In postwar and contemporary art, artists’ engagements with architecture are often interpreted in terms of institutional critique or societal commitment. Artists comment on architecture’s imposition of power or on its biopolitics, or they gauge the capacity of architectural design to bring together people and shape new publics. Yet the involvement of contemporary art with architectural theory and history reaches well beyond these themes. From Asger Jörn’s and the Situationists’ quarrels with Le Corbusier’s design principles to Claes Oldenburg’s and Dan Graham’s dialogue with Robert Venturi, to references to modern and postmodern, Renaissance and Baroque architecture, in art since the 1980s (e.g., Monica Bonvicini, Luciano Fabro, Peter Friedl, Jill Magid, Giulio Paolini, Thomas Schütte), artists have entertained a sustained critical engagement with works and ideas of architects, architecture critics, and architecture historians.

This session calls for contributions that historicize the assorted roles played by architecture theory and history in contemporary art. We welcome case studies and more general papers. Contributions can mine the nexus of art and architecture theory/history in a synchronic and diachronic manner. We wish to address the following questions: how do artists' engagements with architectural theory and history open up reflections on socio-historical themes and developments in art? How, and why, are architects, buildings and theories referenced? If art allows working with architecture beyond disciplinary expectations and established protocols, what ’type’ of theory and history emerges? How, if at all, does contemporary art allow thinking differently about the categories of theory and history in architecture?