De Duve posits that within recent years, the field of visual arts has been described as being in the midst of two seemingly incompatible states. On the one hand, critics such as Rosalind Krauss have argued that we are now in a “post-medium” condition. On the other hand, many critics suggest that we are in the midst of an emphatic "return of the medium." The medium seems to be nowhere and everywhere.

In his talk, de Duve will argue that the question "Where is the medium?" is nearly impossible to answer. Instead, he says, we must ask: "When did the medium disappear? What were the historical conditions surrounding this so-called disappearance of the medium?”

By looking at the historical context of this conundrum, de Duve suggests, we might get an inkling of what its significance might be.

De Duve is a professor of aesthetics and art history at Université Lille III in Villeneuve d'Ascq, France. His research and writing are focused on a reinterpretation of modernism. Marcel Duchamp's readymade and its implications for aesthetics have long been a central focus of his work.

De Duve was responsible for the Belgian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2003 and curated the exhibition Look, 100 Years of Contemporary Art at the Palais de Beaux Arts in Brussels (2000). He authored the companion publication to the exhibition, likewise titled Look, 100 Years of Contemporary Art (2001), and was a contributing writer for Held Together with Water: Artwork from the Verbund Collection (2007). His other books include Kant after Duchamp (1998); Clement Greenberg Between the Lines (1996); and Pictorial Nominalism; On Marcel Duchamp's Passage from Painting to the Readymade (1991).

De Duve has held visiting professorships at the Sorbonne in Paris, France and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Johns Hopkins University, and was the Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Distinguished Visiting Professor in Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. He has also been a Fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study of the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and most recently, at The Clark art institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

De Duve’s talk is presented in association with the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA) and with the support of the Consulate General of France in Toronto.

About the 2010 Joan and Martin Goldfarb Summer Institute

The proliferation of digital media and a continuing movement toward the dissolution of the art object call into question the continuing validity and significance of “medium specificity.” At a time when artists increasingly engage the moving image via a range of technologies spanning cinema, web, television, museum and gallery, the 2010 Joan and Martin Goldfarb Summer Institute asks: ‘Where is the Medium?’ Invited speakers offer a series of events exploring the boundaries and intersections between the disciplines of the visual arts, art history, and film.

The Summer Institute offers York University graduate students and the wider community the opportunity to engage with prominent international artists, curators, critics and theorists through seminars, workshops, courses and public lectures. In addition to de Duve, guests of the Institute this year are dance and film artist Yvonne Rainer, media arts specialist Christine Ross and film theorist Mary Ann Doane, who will give four public talks at York June 7-10.

The Summer Institute is named in recognition of Joan and Martin Goldfarb, longstanding supporters of York’s Faculty of Fine Arts, whose generous gift has made this annual residency program possible.

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Thierry de Duve: “When did the Medium Disappear?”

Part of York University’s Joan and Martin Goldfarb Summer Institute

When: Thursday, May 6 - 7:30pm

Where: MOCCA, 952 Queen St. West, Toronto | Map

Admission: Free

Information: 416.736.5533 (York)  |  416.395.0067 (MOCCA)

www.yorku.ca/finearts/summerinstitute

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Media Contact:

Amy Stewart, Communications, Faculty of Fine Arts, York University

Tel. 416.650.8469  |  amy.stewart@yorku.ca