Presented by The Idee Levitan IHC Endowed Lecture Series Thursday, May 15 / 5:30 P.M. / Free Santa Barbara Museum of Art Mary Craig Auditorium 1130 State Street Reservations: 893-3907 W.J.T. Mitchell reflects on the fortunes of abstract painting in the aftermath of postmodernism, arguing that the heroic status of abstraction within modernist aesthetics has been replaced now by an aesthetics of intimacy. In this illustrated lecture, he will discuss a variety of contemporary painters, including Gerhard Richter, David Reed, and a number of lesser-known artists. W. J. T. Mitchell is Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor of English and Art History, University of Chicago. He is editor of the interdisciplinary journal, Critical Inquiry, a quarterly devoted to critical theory in the arts and human sciences. A scholar and theorist of media, visual art, and literature, W. J. T. Mitchell is associated with the emergent fields of visual culture and iconology (the study of images across the media). He is known especially for his work on the relations of visual and verbal representations in the context of social and political issues. Under his editorship, Critical Inquiry has published special issues on public art, psychoanalysis, pluralism, feminism, the sociology of literature, canons, race and identity, narrative, the politics of interpretation, postcolonial theory, and many other topics. He has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Morey Prize in art history given by the College Art Association of America. His publications include: The Last Dinosaur Book: The Life and Times of a Cultural Icon (1998); Picture Theory (1994); Art and the Public Sphere (1993); Landscape and Power (1992); Iconology (1987); The Politics of Interpretation (1984), On Narrative (1981) and The Language of Images (1980). This event is cosponsored by the UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Top of Page <<Back