Visiting Artists
Each semester, the School of Visual Arts' Contemporary Perspectives Lecture Series presents a series of lectures by various professional artists, including renowned painters, sculptors, printmakers, graphic designers, art educators, and art critics. Undergraduate and graduate students benefit from exposure to these lecturers' work, open dialogues with them about the processes of art making, as well as individual studio visits and critiques. These visiting artist lectures are also open to the public.
2007-2008 Visiting Artists
JENNY SAVILLE - Timothy Hamill Lecture
Monday, October 27, 2008, 6pm, BU Morse Auditorium 602 Commonwealth Ave, Boston MA
Free and open to the public
The fourth annual Tim Hamill lecturer is selected for prominence in their field and the impact their life and career will have on the students at Boston University. This year’s lecturer, painter Jenny Saville, is a leading figure in the contemporary British art scene and is best known for her provocative and unsentimental portraits of obese women. Often larger than life size, Saville’s paintings address serious issues and executed in a bold, brightly pigmented and highly sensual style. Saville received her BA from the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland in 1992, where Charles Saatchi bought her entire thesis exhibition, and she has since been catapulted into the international art world. Saville has exhibited her work extensively nationally and internationally including in the controversial exhibition Sensation at the Royal Academy of Art in London in 1997.
DTZ - Contemporary Perspectives Lecture Series
Monday, November 3, 2008, 6:30PM, CFA Concert Hall
Free and open to the public
One of the young up and coming new American painters, Dana Schutz opens the third season of the School of Visual Arts Contemporary Perspectives Lecture Series, a series which seeks to give students the opportunity to work in both lecture and studio settings with artists who offer diverse and multicultural perspectives. Collected by many major museums, Dana Schutz’s vibrant, large-scale paintings combine the possible with the imaginative, creating a painterly space that converges abstraction and representation, evoking an intimate atmosphere around the subject itself that is at once humorous and grotesque.
CAROL BECKER - Contemporary Perspectives Lecture Series
Tuesday, February 10, 2009, 6pm CFA Concert Hall
Free and open to the public
As Dean of Columbia’s School of Art, Carol Becker comes to the art world by way of social activism and a PhD in English literature. The author of numerous articles and several books, Becker began her innovative approach to art education at the Chicago Art Institute where she taught philosophy and later became Dean. As a writer and critic and now Dean of a prominent art school, Carol Becker’s thoughts on art, life, society and how it all fits together will be invaluable to students, artists and art lovers alike.
URSULA VAN RYDINGSVARD in conversation with DEBRA BRICKER BALKAN - Contemporary Perspectives Lecture
tuesday, march 17, 2009, 6pm CFA Concert Hall
Free and open to the publiC
A Polish-American sculptor who has built a career as distinctive as her iconic style, Von Rydingsvard’s organic forms are constructed from sawn and chiseled cedar beams that are monumental and overpowering. Although massive, her sculptures reveal the personal touch of the human hand and convey the puzzle-like surface of the landscape at the point where the man-made meets nature. Rydingsvard will be in conversation with author and critic Debra Bricker Balken. Balken has written extensively on modern and contemporary art, artists, theory and criticism. A long-time admirer of Rydingsvard’s work, Bricker Balken will be in conversation about the artists past, her career and her thoughts on contemporary art today.
YVONNE RAINIER in conversation with ROB STORR - Contemporary Perspectives Lecture
thursday, april 9, 2009, 6pm CFA Concert Hall
Free and open to the public
American avant-garde choreographer who trained with Martha Graham, Yvonne Rainer is considered an icon as a filmmaker who does not follow narrative conventions, but superimposes reality and fiction and sound and visuals to address social and political issues of the time. Rainier will be in conversation with Rob Storr, Dean at Yale University and former curator of painting at the Museum of Modern Art. Long an admirer of Rainier films, Storr will speak to issues concerning her career and its influence on today’s contemporary art and film scene.
All lectures are held at the College of Fine Arts building, 855 Commonwealth Avenue, unless otherwise noted. Artist's Lectures from 2006 and onward will be availble on the Boston University BUniverse web site