MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
MEDIA
KIT
IMPRESARIO:
PAUL TAYLOR I ART & TEXT I POPISM
IMPRESARIO: PAUL TAYLOR
ART & TEXT I POPISM
A PUBLIC SYMPOSIUM
SATURDAY 1 SEPTEMBER 2012
Presented by Monash University Museum of Art
in association with the School of English, Communications
and Performance Studies, Monash University
Ground Floor, Building F
Monash University, Caulfield Campus
900 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East VIC 3145 Australia
www.monash.edu.au/muma
Telephone +61 3 9905 4217
muma@monash.edu
Tues – Fri 10am – 5pm; Sat 12 – 5pm
Robert Rooney, Paul Taylor 1984
from the series Robert Rooney –
Portrait Photographs 1978 – 1987
Image courtesy the artist and Tolarno
Galleries, Melbourne
MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
IMPRESARIO: PAUL TAYLOR I ART & TEXT I POPISM
INTRODUCTION
Impresario: Paul Taylor I Art & Text I POPISM is a public symposium which
celebrates and reflects upon the life and achievements of the eminent editor,
art critic and curator Paul Taylor (1957-1992). It explores Taylor’s legacy and
example by investigating his impact and enduring influence on Australian
visual culture through the many aspects of his work: as a publisher, curator
and critic, an advocate of post-structuralist theory, and a ground-breaking
impresario who forged significant national and international networks of
artists, critics, gallerists and curators.
Paul Taylor was the founding editor of the internationally renowned journal
Art & Text. He was also an influential critic and curator who had a dynamic
impact on the discourse of the visual arts.
The symposium marks 30 years since the landmark exhibition POPISM,
which Taylor curated for the National Gallery of Victoria, and twenty years
since his untimely death. The title of the symposium is derived from
Impresario: Malcolm McLaren and the British New Wave, which Taylor
curated for the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, in 1988.
Convenors: Janine Burke and Adrian Martin
Janine Burke, Monash Research Fellow, School of English, Communications
and Performance Studies;
Adrian Martin, Associate Professor, Film and Television Studies, School of
English, Communications and Performance Studies
Ground Floor, Building F
Monash University, Caulfield Campus
900 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East VIC 3145 Australia
Adrian Martin:
“Paul Taylor revolutionised the way we write, perform, publish and live
art criticism in Australia. Fusing the most dynamic, new intellectual
ideas with the most stylish forms of subcultural rebellion, he dragged
the 1970s into the 1980s, and blazed a trail for the young critics and
cultural entrepreneurs of today, who are still looking back to and learning from his flamboyant, cheeky, informed, risk-taking approach.”
Janine Burke:
“Paul Taylor changed Australian visual culture. In the early 1980s, with
charm, wit and intellectual brio, Paul gathered around him, in the art
world and at his memorable parties, a diverse and intense cultural
scene. Artists and writers, young and older, some formerly at loggerheads, suddenly found a forum – and friendship – in the networks that
Paul fostered. Taylor was a true impresario – stylish and imperious as
Diaghilev, canny and cool as Warhol. He was a writer, editor and curator of exceptional flair and generosity. Taylor was unabashedly ambitious for Australian art and worked energetically to locate it in a global
context. His vision of Australian culture as unique, vigorous and utterly
relevant remains inspiring.”
Max Delany:
“Paul Taylor was a charismatic, dynamic, polemical and groundbreaking figure, whose work has important legacies and relevance to
subsequent generations of artists and critics. The history of exhibitions,
publications and curatorial practice in Australia is a fledgling area of
academic and professional focus. It is timely to consider Paul’s work
as a pioneering figure in the recent history of critical and curatorial
practice. Monash University Publishing will publish the proceedings as
a major book in 2013–14.”
www.monash.edu.au/muma
Telephone +61 3 9905 4217
muma@monash.edu
Tues – Fri 10am – 5pm; Sat 12 – 5pm
Janine Burke
At Heide: Paul Taylor 1982
Monash University Collection
MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
IMPRESARIO: PAUL TAYLOR I ART & TEXT I POPISM
SYMPOSIUM PARTICIPANTS
PAUL TAYLOR: ABRIDGED BIOGRAPHY
The symposium involves leading academics, museum directors and curators, artists and critics, and will involve close
colleagues of Paul, as well as a younger generation of editors, critics and publishers. Confirmed participants include:
Paul Taylor (1957-92) founded the influential journal Art & Text in 1981, and
he remained its editor and publisher until 1986. He also edited Anything
Goes: Art in Australia 1970-1980 (1984), Juan Davila: Hysterical Tears
(1985), and Post-Pop Art (MIT Press, 1989).
Janine Burke, art historian, author and Monash Research
Fellow
Adrian Martin, critic, editor and Associate Professor,
Film and Television Studies, Monash University
Patrick McCaughey, emeritus professor, Monash University;
former Director of the National Gallery of Victoria, Wadsworth
Athenaeum, and Yale Centre for British Art
Dr Rex Butler, Associate Professor, School of English, Media
Studies and Art History, The University of Queensland
Dr Edward Colless, Head, Visual Art History and Theory,
Victorian College of the Arts
Judy Annear, Senior Curator Photographs,
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Juan Davila, artist
Lyndal Jones, artist and Professor of Contemporary Art,
RMIT University
Helen Hughes & Nick Croggon, Co-editors, Discipline
Lauren Bliss, Centre for Ideas, Victorian College of the Arts
Rosemary Forde, Board member, un Projects and
Communications and Publications Coordinator, Monash
University Museum of Art
Kelly Fliedner, Program Coordinator, West Space
Philip Brophy, artist and film maker
Taylor curated the landmark exhibitions POPISM (National Gallery of Victoria,
1982) and Impresario: Malcolm McLaren and the British New Wave (New
Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 1988), among others. He was the
Official Australian Representative at the 1986 Venice Biennale.
In 1984, he moved from Melbourne to New York where he regularly contributed interviews and criticism to Connoisseur, Flash Art, Interview, The New
York Times, Parkett, Vanity Fair, and The Village Voice, among others. His
interviewees and subjects included art-world luminaries – Cindy Sherman,
Anselm Kiefer, Jasper Johns, Jenny Holzer, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Mapplethorpe, Yoko Ono and Rover Thomas. Famously, he conducted the last
interview with Andy Warhol.
Paul Taylor returned to Melbourne in 1992, suffering from an AIDS-related
illness, and died in July of that year. After Andy: SoHo in the Eighties, a collection of Taylor’s major New York articles, was published by Schwartz City,
Melbourne in 1997.
SYMPOSIUM DATES
Saturday 1 September 2012
9.00am–5.30pm
Lecture theatre G1.04, Monash University, Caulfield campus
followed by a reception at MUMA
Registration is essential, fee $10 includes lunch and refreshments
Register online: www.monash.edu.au/muma/events/2012/taylor.html
CONTACT & ENQUIRIES
Russell Walsh
Symposium Co-ordinator & Research Assistant
Russell.Walsh@monash.edu
Rosemary Forde
Communications & Publications Coordinator, MUMA
Rosemary.Forde@monash.edu
T: +61 3 99054360
Ground Floor, Building F
Monash University, Caulfield Campus
900 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East VIC 3145 Australia
www.monash.edu.au/muma
Telephone +61 3 9905 4217
muma@monash.edu
Tues – Fri 10am – 5pm; Sat 12 – 5pm
Art & Text, selected issues 1981–84
Published and edited by Paul Taylor