Since the end of the Second World War, historical forces and personal motivations compelled many artists, working across a spectrum of materials and visual methods, to directly employ or obliquely reference themes of the Last Judgment and the Apocalypse. Over a historical period of wars, economic booms and devastating depressions, the rise and fall of ideologies of left and right, the collapse of colonial empires and the chaos of failed states, the threats of nuclear annihilation and ecological degradation, artists frequently turned to eschatological imagery to visualize the experience of modern life.

The Last Judgment described in the sacred texts of the Abrahamic religions threatens damnation and promises redemption for both the individual and society. This symposium will explore the way that apocalyptic beliefs and imagery have informed the work of avant-garde artists.

Keynote speaker Dr. Pepe Karmel, Associate Professor of Art History at New York University, will consider the idea of the “end of art” as an allegory for the broader, eschatological idea of “the end."

Symposium Schedule

Monday, February 11: 6:30 - 9:30 PM

Session 1
Hannah Hempstead, MA Candidate, Wheaton College
"'Between the Center and the Edge of Things': Art, Entropy, and Eschatology in the Work of Robert Smithson"

Dr. Rory O'Dea, Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art and Design, Parsons School of Design
"Entropic Apocalypse: Robert Smithson's Non-Objective World"

Session 2
Dr. Suzaan Boettger, Professor, History of Art, Bergen Community College
"'Life in the Lower Depths': Early 1960s’ Postapocalyptic Undergrounds of the ProtoPostmodernist Robert Smithson"

Dr. Deborah Frizzell, Adjunct Professor of Art History, William Paterson University of New Jersey
"Across Space and Time: Figuring the Structures of Nancy Spero's Eschatology"

Discussion with Presenters

Tuesday, February 12: 6:30 - 9:30 PM

Session 3
Alexander R. Bigman, PhD Candidate, Institute of Fine Arts at NYU
"No Future: Sarah Charlesworth’s Doomsday Historicism from Modern History to Stills"

Dr. Isabelle Loring Wallace, Associate Professor of Contemporary Art, Lamar Dodd School of Art, University of Georgia
"Judgement, Jesus, and Reality TV: Christian Jankowski’s Casting Jesus"

Keynote:
Dr. Pepe Karmel, Associate Professor of Art History, New York University
"The End of Art as a Necessary Fiction"

Discussion with Presenters

Concluding Remarks

This symposium organized by Dr. Amy Hamlin (St. Catherine University, [email protected]) and Dr. James Romaine (Lander University, [email protected]) for the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art (ASCHA) and is co-sponsored by the Department of Art History, New York University.