Someone once called Michael Fried the Richard Nixon of art criticism. What they probably meant by that was that like Nixon people thought they wouldn’t have Michael Fried to kick around anymore, and now look, he’s back, and he’s the boss. Or President. Get along and have a listen to Fried at this not-to-be-missed event where he talks about Thomas Demand, the Willy Brandt of contemporary art, before whatever happened to Nixon happens to Fried. Or something like that.
MICHAEL FRIED: THOMAS DEMAND’S ‘PACIFIC SUN’
The Power Institute is proud to present a lecture by world-renowned art critic and historian Michael Fried.
In this, his first talk in Australia, Fried will engage with the short stop-motion film Pacific Sun (2011) by leading contemporary artist Thomas Demand. Fried will discuss the film and artist in detail, and through the film will explore theories of photography, artistic production and the phenomenological experience of art.
Michael Fried is Professor, J. R. Herbert Boone Chair in the Humanities (secondary appointment: Department of the History of Art) at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. Fried has written extensively about an array of subjects, spanning abstract painting and sculpture since World War II, to French painting and art criticism from the mid-eighteenth century, to the advent of Edouard Manet. In his 2008 publication Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before Fried explored the complex process of engagement with contemporary photography citing examples from many leading art photographers. Most recently he has written about contemporary artists Anri Sala, Charles Ray, Joseph Marioni and Douglas Gordon. He is currently embarked on a short book on ‘Madame Bovary,’ to be called Flaubert’s Gueuloir.
FRIDAY 24 MAY, 2013
7:00-8.30PM
Bar open from 5.30pm
GREAT HALL
The Quadrangle, University of Sydney
Camperdown, NSWRSVP
Adult $20, Conc $15 for general public
FREE for all full-time University students, University of Sydney full-time students, alumni and faculty staffPlease register online via the Seymour Centre website here
Co-presented with Sydney ideas and The United States Studies Centre.
Image: Pacific Sun (detail), Thomas Demand, 2011, production still.
