atlanta University Center art history and curatorial studies Collective and distinguished visiting professor in the department of Art and visual culture at Spelman [Applause] College a curator and contemporary art critic Dr Finley is also an award-winning author noted for committed to memory the art of the the slave ship icon her co-authored publications of note include my soul has grown deep black art from the American South Tiny Harris photographer an American story and diaspora memory Place David Hammonds Maria Magdalena Campos Pon Pamela z a frequent essayist Dr Finley's writing has appeared in numerous academic and popular Publications including aperture Inka Journal of contemporary African art American quarterly art forum and small acts welcome good afternoon everyone thank you so much what a wonderful wonderful panel and um I just want to uh echo my gratitude to to the Getty uh to Rebecca for organizing the fifth sixth annual Getty grad Symposium and and to our our speakers today um I'd like to begin just by making some connections said I think you're going to be more temporal connections to your work to your papers um and I wanted to ask each of you to just take a moment to talk about the time frame in which you're operating in your in your dissertations um it looks like we are um you know towards the 1950s to the 1970s about mid 1950s to 1970s um uh two papers based pretty much here in Southern California um and in the United States um but still I think with major Global implications and that's one of the things that connects the three of your papers um another paper looking at a similar time frame maybe ending in the 1960s late 60s um but that is based in Iran but again looking I think globally um but also inwardly and really pushing the boundaries of the discipline that we're all engaged in that is art history um I think that's another thing that connects your work but also I think makes this panel one that can enable us to have conversations about the discipline today um and conversations about the discipline that can extend to earlier this morning um as we've had sort of this you know temporal growth throughout the day um and to think about the kind kind of work that you're doing um and the kind of work that I think Scholars to be are also doing um and that those of us in the room who are um advisers to PhD students to master students to undergraduate students how we're working with um with the materials that interest them and attract them um that they're passionate about today um so I think again to go back to this first very long-winded question can you can you just take a moment to describe the time in which you're working just to set the stage for us please and can anyone can jump in hi everyone can you hear me okay um yeah so I'm looking primarily at the 1960s but the development of the project started in the 1950s um so the main project architect was in hartfordshire England uh during the 1950s where they were they started Ed using prefabricated kind of systems architecture to build schools um and then decided to kind of to take some of the lessons or what he perceived to be the good parts and some of the pitfalls of the experiment of of the system in hartfordshire um and try again in California in the 1960s so my dissertation project kind of looks at this period between the 50s and the 60s and I I hope to sort of there's also um kind of a looking back part of my project as well that as the article the the sexian system article was from 1979 and so I think there's been a fair bit of kind of reflection on the project that um from the the 70s anyway um that my project also looks to as well thank you Lon so my project uh discusses the paintings by massas in the 60s which is extremely important time uh both because of the political developments in Iran after the 1953 coup and also the global developments of painting because sha and uh let's say his cultural institution are able to promote certain kind of art and during this time uh a painter like masses uh emerged as um a challenging solution to that modernist uh abstraction and uh my project looks both at the local side of the thing like the sharo new poetry that I discussed in this paper and also the connections masses uh builds with the European painting how he appropriates how he parodies the examples of Western painting which is again interestingly similar to certain examples that we see both in the west and you know uh in nonwestern avangard uh examples thank you so I think of the 1970s as a decade of kind of exhaustion um I felt like in the 60s there's this move of social change and push and these things are happening and then we get into the 70s and there's just this kind of like and everybody's trying to kind of figure out how to move forward we have stagflation the economy is out of control you've got Watergate there's this sort of collapse in sort of Faith um and so I that's I think with my project and with karp with people like Barbara Burton and Marilyn Nicks they were looking at sort of what they had and the network they had and they were like how do we keep art alive and how do we keep it valuable and I think they saw this shift that was happening from like we're not making things now it's all about you know information and service and like how can we provide that for artists and do it in a way that we can afford and then do it in a way that gets the artist message out there and so I think for me there's this sort of reaction to this old model mod that just fell apart and then they're just you know as artist and creative entrepreneurs are they creative they problem solve and they're like how do we keep going because art keeps going right so that's that's I think how I've always thought about my my my decade yeah thank you great okay all right so we've set we've kind of set the stage um and sort of thought about our time frames and now I want to maybe ask a couple of questions that are specific to each of your Works um and um and I want to Circle back to a couple of other more I think General themes that I see across the works as well um and so I I wanted to maybe begin um with moases and um and your work Muhammad duresa in thinking about um the way in which as an artist he kind of shifts from you know abstraction to figuration but also the way in which he is involved with different kinds of communities um communities of writers um and also communities that are again as you said part of um local conversations um that are pushing back um but also communities that have reached out to other histories of art but also histories of literature and the engagement of the Arts r large um with thinking about conversations that can push back against political regimes um and social um anxiety at a particular moment in Iran and I wanted to ask a question about um uh some of the work that and you and I discussed this yesterday evening some of my colleagues at Cornell have been engaged engaged in I would say for some time maybe about the last decade to 15 years um and this is this notion of comparative modernities um looking at the modern era and not really only focusing upon European modernism but rather looking at modernity um that we might see for example um in Iran um and how there are conversations happening within certain intellectual and artistic communities in Iran um that we might see happening around the world say even around the very same time um in Dakar um or in Lagos um or maybe even in par Paris so if you could talk about that please um because I know that some of your work too is is influenced by um your own interest in comparative literature and um when I think about this you know this way that we can think about the discipline of art history um as one that can be expansive and one that can be challenged and one that can um look to Future Scholars like yourselves um looking through things like comparative modernities and comparative literature um can help us expand um a discipline I think that has been um often very narrowly defined for far too long thank you very much for um this question um which kind of uh deals with my personal concerns uh yeah unfortunately when we think about modernity or in case of my work in this sort of historical categorization of poar art lots of countries are not included and uh they have no idea what was going beyond the vest and as you mentioned uh many scholars are dealing with similar uh topics in these places and interestingly we are seeing how different communities were coming up with similar Solutions but at the same time some locally specific uh details to those Solutions um in case of my project I'm really interested in this concept of international contemporaneity uh which uh considers the simultaneous uh moments and events between different places locals and uh as we see in the Middle Eastern Community like the art scene of tan surprisingly the art community is pretty formalist and they are pretty uh displeased with an artist who is painting in let's say uh early 20th century modernist language of figuration in their own uh perception and by U emphasizing on this similarity let's say the clash between figuration and abstraction uh by emphasizing on other facets like appropriation like like making parodies like uh challenging the originality of these uh the modernist practice that other artists were thinking about in Iran um in the work of masses I try to bring you know Iran in this map of postar art history and um in a way be in conversation with the other Scholars that you mentioned who are doing similar things in different places in Middle East or uh you know South America or Japan or many other places thank you thank you so much and and I just want to just follow up with another question too just around this is maybe a question for for all of you before I go and I'll start with you again um Mohammad Raa uh before I I go individually um to you Leslie and Charlie but um could you say something about um about you know your your sources and I'm thinking about the archives um and materials that um that you've been working with and because I I I'm now I I want to go out and and look and see more work and I'm really intrigued by um by the work that you share the blind Eagle um uh painting um but then I wanted to see more especially in terms of you know what was the sh shift um we saw a few few pieces that you showed um that were the abstract works in the very beginning but then what's the shift to um to more figuration and the push back that we see um again that's a fantastic question because when we it comes to Iranian art um unfortunately uh we don't have many institutions that take care of archives or um the artworks in uh let's say dactic or educational way and in terms of the work of moases um there are few pieces in few museums in the world lots of other things are in the private Collections and it's indeed a challenge to find the pieces and find information about them which was part of my ch to write this dissertation about mes uh he has in terms of his work he has a book which is self-curated published in uh Italy in late 2000s and he has another book uh published again in Italy in the 70s uh which do not include all the works uh but uh it's a good uh basic source that we have in my project I also deal with lots of perod periodicals lots of magazines lots of communications by MERS to different artists and that intellectual history plays a very important role in my project so uh I both deal with these paintings which are mainly in private colle c s and this intellectual history of Iran in the 60s so it sounds like you you've had to like cover a lot of ground in terms of getting close to those materials yes yeah yeah okay great great Leslie so I wanted to ask you um and I'm G to ask each of you about your archives but I'm going start with another question I I wanted to ask you if you could say something about um the population size of of the two high schools um the first one that you discussed um as as a as a case study you said was at one point I think the largest had the largest population um west of the Mississippi um uh but also if you could say something and you and I had a a quick combo at the Break um but about um things like demographics um and you know other um underlying perhaps motivations for um you know the implementation um of this kind of architecture um in the state of California um at this particular moment and and you know you and I talked about school desegregation for example um as one of the motivations as we as we look at you know the growth of the Suburban especially um in Southern California the growth of track homes and different kinds of communities that are encapsulated like campuses as you um as you describe them around you know a military and or Aerospace industrial uh you know type of mentality um architecture and and expansionism thank you so much um yeah so in terms of the population and the demographics both have um shifted over over time um the the folks that I've talked to at the schools today are very concerned about space not being adequate to meet the growing kind of school population needs and so there's a lot of concern about remediation um so uh I don't have the exact numbers on the sort of tracing the population over time only knowing that it's ebbed and flowed but then it's in at a moment of of getting much larger um so there's a lot of conversation about the space as being completely inadequate for the large student bodies that they have not only in terms of um the the numbers of students but also student needs how they've shifted over time as well and how these spaces are you know needing a lot of remediation to meet contemporary um educational environments um and then the demographics have also shifted over time as well and we were talking a little bit um just kind of about you know the ways that these schools were kind of implicated in conversations around desegregation in the 1960s um and I think you know part of the conversation that's really interesting to me as um as a former like public school teacher um is you know what is the what is the purpose of of of school and um I think it's a question that school Architects really grapple with and I think there shifts over time of what the purpose of schooling is and so you think about 19th century American schools which were so much more about you know separating and managing about sort of maintaining hierarchical order and then you have this movement toward um you know in the early 20th century of like you know indoor outdoor classrooms and you know students kind of of having a little bit more agency in the classroom that's mirroring some of the sort of educational um shifts that are going on in in Educational Theory at the same time and so I think in the 1960s In This Moment there's a real question of what is the purpose of schooling what why you know what are these buildings going to be doing who are they for and so I think this this moment of experimentation and why it brings kind of different these different Frameworks of thinking about it is because there was a lot of a lot of um Curiosity on behalf of the project Architects as all as well as all of the sort of like you know many different partners that were involved in this project including Stanford University's School of graduate you know Graduate School of Education the Ford Foundation all of these different people really interested in this question of what is the purpose of schools and how can buildings kind of do something um toward that purpose and so you know I think um I think that as that's shifted over time these schools are really in a position to sort of be experimental in a moment when you know um folks were not necessarily sure how things were going to be moving forward in the context of the Cold War great thank you and and just back to the question of like the actual size Andor demographics at the time that some of like the two examples that you have opened do you have a sense of what the what the population size was for the schools and also the demographics that would have related to say the the families that would have worked in the nearby Industries and you know the students that were there and or even the the teaching faculty for that matter I can I yeah I could definitely find numbers on the population size um but but the families were were were white families who were you know generally new new Suburban dwellers yeah great thank you Charlie okay um so um I'm really really excited about your work around karp and also the time period in which um the per performances that they're doing Andor installations these are you know my my words mapped on to to your project but I I hope that's okay to characterize them and um and I I have a couple questions around um one is how did um you know how did the artists find karp um how did you know karp find the artist how did they make the kinds of decisions that they made around the The Works that they supported um because I think it's really interesting diversity of of projects from you know a Wilshire Boulevard Long you know performance over to separate days at least in the examples that you shared with us um versus something that's you know housed within the the the Arco towers and its relationship to you know whether it's a feminist movement or whether it's you know consumption and and the way that you know in that specific space it helps to repurpose something that um most people who are looking for or art are not necessarily going to enter um so the first question there we are to the first question how did they they find these artists it it was a largely it was a it was a as artists work and I think art communities work it was an ecology they all were sort of interconnected with each other um they were all sort of you know friends or it was kind of word of mouth early on um by the time time um e sea was involved I know that uh carp would either be reaching out to artist or artists would reach out to carp directly um the way they actually encountered Jones was they had sort of seen Jones um around Venice Barbara bonad and the story that I was told was that Barbara and Scott were in Barbara's apartment and they saw Jones go walking by and they followed him out to the remains of Pacific Ocean Park which was this you you know amusement park that stuck out into Venice it was falling apart and Jones was having pictures taken and that's how they struck up the conversation because Barbara was very interested in working it's like hey you know so so that's how that that that's I think how they met um and then you know as these things Marilyn was could meet anybody could you know her she had a very from what I've been told her role of De was very very big you know she just and so and she could always meet somebody everybody was you know could you know she was a very excellent at networking putting people together together and so she had that skill and I think that that public relations skill is what sort of allowed these connections to you know happen I mean they brought veto aoni and to Los Angeles for his first show so that was a you know there they there was a network there for sure yeah because I I I was wondering even if they had you know connections to um for example the the film industry because obviously you know where they're located of course but I I feel like the kinds of services that they would have provided to the artists and the way that they I think in a really Innovative way that was maybe you know something that artists would have done around you know in the 1970s especially around around performance around happenings around thinking about okay well how can we make this particular um idea that an artist or a group of artists has happen without necessarily going to um a museum space or to The Establishment um so I I thought that was you know was really kind of interesting to think about about um where are they you know how are they finding one another but also how do they how do they go about producing these events because they seemed like they were oneoff events yeah are we good okay yeah they were one-off for sure um I think they did work with maybe the same artist for two or three things but it was always a one-off event they really approached I think a a project as okay what does the artist need to do this this okay and what can we do what can we provide um and those early on that was always you know they as eileene told me on the phone she was like they dealt with the red tape they dealt with all of the bureaucracy it was great we could go in and we could just make this sort of work happen and I think though that through doing that by sort of like at least with se's piece really insisting on it being in a shopping mall like NX was realizing she's like no this this needs to be in a shopping mall or Willshire should happen during the day to kind of Drive um the work I think outside of maybe the safe nucleus and let's put it into as you said a place where somebody going to buy a pair of pants is suddenly confronted with this thing and they're kind of what's going on so I think there was this intentional maybe discombobulation is wrong word but let's let's put art into a public place they I know they were interested in that and let's see what it does there and how it can generate a new conversation yeah great and then I wanted to ask um you about your archive um because I I I'd love seeing you know the still photographs of the performance along Wilshire Boulevard but I kept imagining okay where's the film footage because you know there there could have been there maybe would have been film footage at that time um I was also really interested too in um the ephemera uh especially you know that lovely uh holiday card that you shared um and just the way that you know design was clearly something that they also were very Adept at and knew about they were very conscious of so if you could say something about that as well thank you for that question because so carps archive is held privately in maryn nix's son's house right now and he's basically said I'm the guy who's working on it so have fun with it and I'm very thank you Jason because I know you're watching um and um hi and um it was a very sort of serendipitous thing how I sort of came across carp I came across carp through my MFA work I found this typed up description of of this organization I had no idea what it was I Googled them I reached out they responded and I was able to go see this stuff um and Marilyn did a very wonderful job keeping ephemera from from stuff um some of the photographs uh the mailers those things that they designed they sort of compiled um a bunch of stuff together actually when the Getty was doing their PST their first one and they actually approached the Getty about being involved um and so I think that stuff has been sitting um and sort of been you know being preserved well so that's how I was able to access that archive um and then some of the other stuff contacting the artists um such as Kim Jones or SE seov the people who worked with carpel design those flyers they're very very nice people and they've always got you know time to talk and so then they also have their own personal archives that they can through digital you know stuff here's a picture or here's whatever so yeah great thank you um Leslie could you say something about about your archive and you know how how it's in in some ways um you know been either accessible or inaccessible um but also how it has shaped your research and and your project thank you very much um so and the the school it's it's really difficult to visit school buildings um in this clim you know current climate um and I I had a hard time sort of visiting many of these schools that are part of the system um and so I was able to sort of reach out and speak with um administrators and um former teachers and eventually gain access to to some of the spaces um and kind of go through some of the archives that they had um some of the information and materials that they had been storing in their you know their offices over time which is really interesting um and but it was really difficult particularly during the during the pandemic and just in general having somebody come into the school um you know to to to look at it um so that was really really difficult and I'm very grateful for the folks who um you know were willing to talk with me uh of which everyone was really generous um and then you know I I looked at a lot of um material at the Ford Foundation um which was really helpful talk to a number of people who sort of manage educational ephemera um in there's archives you know dedicated to educational ephemera and that's been really interesting um and then looking at some of the you know some of the planning documents from Aaron cr's time in hartfordshire and a lot of the kind of the documents around um the early development of the system looking at um Aaron cr's papers looking at you know all of these different kinds of um um project files as well has been really interesting and look you know to get a sense of of the the sort of the big picture of the of the plan great okay I have a few more questions for each of you and then I'm gonna open it up I promise so um and I'm also being conscious of our time so I'm going to go back to you Leslie um and and this will be be my last one for you um you've been an educator you are an educator um and you've taught you know um younger people and I just wanted to ask you if you could talk a little bit about you know why and how you you came to this project and how that training and that experience um has shaped the work that you're doing your line of inquiry um I always think it's really good for us you know whether we've been teaching for 20 or 30 or 40 years or um working in a museum or an archive for just five years if we're still still you know in school and thinking about the future just to understand what um what other Scholars trajectories are um because there's there's no one pathway and I think each of you have really interesting Pathways to the work that you're doing thank you very much for that question I really I really appreciate that um yeah so I um I was a teacher in Philadelphia Public Schools um which was great but I noticed I started thinking a lot about my own experience I grew up in Southern California and I went to a school you know an elementary school that didn't have didn't have Windows um even though we were you know we're in this amazing we're in this amazing climate um but we had a lot you know a lot more outdoor access a lot more time to be outside things like that but the spaces themselves were you know when I was growing up were very um you know they had the accordion walls which you could hear everything was happening in the other classroom and you could you know teachers would try and pin pin stuff up on the walls and they would fall down and it just it just never seemed to be very functional um and so I was always really curious you know when I was a kid why our school didn't have any windows and then when I became a school teacher I found that the spaces were um really different depending on when the school was built and so it kind of goes back to my original what I was saying earlier about you know what is the purpose of what is the purpose of these buildings and why why are they why are they built in this way um and so as a teacher I think I was always um I I started getting very surprised about the way that the you know my hierarchy um you know my position as like the leader of the classroom was always maintained by sort of standing at the front of the room and I was working in Philadelphia schools and there was a lot of um you know there was constantly facilities problems and so something was always breaking there's really old schools um and so I did my Master's thesis on um Philadelphia School architecture in the 1920s um particularly amidst a wave of 2010's um school closures so a lot of these schools had been shut down um and then sold to to private companies who turn them into apartment buildings or things like that whereas the school buildings that stayed with the school district continued to fall into disrepair and so my question was you know how is this how is this happening what is it about the architecture that is so difficult to maintain for the school district and so I think I sort of brought together my all of my personal experiences and queries just about you know what is the what is what what might be the best way to to organize a classroom spatially and a school spatially um so that's definitely where where it comes from great thank you thanks that's the great insights into the work so thank you mohameda I also wanted to ask you just about um and this is going to be maybe another thread from our conversation last night but I I think for the two of you you have you know whether you've done an MFA or you know worked with with artists and we we talked about about a connection that we discovered through the artist Terry Atkins when you were at upen if you could talk about whether it's mentors um or even the role of working you know with art as an artist how that has influenced your work or even your connection to comparative literature thinking interdisciplinarily um across your your project how that's kind of come into the work you're doing now I would like to think that at uh this diverse background that I have as an artist um as somebody who really appreciates Italian literature my ba is in Italian Studies actually um and all this interest in literature all come together in my project in someone like masses who himself translates Italian literature has diverse interests and um I think um knowing uh the other side of the uh thing knowing um the challenges that artists face in making work uh can be helpful in some ways uh but at the same time in my project I really try to also get some distance from it at as much as context as much as possible provide lots of uh social history and intellectual history of my country and I believe masses is someone who reveals a lot about uh the local community in Iran and his character uh contains lots of paradoxes is a very good figure to be able to study uh the Iranian Art In the postar period and this adoption of modernism in Iran thank you he he seems to be a very complex figure um in terms of the relationships that he has um and the way that he's able to work with different communities yeah yeah exactly thank you okay this is you you have an MFA how has that seriously how has that influenced the work that you're doing and and also maybe shaped how you know I always find it and and I have a lot of friends and colleagues some some of us art historians might be um you know art historians Who were or still are artists um but you know there are others who actually still continue their own practice ice um and and I have quite a few colleagues who who do that they're very well known for their practice as artists but they're also known as Scholars and writers and they have trained phds and I thought I would ask you a similar question about the relationship between your MFA and your PhD I think I mean there's a very practical um answer which is that my MFA was in it was in painting I was out at Claremont and my first first Master's the thesis was written on one of my my advisor out there and that I think for me was a great experience of sort of like there had been a long-term sort of mentorship that sort of evolved over years and then when he actually grew ill and passed away I was able to kind of come in and do the archive work with his widow and that to me I think was how I got into the kind of love of archives and work that I do um I'm no longer a practicing artist but but I'm notorious for going into museums having been a painter and getting real close to the painting and setting off the alarms and that's totally fine so I I still really enjoy I think looking at the way paint is put on a Surface I like really looking at the way you know a sculpture or a symbl thing is you know is put together um and I definitely appreciate I think about you know the time that it took to kind of layer and build and glaze stuff up so I I I definitely I think it's translated more from a tactile thing to more of a a viewer thing for sure yeah great great thank you thank you all so much I I'd like to um just in the I think we've got about 10 exactly minutes remaining uh open up uh two questions from the floor I know that there are a couple of mics moving around we've got one right down here in the front two right down here in the front on the left on my left oh great um yeah thank you so much for these uh engaging talks um I have two quick questions one for the last speaker I really enjoyed your paper thank you so much um and so I had a vague notion that um the postwar development of Southern California was not due to Sun and surf but that it was like you mentioned the oil industry in the early 20th century and then the Aerospace industry after the war I certainly didn't know that this would have extended to the public school system now what I wanted to ask you is whether you might be a little bit more explicit on your conclusions so when somebody like Mike Davis writes the history of the region he does that with a very Critical Agenda critical of global capitalism and corporate capitalism consumerism and so forth are you being an art historian I suppose you're excused from being critical but would it be possible to make maybe push what the wonderful and super exciting research that you've presented maybe a little bit more and interestingly in your in your personal remarks about you know your previous existence as a teacher um you know your sort of critical Edge became much more obvious than in your paper so I was wondering if you could do that and then I have a quick question for mmed Resa um so we know that in the postwar period abstraction was weaponized um by the West you know we know about the association between abstraction and liberal democracy and the way that was used for purposes that one might call colonizing or whatever you want to call it so I guess a sort of fasile interpretation of what you've presented would be to say that Moses's um shift you know away from abstraction was sort of an act of decolonization um but I think a much more interesting reading in a way would be to ask ask whether it would be possible to see that act as a way of actually deconstructing the boundary between abstraction and figuration in other words is it possible to read that figuration of his maybe not as a form of abstraction but certainly not as figuration in the sort of Common Sense way we understand that term you mentioned vamin for whom clearly allegory which you've invoked was not simply figuration so it seems like there would be a lot of ways in which it would make sense to say that um it's not really about you know just the alternative between figuration and abstraction but it is about making the whole question of what is figuration and what is abstraction more complicated thank you thank you very much for that question I think I think in the derer the dissertation project um I I get a little bit more um to toward criticality and I think my main question is should School SPAC should School spaces spaces for children be tied to you know uh training for potential labor spaces of of of getting ready for the for the job Force the job market um and I think you know in the 19th century you see that very explicitly with schools being tied School architecture being tied to factory type situations and then you see this shift as I was identifying in the early 20th century toward more sort of you know group work and the kind of John Dewey sort of educ ational philosophy and then this moment I think I'm identifying as a different type of a different type of shift in which a different type of Labor is being sort of normalized in a different way of thinking about production and consumption and our role as suburban sort of consumers and producers in it and the school does that work of of does part of that work in normalizing that um and so I think that that is one of my that is one of my critiques now I think the the question then is what should schools prepare prep are students for you know the labor force and how should they do that and what what are the proper ways that sort of the built environment can respond to um you know economic needs and I think that these are the questions that I'm very curious in terms of my broader research practice um but in terms of this particular project I think I am slightly critical particularly in the context of some of the things that I get into in the rest of my dissertation um around the context of desegregation and the way that these schools were sort of meant to kind of push the question of desegregation aside um in favor of using the school as a vehicle to sort of prepare this kind of universalized subject so um yeah so I really appreciate that question thank you thank you for um your question as f um yeah I think definitely for Mo it's beyond an alternation ative you know figuration is beyond an alternative uh for abstraction during this time there are certain documents that are very interesting uh in an article I think in 1962 he talks about uh the issue of figuration and abstraction and says that all the bright painters in Italy are considering that when he's in Rome and when he comes back to Iran after his show in 1965 moases says that uh abstraction is problematic in the west mainly because it's commercialized you know we have this wave of informality in Italy and Abstract expressionism in the States has become very established and in Iran he says that this problematic because of the incompetence of the painters everyone who can't paint is going and doing this and then he kind of implies the political problems that I talked about this uh in my paper so I think that yeah abstraction in the case of Iran really fits this interest to be contemporary with the West to you know which is interest interesting to many artists and to the governments uh to westernize uh the culture and art and uh mes doesn't only provide an alternative provides something that really fits these uh oppositional discourse to the Sha and interestingly uh uh whenever he uh sites or makes U the subject of Western painting his own subject he's so critical and he makes parodies of West painting as I discuss them in another chapter of my dissertation thank you all for such um thought-provoking talks I enjoyed all of them um my question is for Leslie uh and I apologize for not having a uh well articulated formulated question yet but um I was really um struck by the ways that you compared School architecture to or or you were thinking about kind of um production and consumption and comparing School architecture to architecture of other sites um and I was wondering I thought that I caught in the uh Professor narra's um introduction for you that you had also maybe done some work on um carceral architecture I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about how um how this school architecture that you've discussed might relate to um carceral architecture of prisons and um whether it does at all or if it just comes later um yeah thanks so thank you so much for that question um uh yeah I so the I wrote um previously I taught in um uh an alternative school so a school for students who had been expelled from the school district um and the the school was um managed by or sort of operated by a like a for profit for-profit charter company and so I became really interested in the ways in which they were using the space to sort of serve um their function as a kind of um an alternative school for students who had been expelled from the school district this was kind of their the last place they ended so um I was really interested in the way that they created they sort of separated and created divisions with using the existing space um that was there in order to sort of maintain and control and also um I looked at the I'm sort of just tracing the long history of this school through a couple of different sites it was had an original an earlier site earlier in the 20th century um at a different location um and just kind of looked at the way that the development of the school architecture was also tied to the development of um um experiments in special education and Clinical Psychology um in in that same period um with children yeah we uh we are at time but we're gonna have one last question if you okay great one last question thank you um I just want to say I'm a proud graduate of kigu Elementary which was one of the first prefab schools in Harford show it was chilly and cold and disorganized and it did nothing to prevent my delinquency so that's that's all I can say about that and it's a ston throw away from the voisey uh home in har so thanks to everyone for bringing the conference so personally back um but the question I had is quick question um it's about modularity just because it seems that this is one I mean it's a framework about the framework if you like it seems one way because your paper Leslie was obviously talking about the the sort of the joys of the modula and its social almost euphoric potential you know within Suburbia and Within These architectural Concepts and social concepts of the perod period but it strikes me also that um some of the critiques that um were put up around uh from the Uranian perspective against uh or or suspicious of the project of abstraction uh were couched in terms that were you know potentially imagining it as a rote formulation uh and so a sort of mode of modular organization and in fact that that idea that critique of abstraction comes forward in St Anthony A's writing in particular from the same from the same time period from the late 50s through the early 1960s um and and and in Charlie's uh presentation this idea of event management as a uh as a kind of para institutional form that would that paid no lip service to organizational mechanisms that you would associate with normative exhibition production or whatever that was much more spontaneous and so on also seems to have a a certain vested antim modularity so I just wanted from your different perspectives if that's um a useful Way To Think through some of some of the stakes I think that you're articulating in each case so I think this idea of anti modularity as far as karp goes is they were definitely um I mean they worked very much I think not even really necessarily even thinking about like we're going to you know challenge the institution I think they were but this idea of moving from space to space to space was I think a thing that they very much embraced if I'm fully understanding your question um and this idea of of sort of going and sort of putting something on and going and moving around at this time you know the pass art museum is is now become the Norton Simon um there's you know where do we show what do we do um and again I think this this was idea of trying to sort of um like I said kind of keep art moving forward in any sort of way that they could but that's sort of how I understand it does that answer your question sort of okay um I think uh in case of Topia that's actually very interesting example and context is very important because when we talk about all these uh context from intellectual and social history of Iran that's when the painting becomes meaningful and finds another kind of meaning these allegories which uh even in case of Nas's poetry that I was talking about we can really read them in many different ways uh and the only thing that I can add about it is uh thisr I of abstraction H these painters who become with some sort of solution for that in America we have Philip gon for instance which has been really overlooked for many years and now we are understanding uh his importance or in Italy we have petto uh it is kind of we can see it in a more broader uh context and vo Iran has these interesting local details I want to kind of also H to this more Global issue of this critic of abstraction take up I know we're at time but I first of all thank you so much and I really want to would love to talk with you that about your experience uh at you know going to school in harf um and I think the question of modularity is really important I think that um it was something that really excited the project Architects and led to this sort of you know vast manufacturing system in the United States um with all of these sort of modular components and it's really informed the way that we think about school architecture in the United States but I think one of the lingering questions I have from doing this research is H how much has modularity sort of become a part of the way that we think about school architecture and is that appropriate and you know should we be thinking about it in in a different way so yeah thank you wonderful well please join me in thaning our [Applause] panelists for for really really wonderful job and also uh there's a reception outside so I think we should go celebrate a really really productive and fun day thank you Rebecca yes indeed and thank you Cheryl thank you to all of our speakers and to our wonderful audience I know there were a few questions we didn't get to so please do bring those up with our speakers um I have a few quick announcements uh first of all there is parking validation outside in the lobby so if you parked and have your ticket make sure to get that validated for free parking um I would like to ask all of our speakers if they would stay behind for just one minute for a group photo uh and I would like to invite everybody to join us for a celebratory reception outside in the foyer and I look forward to seeing everyone back next year for what will then be the seventh annual Getty graduate Symposium thank you

Channel: Getty Research Institute

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Length: 126min 13sec (7573 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 20 2024