Mette Gieskes, born in Oosterend, the Netherlands, in 1974. Ph.D from the University of Texas at Austin. Assistant Professor in Art History at Radboud University Nijmegen.
Fellow (1 September 2010 – 30 June 2011)
SYSTEM AND AGENCY IN EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN ART, 1957-1975
During my stay at NIAS, I worked on a book about the use of systems in American and Western European art of the 1960s and early 1970s. In particular, the book focuses on seven artists (Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt, Vito Acconci, François Morellet, Alighiero Boetti, and Stanley Brouwn) who explored the relation of systems to agency in their art. As I had already done considerable work on the sections about the American artists Andre, LeWitt, and Acconci, I especially spent time gathering, reading, and taking notes on literature on the European artists Morellet, Boetti, and Brouwn.
One of my other projects was the writing of an article on the disregard of distinctions between good and evil in the work of the American artist Philip Guston for an edited volume on the portrait historié in Western art, to be published before the end of 2011.