Peggy Phelan

Marina Abramovic: Witnessing Shadows

Born in 1946 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, Marina Abramovic ; might be too old to qualify as an “‘It’ girl”—but certainly she is enjoying a new level of concentrated attention, if not quite celebrity. Her performance in New York’s Sean Kelly Gallery in November 2002, The House with the Ocean View, won the New York Dance and Performance Award (the Bessie) and Best Show in a Commercial Gallery from the International Association of Art Critics. The same performance was featured on HBO’s Sex and the City during its sixth season in 2003, and the New York Times ran four pieces about Abramovic;’s performance, including a short interview in the Sunday Magazine (the world’s largest circulating magazine).1

Art History Survey: A Round-Table Discussion

At the College Art Association 2003 annual conference, the editorial board of Art Journal convened a round-table discussion on the art history survey: why it continues to exist, who teaches it and how is it taught, and what have been effective challenges and innovations to its traditional form. Participants engaged in a spirited, substantive, and inconclusive discussion. Organizer and moderator Peggy Phelan (then chair of the Art Journal editorial board) proposed that this conversation on pedagogy should continue. She convened a round-table discussion, via e-mail, on the survey course with several experienced teachers and scholars. During the course of the conversation, Kathleen Desmond noted, “The Carnegie Foundation found that 80 percent of college teaching faculty listed teaching as their primary interest. Yet we barely discuss teaching. Treating teaching in the same ways we treat research and art making can revitalize and legitimize the essential component of our jobs as college professors.” With these points in mind, we are publishing excerpts from the e-mail discussion, hoping it might provoke further consideration of and dialogue about teaching the arts and art history in the new century.

Encircling Black and Blue

Abstract “Encircling Black and Blue” is Peggy Phelans poetic response to Carol Mavors recent book, Black and Blue: The Bruising Passion of Camera Lucida, La Jetée, Sans soleil, and Hiroshima mon amour (Duke University Press, 2012). In the spirit of Roland Barthes, Phelans neither-nor piece (which is neither criticism, nor poetry—neither oral, nor written) is a “writing aloud” prose poem. Literally extending her memories and passions into Black and Blue, Phelans writing is one with Mavors. An afterword has been provided by the books designer, Amy Ruth Buchanan.