VIVIAN REHBERG

is an art historian and critic from Paris. Since 2007, she has been serving as chair of critical studies and teaches modern and contemporary art history at Parsons School of Art and Design in Paris. From 2001 to 2004, she was curator for contemporary art at ARC/Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris. Vivian Rehberg founded the Journal of Visual Culture and is a regular contributor to magazines such as Art in America, Artforum and frieze.

10.30 a.m.
Why Baudelaire Was Wrong about Sculpture
Charles Baudelaire titled a section of his review of the 1846 Paris Salon »Why Sculpture Is Boring«, followed by the opening line: The origin of sculpture is lost in the mists of time; thus it is a Carib art. Emphasizing the purportedly »savage« origins of sculpture, Baudelaire derided the lack of historical consciousness of the sculptors of his day, and hailed painting as the more authentic medium of modernity. As expanded and pluralistic as contemporary sculptural practice appears, the works we identify as sculpture today display an acute awareness of their aesthetic and historical precedents, as well as of accompanying critical and theoretical discourses. This paper will explore how contemporary sculptural practice navigates its own historicity, specifically with respect to the object, and how it encroaches on other mediums, specifically that of the moving image, in order to argue, contre Baudelaire, that sculpture today is many things – except boring.