The Counterculture in the 1950s and 1960s: From the Beats to Bucky Fuller
November 1, 2008, 9:45AM – 5:30PM (doors open at 9AM)
Auditorium, Edgar A. Smith Building, Blanton Museum of Art
Symposium accompanying the exhibition Reimagining Space: The Park Place Gallery Group in 1960s New York
Blanton Museum of Art, September 28, 2008 - January 18, 2009
Free to UT faculty and students and Blanton members. We would like to extend a special invitation to faculty and students from other colleges and universities to attend free of charge. For the general public there is a $20 registration fee (paid in advance or the day of the event). To register or for more information, please contact Jason Mendiola at (512) 471-9210 or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). A list of lunch options near the museum will be provided.
Co–sponsored by the Blanton Museum of Art and the Department of Art and Art History, with assistance from the Center for the Study of Modernism
Organized by Linda Dalrymple Henderson, Guest Curator of Reimagining Space, Department of Art and Art History, The University of Texas
The goal of this interdisciplinary symposium is to offer new perspectives on the 1960s for students and faculty as well as for the Blanton and larger Austin communities. While some people may still have their copies of the Whole Earth Catalog (1968-1971), that publication is an enigma for a younger generation today. Yet the Whole Earth Catalog is an invaluable time capsule of the social and intellectual concerns of the 1960s. For a counterculture seeking to remake the world on a new model, the Catalog provided practical guidance and “access to tools” for sustainable living as well as books on a wide range of topics including science, geometry, cybernetics, new media, experimental music, psychology, philosophy, spirituality, and utopia.
Behind the Whole Earth Catalog is the work of Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), which inspired it and underlies its focus “whole systems.” While interest in Fuller waned in the later 20th century, his philosophy of “comprehensive design” and its commitment to solving humanity’s problems—from shortages of affordable housing and energy to the ecological health of the planet—are once again attracting serious attention. The Whitney Museum of American Art staged the first major Fuller exhibition, Buckminster Fuller: Starting with Universe, in summer 2008 and numerous new books on Fuller have appeared in recent years, documenting his newly recognized relevance in the 21st century.
Countering the ubiquitous stereotypes of the counterculture of the 1960s, this symposium brings together a group of scholars to share their insights into specific aspects of the period. In addition, Park Place Gallery founder Dean Fleming serves as an eyewitness of the period, from the Beat Scene of San Francisco in the 1950s through the establishment of the Libre community in Colorado in 1968, which is itself documented in the Whole Earth Catalog.
Speakers' Abstracts and Biographies
Schedule
9:45 Welcome
10:00 – 11:45 Quests for Transcendence and Utopia in the Late 1950s and 1960s
10:00 Dean Fleming, Gardner, CO (painter and Park Place Gallery co–founder)
Informal conversation about his and other Park Place members' student days in San Francisco and interaction with the Beats, the Park Place Gallery years in New York, and his subsequent move to the Colorado mountains and co–founding of Libre
10:50 – 11:00 DISCUSSION
11:00 Robert Abzug, Dept. of History and Director, Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies, UT Austin
Roads to Transcendence: 'Cosmological Eclecticism' in the Early 1960s>
11:30 – 11:45 DISCUSSION
11:45 – 1:00 LUNCH BREAK
1:00 – 3 :00 Experimental Art, Music, and Film
1:00 Linda Henderson, Dept. of Art and Art History, UT Austin
The Fourth Dimension, Buckminster Fuller, and the Art of the Park Place Gallery Group
1:30 Douglas Kahn, Director of the Program in Technocultural Studies, University of California at Davis
Far Out: Brainwaves as the Inner of Inner and Outer Space
2:00 Bruce Elder, Dept. of Film Studies, Ryerson University, Toronto
Filming Energy
2:30 DISCUSSION
2:45 – 3:30 COFFEE BREAK AND CONVERSATION
3:00 – 3:25 Screening of Stan Brakhage's Prelude to Dog Star Man (1961–64)
3:30 – 5:30 Alternative Communities, Fuller, and the Whole Earth Catalog
3:30 Tim Miller, Dept. of Religious Studies, University of Kansas
Art and Community: Libre and Its Communitarian Context
4:00 Bruce Clarke, Dept. of English, Texas Tech University
Systems Countercultures: Buckminster Fuller and the Whole Earth Catalog
4:30 Fred Turner, Dept. of Communication, Stanford University
Informationn–Technology–Counterculture: How USCO Shaped the Whole Earth Catalog
5:00 DISCUSSION AND SYMPOSIUM CONCLUSION
