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 the lecturers’ work, engaging with them in dialogues about the art-making process, as well as benefiting from individual studio visits and critiques. Visiting artist lectures are free and open to the public.
2011–2012 Visiting Artists
Phoebe Washburn—Contemporary Perspectives Lecture Series
Wednesday, October 19, 2011, 6:30 p.m.
Morse Auditorium
602 Commonwealth Ave.
Free and open to the public
Phoebe Washburn, sometimes called the Dumpster Diva, recycles discarded industrial materials into large-scale installations. Favored materials include cardboard boxes and wood, most of which is scavenged behind businesses near her studio in Brooklyn. Stating that she is not interested in art with “a capital A,” she instead explores the real world through what we are leaving behind: fish tanks, conveyor belts, wood scraps, and power tools. She modestly describes her handmade installations as, “clumsy, labored, slow-growing events,” they captivate anyone who sees them and reveal an elegance of form and fantasy.
Enrique Chagoya—Contemporary Perspectives Lecture Series
Thursday, November 17, 2011, 6:30 p.m.
College of Fine arts Concert Hall
855 Commonwealth Ave.
Free and open to the public
According to painter and print artist Enrique Chagoya,”It is very important to understand the relationship between art and society.” The artist demonstrates his worldview by combining images from art history and cartoons, appropriating from various cultures, and juxtaposing disparate figures in satirical ways. Born in Mexico, and now a naturalized American citizen, Chagoya mixes images of Superman, Jesus, and Aztec Diagrams with portraits of artists and political activists. He utilizes painting, printmaking, drawing, video-animation, and installation in his work. He grapples with the conflicts of his own life experiences while also expressing an irreverent, wildly pluralistic imagination.
Read a Q&A with Enrique Chagoya on BU Today.
Nicole Eisenman—Contemporary Perspectives Lecture Series
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 6:30 p.m.
Morse Auditorium
602 Commonwealth Ave.
Free and open to the public
New York-based artist Nicole Eisenman has created a self-aware and psychologically probing body of work that includes installations, animations, drawings, collages, assemblages, found objects, murals, and paintings. Much of her work focuses on different ways of coping; however she uses humor in a way that is different from her contemporaries. Her flair for drawing pulls you in, then stops you in your tracks with content that might not be so funny. Eisenman offers an insight into the isolation experienced in the pursuit of artistic creation and the very human need to seek diversion from that same pursuit.
Laurie Anderson—Tim Hamill Lecture
Monday, February 27, 2012 6:30 p.m.
Morse Auditorium
602 Commonwealth Ave
Free and open to the public
New York-based artist Laurie Anderson has created large-scale theatrical works that combine a variety of media–music, video, storytelling, projected imagery, sculpture–in which she is an electrifying performer. As a visual artist, her work has been shown at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, as well as extensively in Europe, including the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. She has also released seven albums for Warner Brothers including “Big Science,” featuring the song “O Superman,” which rose to number two on the British pop charts. In 1999 she staged “Songs and Stories from Moby Dick,” an interpretation of Herman Melville’s 1851 novel.
April Greiman—Contemporary Perspectives Lecture Series
Tuesday, March 20, 2012 6:30 p.m.
College of Fine Arts Concert Hall
855 Commonwealth Ave.
Free and open to the public
April Greiman’s transmedia projects, innovative ideas, and hybrid-based approach to art making have been influential worldwide over the last 30 years. Her explorations of image, word, and color as objects in time and space are grounded in her singular fusion of art and technology. Greiman has been instrumental in the acceptance and use of advanced technology in the arts and the design process since the early 1980s. She lives in Los Angeles, where she has established her multi-disciplinary practice, Made in Space.
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 available on the Boston University BUniverse website.
