The next next meeting of the New York Reading Group will take place on Tuesday 4 March from 7-9:30pm, at ISSUE Project Room at 22 Boerum Place in Brooklyn. Wine will be served.
 
In the last meeting we read the 'Introduction' from art historian Darby English’s book How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness (2007) and 'Posing' (1985) by the art critic Craig Owens, who dedicated much of his life’s writing to discourse on contemporary art, sexuality, and power. Through these texts we discussed ways appropriation relates to representations of race and gender by discussing issues involving cultural history, identity, experience, and gendered tropes.
 
For our next meeting we will depart from Craig Owens’ provocation that “posing is a form of mimicry”, and read a text from Kelly Dennis’ book Art/Porn titled 'Art Made Flesh: the physical contact of art' (2009), which will take us back several centuries to examine the nude in Renaissance painting, in which she gives specific focus on Plato’s idea of mimesis.
 
The second text for this meeting, Donald Kuspit’s 'The Appropriation of Marginal Art of the 1980s' (1991), will extend from the discussion on representation and cultural appropriation brought forth in English’s essay, but also from the closing of Craig Owen’s 'Posing', in which he quotes Derrida:
 
“If the alterity of the other is posed, that is simply posed, doesn’t it amount to the same, in the form, for example, of the “constituted object,” the “informed product” invested with meaning, etc. From this view, I would even go so far as to say that the alterity of the other inscribes something in the relation which can in no way be posed (page 215).”

We will also read Jerry Saltz’s historical examination of the selfie: 'Art at Arm’s Length: A History of the Selfie' (2014).