Achim Borchardt-Hume, Albers and Moholy-Nagy  Achim's talk explores Josef Albers and László Moholy-Nagy's shared belief in art being not just an aesthetic but an ethical experience. Both detested romantic notions of art as self-expression and instead were concerned with the contribution art and artists could make to the positive development of modern society. Imbued with democratic aspirations, they challenged traditional notions of art as the preserve of a bourgeois elite, and sought a unity of art and life. Further Reading Albers and Moholy-Nagy: From the Bauhaus to the New World, ed. Achim Borchardt-Hume, Tate 2005

Tim Benton, Le Corbusier  There is a preconception, backed by a growing literature, that Modernist architects had trouble meeting the psychological and physical need for comfort and enclosure of ordinary people. Architects tend to perceive architectural value in visual terms whereas, for most people, the other senses are more important in producing a sense of well-being. Furthermore, Modernism imposed an attitude to the use of 'modern' materials which gave Modernist houses the appearance of being 'unnatural' and abstract.

Sophie Howarth, Introduction  This study day explores Utopian beliefs in the power of culture to transform both the individual and society at large.

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.

Steve Edwards, Russell Roberts, Gill Perry and Bettina Kaufmann, Q&A Session 1

Steve Edwards, Documents and Pictures  Steve Edwards explores some of the antimonies or contrasts that have shaped photography from its origin in the nineteenth century to the present. This short survey presentation provides an introduction to ideas and photographic practices relevant for this study day. Suggested Further Reading Steve Edwards, 'Profane illumination': Photography and photomontage in the USSR and Germany, Steve Edwards & Paul Wood eds, Art of the Avant-Gardes, Yale University Press, 2004, pp.395-425

Round Table and Q&A chaired by Gill Perry  Gill Perry is Professor of Art History at the Open University.

Margarita Tupitsyn, A Russian Journey of the Grid  Constructivism had developed its own genealogy of the key modernist emblems such as the grid, and the monochrome as well as theorized on the status of the everyday object in the field of aesthetics. This talk presents a case of the resuscitation and redefinition of the grid's visual and theoretical formats through the work of artists associated with the Moscow conceptual circle in its past and current "membership."

Brandon Taylor, Looking from the Left From Line to Construction: Rodchenko's Laboratory of Form  From the earliest straight-line paintings of 1917 and 1918 through to Rodchenko's article 'The Line' of 1921, lines alone summarised the ambitions of Constructivism for efficiency, simplicity and functionality - and for energy, direction and speed, all metaphors of a new art and a new attitude to three-dimensional form in the real environment.We shall look carefully at the 'laboratory' attitudes of Rodchenko and Popova in their efforts to transcend painting, but with the resourc