Waiting for the End of the World: Eschatology and Art 1939-Present

Since the end of the Second World War, historical forces and personal motivations compelled many artists, working across a spectrum of materials and visual methods, to directly employ or obliquely reference themes of the Last Judgment and the Apocalypse. Over a historical period of wars, economic booms and devastating depressions, the rise and fall of ideologies of left and right, the collapse of colonial empires and the chaos of failed states, the threats of nuclear annihilation and ecological degradation, artists frequently turned to eschatological imagery to visualize the experience of modern life.

The Last Judgment described in the sacred texts of the Abrahamic religions threatens damnation and promises redemption for both the individual and society. This symposium will explore the way that apocalyptic beliefs and imagery have informed the work of avant-garde artists.

Keynote speaker Pepe Karmel, Associate Professor of Art History at New York University, will consider the idea of the “end of art” as an allegory for the broader, eschatological
idea of “the end.”