Nonobjects and Quasi-objects: Notes on a Research Agenda at the Edge of Modernity

Prof. Monica Amor, Maryland Institute College of Art. Baltimore

As part of the “Modern/Contemporary Materialites” lecture series at The Art Institute of Chicago,

generously supported by the Stockman Family Foundation.

Monday, May 8, 2017
2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Fellows Lounge, AIC Rubloff building

About the presenter:
Monica Amor holds a Ph.D. from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has written art criticism and essays for Art Margins, Artforum, Art Journal, Art Nexus, Grey Room, October, Poliester, Third Text, and Trans. She has curated several exhibitions, among them: "Altering History/Alternating Stories for the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas (1996), "Beyond the Document" for the Reina Sofia in Madrid (2000) "re-drawing the line" for Art in General in New York (2000), "Gego Defying Structures" for the Serralves Foundation in Porto (2006) and "Mexico: Expected/Unexpected" for Le Maison Rouge in Paris (2008). She has lectured at The Ohio State University and Sara Lawrence College, and has taught at Hunter College, Parsons School of Design, Pratt Institute, the Instituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia, and the University of Pennsylvania. Her most recent book Theories of the Nonobject: Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela 1944-1969 (University of California Press, 2016) investigates the crisis of the sculptural and painterly object in the concrete, neoconcrete, and constructivist practices of artists in Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela. Based on deep archival research, this distinctive book brings scholarly attention to a group of major art figures, including Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica, and Gego, whose work proposed engaged forms of spectatorship that dismissed medium-based understandings of art. Exploring the philosophical, economic, and political underpinnings of geometric abstraction in post–World War II South America, Amor highlights the overlapping inquiries of artists and critics who, working on the periphery of European and US modernism, contributed to a sophisticated conversation about the nature of the art object.