The Queer Studies Research workshop presents a queer works-in-progress talk by Ted Triandos (UB Dept. of Art), on Thursday, April 28th at 12:30pm in 1004 Clemens! The respondent for Ted’s talk will be special guest (and our former colleague) Jonathan D. Katz, Associate Professor of Practice, History of Art and Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, joining us via Zoom! This will be an in-person talk with LIGHT REFRESHMENTS in 1004 Clemens, with a Zoom link as well for anyone who would like to tune in remotely.

Ted Triandos, “On Eroticism and Criticism’s Discursive Spaces, or Reading Rosalind Krauss’s Video Essay”
Thurs. 4/28, 12:30pm, 1004 Clemens

Abstract: In November of 1974, the artist Lynda Benglis took out ad space in Artforum magazine with the financial backing of the Paula Cooper gallery. In her sensational image, printed as a centerfold spread, Benglis appears in three-quarter view, looking out at the viewer from behind a set of shades, one hand on her hip, the other slinging a large rubber phallus. Characterizing the ad as “an object of extreme vulgarity” in a published response, Artforum contributors, Rosalind Krauss and Annette Michelson, along with several other of their colleagues at the magazine, portray the artist’s performance as a kind of hustler production: their phrasing suggests the image represents at once an act of tasteless self-promotion and a graphic depiction of sex better suited to that other kind of picture magazine. The publication of the ad is widely considered one of the precipitating events of Krauss and Michelson’s eventual resignations from Artforum and their founding of the October journal shortly thereafter.

Benglis’s Artforum spread represents for the realm of art writing what the theorist Elizabeth Grosz describes as sexuality’s complete permeation, its seepage across all boundaries, its refusal to stay out of sacred spaces. In this essay, I read Rosalind Krauss’s “Video: Aesthetics of Narcissism” (1976), the first essay Krauss published in October, as an (anti-)intellectual extension of the author’s primary denunciation of Benglis’s ad. Sacrificing internal coherence for the creation of an overarching critical framework, Krauss’s video essay establishes an approach for her new journal that, in severing engagement with the erotic within the writing process, stems the spread of sex into criticism’s discursive spaces.

Zoom information: Christine Varnado (she/her) is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Ted Triandos Queer Works in Progress talk 4/28
Time: Apr 28, 2022 12:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://buffalo.zoom.us/j/97623262925?pwd=QlRVdmZyc0xyb2Z1SVhoWnZwWG8xUT09
Meeting ID: 976 2326 2925
Passcode: 518140

Bio: Theodore Triandos is an Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Studies at the University at Buffalo. Specializing in issues of gender and sexuality in 20th century art and criticism, he has presented papers at The Clark Art Institute, The Courtauld Institute of Art, The University of Chicago, and The Snite Museum of the University of Notre Dame. He teaches courses in Contemporary Art, American Art, and Theory/Criticism at UB. His paper on Krauss’s video essay is part of a larger project, Art[SEX]Criticism, which explores sexuality’s role in dissolving distinctions between aesthetic and critical practices.