PSU student presents art history research

Georgina Ruff, a student at Portland State University, was one of 10 up-and-coming art historians who spoke on April 28 at the National Undergraduate Symposium in Art History, held at and sponsored by the Portland Art Museum and Portland State.

Applicants applied from as close as Iowa to as far away as Mexico. This year, Ruff was among the 10 students selected to speak about art history.

“Everyone was really fascinating and I think everyone was really interested in each other,” Ruff said. “I was absolutely thrilled to do it.”

Ruff said she has attended many lectures on art history, including a symposium in Los Angeles in January, but she has never spoken at one. She said she felt her presentation went well, having finished it without stumbling on any words. People asked follow-up questions and the audience stayed awake.

“And that’s a home run in our industry,” Ruff said.

There are many art history symposiums around the country, but PSU hosts the only one that features undergraduates, said Sue Taylor, symposium director and professor of art history at PSU.

With a growing art scene, Taylor said Portland is especially suited for the symposium. Previously the symposium has taken place at different Oregon universities, but has been exclusively run by Portland State in recent years.

The symposium is held with an audience in mind. However, a major part of it is to provide a learning experience for the undergraduate art historians, many of whom have no training in formally presenting research.

“It’s really good for students going on to graduate schools in the future,” Taylor said.

Each participant worked with a faculty advisor at their school to turn their research into a full presentation. Speakers were allotted 20 minutes to present their work.

Taylor said the allotted time is closely monitored to teach the students brevity and prepare them for their future as professional research presenters.

Students spoke on topics as varied as gender and propaganda. Ruff, who previously wrote for the Vanguard, spoke on pornography-based art, or what is called appropriating images of pornography.

Ruff focused on David Salle and Ghada Amer, two artists who use images taken from pornography. Salle’s work has an undercurrent of misogyny, Ruff said, while Amer’s art is more about female empowerment.

Ruff said she finds it interesting that the images were once deemed pornographic, but because they are now painted-or in Amer’s case stitched-they have become art.

Although some consider the topic she discussed risqu퀌�, Ruff said it fits in the academic setting of the symposium where all areas of art can be discussed openly.

Ruff originally studied studio art. Later she began to study art history because she said she would rather judge others work then have others judge her work.

In July, Ruff will be leaving Portland for graduate school at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she hopes to move away from academic work and insert some energy and enjoyment into the field of art history.

“This is what I want to do,” Ruff said. “It’s taken me a long time to get here.”

The keynote speaker for the symposium, Rebecca Zorach, spoke on April 27 about the young field of art history, which came about as a serious academic discipline around the 1940s. Before that, art was mainly critiqued and analyzed by only its visual elements.

Zorach said that an art historian can analyze a piece of art more thoroughly by knowing when the piece of art was created. Ruff said that understanding the history of art can help interpret the entire scope of art and artists, from the Renaissance to modern art.

“Art is a derivative field,” Ruff said. “Art builds upon itself, it borrows from previous generations…art history does the same thing.”