Conferences

Conference: Cultural Mobility and Transcultural Confrontations: Winold Reiss as a Paradigm of Transnational Studies

December 1-3, 2011

John F. Kennedy-Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin

(Lansstr. 7-9, 10625 Berlin)

Organized with funding from the Terra Foundation for American Art

The extremely versatile German-American painter, designer, and teacher Winold Reiss had once been celebrated as a "modern Cellini" in the United States. In the 1920s and 1930s, Reiss emerged as an influential figure in transatlantic encounters and modernist aesthetics. He collaborated with leading artists and intellectuals including Alain Locke, Katherine Anne Porter, Paul Kellogg, Miguel Covarrubias, and Langston Hughes. Among his students was Aaron Douglas, a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Despite Reiss' impressive range of creativity, his rich work of ethnic portrait paintings, distinctive interior modernist design, and cutting edge graphic designs, he has been relegated to the footnotes of American art history. In Germany, Winold Reiss is hardly known at all. The conference will reassess Reiss' contributions, allowing him to emerge as a cultural "mobilizer" who can be understood as an agent, translator, and intermediator.