Niru Ratnam, A Fascination with 'Otherness'  Both Picasso and Matisse drew upon African art early on in their careers, arguably in order to break, or continue in their break from, conventional western visual languages. Niru Ratnam examines the idea of the cultural 'other', how it has been constructed and how it persists in contemporary art.

Sarah Wilson, Matisse, Picasso and Exhibition Making  In the light of two very different exhibitions - the Royal Academy's Paris: Capital of the Arts 1900-1968 (26 January -19 April 2002) and Tate Modern's Matisse Picasso (11 May - 18 August 2002), Sarah Wilson, curator of the former, discusses the relationship between exhibition history and the fictional recreation of artists' personae and influence.Further ReadingConstantin Brancusi: The Essence of Things, Tate 2004, especially Alexandra Parigoris, 'The Road to Damascus'Alex Potts, The Sculptural Imagination: Figurative,

Andrew Brighton, Matisse, Picasso and Marketing the Modern  The rise of the reputations and prices of Matisse and Picasso were made possible by the development of new ways of marketing art. In his talk, Andrew Brighton asks to what extent the character of their work formed by the political economy of their reputations.

Sophie Howarth, Introduction

Sophie Howarth, Gill Perry and Claire Bishop, Discussion 2

Robert Morris, Mike Nelson and Martin Fried, Installation Art and the Post-Medium Condition  Claire Bishop argues that installation art is exemplary of 'post-medium specific art', in other words, art whose medium is so expanded that it no longer has much to do with traditional art historical genres such as sculpture and painting.

Gill Perry, Sculpture and Performance in Ana Mendieta's Silueta Series  Studies of Mendieta's work have frequently interpreted her earth/body art as both instilled with primitivist fantasies of a feminine primordial power, and an obsessive response to trauma and loss.

Sophie Howarth, To the Things Themselves! Phenomenology and Minimal Art  This talk explores ideas of the readymade in American and European art since the 1960s. Beginning with a discussion of the historical origins of 'readymade' sculpture in the 1910s, Sophie Howarth goes on to explore the renewal of interest in such practice in the late 1950s, and its appeal to generations of artists since. Among those whose work will be discussed are Jasper Johns, Robert Morris, Piero Manzoni, Bruce Nauman, Charles Ray, Sherrie Levine and Jeff Koons.

Sophie Howarth, Paul Wood, Matthew Gale, Dominic Willsdon, Discussion 1

Dominic Willsdon, To the Things Themselves! Phenomenology and Minimal Art  Phenomenology is a school of thought founded by the philosopher Edmund Husserl in the early 20th century. Between the 1920s and the 1960s, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and others developed and expanded phenomenology to address art, literature, society and politics.