Graduate Program in Media + Modernity | Princeton University

Irene Small

"The Organic Line: Toward a Topology of Modernism”

[Response: Anne A. Cheng]

Tuesday, November 19, 2024 @5pm ET

N107 (School of Architecture)

What would it mean to treat an interval of space as a line, thus drawing an empty void into a constellation of art and meaning-laden things? In this presentation, Irene V. Small discusses her new book, which elucidates the signal discovery of the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark in 1954: a fissure of space Clark called “the organic line.” A cavity that binds discrepant entities together, the organic line transforms planes into flexible topologies, borders into membranes, and interstices into points of connection. The presentation will focus on Clark’s architectural experiments and their implications for conceptualizing subjectivity, space, and networks.
 

Irene V. Small is Associate Professor of Contemporary Art & Criticism in the Department of Art & Archaeology at Princeton. She is the author of Hélio Oiticica: Folding the Frame (University of Chicago Press, 2016) and The Organic Line: Toward a Topology of Modernism (Zone Books, 2024).

Anne Α. Cheng is Professor of English and author of: The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation, and Hidden Grief; Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface; Ornamentalism; and a new book of personal essays Ordinary Disasters.  She was the 2023-2024 Scholar-in-Residence at the Museum of Modern Art in NY and is a consultant for the exhibition Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Retake on Chinoiserie, opening in Spring 2025 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

M+M strives to make everyone feel welcome. If you are concerned that room N107 will not provide adequate physical accommodation for you, please contact us in advance to discuss it.