Dave Beech, Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia  Dave Beech links Picabia's monster paintings to current artists such as Mark McGowan, Laura Oldfield Ford and Freee by drawing out a shared commitment to produce art that does without the privileges of cultural capital, taste, style and so on. Picabia's critique of art - his anti-art - was a full-on philistinism (his version of avant-garde deskilling was an attack on taste as much as craft) even if it was mainly pictorial. Today artists pursue the challenge to art without restricting themselves to the pictorial or questions of style.

Jennifer Mundy, Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia, Three's a Crowd?  Jennifer Mundy, curator of Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia, reflects on the exhibition, its making and its aims. Further Reading Jennifer Mundy ed., Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia, Tate Publishing, London 2008.

TJ  Demos, Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia, Dada and Exile  TJ Demos discusses the form and function of "exile" in relation to the work of Duchamp, Man Ray, and Picabia, a term that both defines the experiential circumstances of Dadaist artists and inflects Dada's aesthetico-political commitment.

Jason Gaiger, Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia, Incidental and Integral Beauty: Duchamp, Danto and the Intractable Avant-Garde  It is widely accepted that the radical avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century abjured beauty, thereby effecting a decisive break with the art of the past. Duchamp is accorded a leading role in this process insofar as he rejected the satisfactions of ‘retinal pleasure’ in favour of an art of ideas.

Paul Wood, Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia, The idea of ‘avant-garde’ in the early 20th century  Paul Wood introduces the development of the idea of an avant-garde. He will look at what it meant in the early twentieth century and also discuss some contemporary art historical views on the avant-garde. Further Reading Francis Picabia 1879-1953 (exhibition catalogue), National Galleries of Scotland/Galerie Neuendorf Frankfurt am Main, 1988 Francis Picabia (exhibition catalogue), Musee d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 2002 George Baker, The Artwork Caught By The Tail, An October Book, MIT Press, Cambs. Mass., and London 2007

Marko Daniel, Introduction  This study day explores different ideas of avant-garde art in the early twentieth century, and in contemporary practice.

Marko Daniel, Q&A Session 2  Conference video recording

Stephen Bull, Celebrities in the Street and Studio  During what could be called The Golden Age of Celebrity, from the 1920s to the 1960s, photographs of the famous were usually carefully staged in the studio. Stars were portrayed as godlike: separate from the mere mortals who worshipped them. With the arrival of paparazzi photography, celebrities came to be pictured walking the same streets as you and I and the stars were brought down to earth.

Karen Knorr, FABLES: Towards a Digital Imaginary  Karen Knorr speaks about her recent work FABLES which continues her investigation into high art culture and its museum context using live and dead animals photographed in museums and heritage sites across France. FABLES, a survey show of Knorr's work will be exhibited at Centrale Electrique, European Centre for Contemporary Art until September 28 2008. Suggested Further Reading A Matter of Life and Death (1946) Film by Powell and Pressburger The Birds (1963) Alfred Hitchcock A Thousand Plateaux (1980) Deleuze and Guattari

Joy Gregory, Cinderella Tours Europe  Cinderella Tours Europe is a series of photographs which grew out of the numerous interviews Joy conducted during a four month research trip around the Caribbean. From Panama to Jamaica, from Haiti to Surinam, for many Europe was the place of unattainable dreams regarded in the same way as others may imagine Ancient Greece or the Roman Empire.