Art + Design Events in Champaign

Art + Design has two exciting events this week. Both events are free and open to the public.


Thursday, March 12 * 5:30 pm * 62 Krannert Art Museum Auditorium

Fang Lijun Discusses His Work as part of the Jerrold Ziff Distinguished Lecture on Modern Art.


Fang Lijun, born in 1963 in Handan, Hebei province is one of the leading and most influential contemporary artists in China. Fang Lijun received a BA from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing in 1990 – he currently lives and works out of Beijing and exhibits both nationally and internationally, working primarily in oil painting or woodblock prints.


Saturday, March 14 * 10 am - 5 pm * 62 Krannert Art Museum Auditorium

Center for the Study of Modern Art at The Phillips Collection & Illinois at the Phillips Symposium: "Painting in the Twenty-First Century: Teaching Painting"

Session II of a symposium on “Painting in the Twenty-First Century”

While painting is ubiquitous, its terms are more elastic than ever, with artists working between and among disparate kinds of practices and eschewing traditional notions of the medium. Given the wide range of projects that constellate around painting today, what does it mean to choose paint as one’s material and to self-identify as a painter? How varied are contemporary practices and how has the art pedagogy that subtends them changed? How does the way we teach painting transform the nature of painting as well as the ways in which we see, teach, and write about it. What role does criticism play in teaching painting? How different are teaching practices internationally and in what ways do regional practices share common ground? For instance,China has become an important source of painting in the last decade, a fact not unrecognized by the art market. How have the teaching-methods in China changed and what impact has this transformation had on what is happening in China and elsewhere? And regarding the economic situation more broadly, what spaces for critical discourse exist in this context? These are some of the issues that the symposium will address, beginning with the case study of China today then broadening to practices elsewhere, including the United States.


Symposium -- Schedule of Events:

10:00 am - Welcome remarks

Jonathan Fineberg, Director of Illinois at the Phillips and Gutgsell Professor of Art History at the University of Illinois

10:10 am - Introduction to the conference

Professor Fineberg introduces Fang Lijun and Gary Xu (Professor of Comparative and World Literature, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

10:20 am - Keynote

Fang Lijun, painter, Beijing, China (with Gary Xu translating)

11:30 - 12:30 - Discussion

Jonathan Fineberg, Vesela Sretenovic (Curator, The Phillips Collection), and Joel Ross (Professor of Art, Universityof Illinoisat Urbana-Champaign) discussants, followed by audience questions and discussion


12:30 - 2:00 pm - Lunch Break


2:00 - 4:00pm - Panel Discussion: Teaching Painting Today

Moderated by: Suzanne Hudson and Terri Weissman, Assistant Professors of Art History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and at Illinois at the Phillips; Tim Griffin, Editor of ARTFORUM magazine; Okwui Enwezor, Dean, San Francisco Art Institute; Jacqueline Humphries, painter, N.Y.

4:00 - 5:00 pm - Discussion from the floor