Stokes’ Objects (20-21 November)
Event details
The conference examines Stokes’ career-long fascination with the sculptural practices of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy and their afterlives, from Agostino di Duccio’s carvings for the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini to the late work of Michelangelo and beyond, to Mickey Mouse and the Russian ballet. Contributors address Stokes’ wide-ranging interests beyond the arts, from geology to psychoanalysis, while also positioning his work in dialogue with that of other sculptors and scholarly networks of the twentieth century.
The conference concludes the Henry Moore Institute’s Research Season Adrian Stokes, Inside Out, which centres on the critic’s compelling and idiosyncratic sculptural imagination. A key voice in mid twentieth-century sculptural and architectural criticism, Stokes uniquely combined a disparate set of compelling concerns: modernist values of direct carving, speculative psychoanalytic thought, a sensitivity to the vitality of natural materials, and a deep understanding of pre-modern artmaking in its continual reanimation.
Participants include François Blanchetière, Caterina Caputo, Laura Chase, Ruth Ezra, Stephen Feeke, Henrike Christian Lange, Jeremy Melius, Alex Potts, Liz Prettejohn, Jessica Richardson, Alistair Rider, Sam Rose, David Russell, Harmon Siegel, Baptiste Tochon-Danguy, James Williams, and Alison Wright.
The conference will take place Friday 20 November, 1pm-6pm and Saturday 21 November, 11am-6pm in the Bowland Auditorium, BS/006. It is organised by Jeremy Melius (University of York) and Ruth Ezra (University of St Andrews) in collaboration with the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds.