CFP: Producing and Consuming the Image of the Female Artist (CAA, Chicago, 12-15 Feb. 2020)

Ellery Foutch Announcement
Location
Illinois, United States
Subject Fields
American History / Studies, Art, Art History & Visual Studies, Cultural History / Studies, Fine Arts, Women's & Gender History / Studies

 

The Zoë Mozert Appreciation Society cordially invites you proposals for our upcoming CAA session “Producing and Consuming the Image of the Female Artist.” We welcome submissions from practicing artists and from art historians who study any geographic region or historical period (including the present day). Please do share this invitation widely. For more details, please consult: https://zmas.org/2019/06/24/cfp-caa-2020/

 

CFP: Producing and Consuming the Image of the Female Artist

College Art Association 2020 (Chicago, 12-15 Feb. 2020)

Co-Chairs: Alison J Carr and Ellery E Foutch

 

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

 

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

 

Please submit proposals (2-page cv, abstract, images) to co-chairs Alison J Carr (ajc@alisonjcarr.net) and Ellery E Foutch (efoutch@middlebury.edu) by 23 July. For more information, see https://caa.confex.com/caa/2020/webprogrampreliminary/meeting.html

 

About The Zoë Mozert Appreciation Society (ZMAS)

Inspired by the work of Zoë Mozert, a mid-century pin-up artist and model, ZMAS explores questions of artistic practice, image consumption, bodily display, and relationships between artist and model, muse and producer. Balancing a playful spirit of inquiry with rigorous research and critical engagement, ZMAS searches for evidence of the lived experiences of pin-up models and artists through archival hunting and imaginative acts of interpretation and speculation. 

 

ZMAS.org will function as an archive and platform as we generate transdisciplinary research into Mozert, reconstructing a context for her that considers her contemporaries as well as who Mozert has influenced today. We welcome collaborators, contributors, and co-conspirators in this exploration and adventure. 

 

Contact Email
efoutch@middlebury.edu