Birkbeck tel no: 0207 631 6124
Dr Simon Shaw-Miller is currently Head of the Department of History of Art and Screen Media and the Assistant Dean: Media, in the School of Arts. He is senior lecturer in History of Art and an Honorary Associate and Research Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
He joined Birkbeck College in 1995, having previously held a Senior Teaching and Research Fellowship jointly in the Department of History of Art and the Department of Music at the University of Manchester. Prior to this he was a Junior Teaching and Research Fellow in the Department of History of Art at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.
He lectures on European and American topics in the long twentieth century, specializing in modernism. He offers special subject papers on Viennese culture, 1858 - 1918, and interrelationships in music and art c.1860 - 1960 for both undergraduate and postgraduate students.
Current research interests
Dr Simon Shaw-Miller’s interests are the history of art and music in the modern period. He was recently awarded the Prix Ars Electronica 2009 Media.Art.Research Award for his forthcoming book Eye hEar: Art, Music, Film & the Culture of Synaesthesis at the Award Gala at the Brucknerhaus, Linz, Austria 4 Sept 2009.
Areas of supervision
His areas of supervision are interrelationships in audio and visual culture, synaesthesia, interdisciplinarity and art and music history and theory from the early 19th century to the late 20th century.
Selected publications
Books
Eye hEar: Art, Music, Film & the Culture of Synaesthesia (Boydell & Brewer, 2010).
Visible Deeds of Music: Music and Art from Wagner to Cage (Yale University Press, 2002, ISBN 08374-2, pp. 320, 100b/w illus.) (Paperback published 2004).
Exhibition catalogues
Art in Vienna 1900-1935: Programme essay for the London Philharmonic Orchestra's Vienna City of Dreams concert series (2008-2009)
Eye-Music: Kandinsky, Klee & All that Jazz (essays ‘Sighting Music: Musical Notation’ (n.p.) and ‘Kandinsky and Schoenberg: Musicality and Abstraction’ pp.19-30 ) July 2007, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester ISBN 978-1-869827-03-8
(Eye Music was short-listed for the AXA/Art Newspaper Catalogue Award 2007)
Separate Elements: The Sound Art of Charlie Hooker, St.Andrews. (Crawford Arts Centre, 1992, 15pp. ISBN 0 906272 35 1)
Edited books and journals
The Last Post: Music after Modernism, in Music and Society Series, editor and contributor (Manchester University Press and St.Martin's Press, 1993, ISBN 0 7190 3609 7, pp. 195).
Edited books (joint editor)
Samual Palmer Revisited joint editor with Sam Smiles (Ashgate, 2009)
Image:Music:Text, consultant editor and contributor, eds. M.Pointon, P. Binski and S. Shaw-Miller (Oxford, UK and Cambridge, USA: Blackwell, 1996, ISBN 0 631 20074 6, pp. 162, 30 pls.).
Chapters in books
'Musical Modernism’ in the Oxford Handbook to Modernisms (eds. A. Gasiorek & P. Brooker, Oxford University Press, 2010)
‘Music as Imminent Gesamtkunstwerk: Absolute Music, Synaesthesia & Die Glückliche Hand’ in the Aesthetics of the Total Artwork: On Borders and Fragments (eds A. Finger & D. Follett, John Hopkins University Press, 2010)
'Palmer and the Dark Pastoral in English Music of the Twentieth Century' in Samuel Palmer Revisited (eds S. Shaw-Miller & S. Smiles, Ashgate 2010)
'Afterward: Issues in Musical and Artistic Modernism' in Music and Modernism (ed. C. Demille, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2010)
‘Forward: ‘Disciplining the Senses: Beethoven as Synaesthetic Paradigm’ in Other than the Visual: Art, History and the Senses (eds. P. diBello & G. Koureas, Ashgate, 2009 pp. 1-15)
'Eye hEar' in CyberArts (eds H. Leopoldseder, C. Schöpf & G. Stocker, Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2009, pp. 240-249 ) ISBN 978-3-7757-2499-9
'Musicality and Abstraction: Kandinsky and Schoenberg' in Eye-Music: Kandinsky, Klee and All that Jazz (Pallant House Gallery, 2007) pp. 19-30 ISBN 1869 827 038
'The Limits of Art. Post-Cagian Performance: Politics, Aesthetics and Nature' in Art and Politics (eds) F. Ames-Lewis and P. Paszkiewicz (Instytut Sztuki, Warsaw, 1999, pp. 187-200, 10 pls., ISBN 83-85938-48-6)
'The Art Work of the Future: the Gesamtkunstwerk reworked' (in English and Russian) in XX century art: Achievements, Traditions and Innovations (The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2003, pp. 169-174 & 290-294. ISBN5-93572-043-4)
Journal articles
'Thinking Through Construction: Notation - Composition - Event, the Architecture of Music', AA Files: The Journal of the Architectural Association School of Architecture (No.53 2006) pp. 38-47
'Andy and John get ordinary: Ontological Issues in the 1960s Work of Warhol and Cage', Consciousness, Literature and the Arts, vol. 6, no. 3, Dec. 2005 - April 2006 (e-journal:http://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/users/dmeyerdinkgrafe/archive/shawmillwe2005.html).
'Sighting Sound: Postmedia, a question of genre?', (Art History, vol. 24. No.1, Feb. 2001, pp. 139-146)
'Skriabin and Obukhov - Mysterium et La livre de vie: The concept of the Total Work of Art', Consciousness, Literature and the Arts, 1, no, 3, Dec. 2000 (e-journal: http://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/users/dmeyerdinkgrafe/archive/skria.html )
'Concerts of everyday living': Cage, Barthes and Fluxus: interdisciplinarity and inter-media events', Art History vol. 19, no.1, March 1996, pp.1-25, 2 pls., 1 mus.ills.
'Instruments of Desire: Musical Morphology in the Early Work of Picasso', The Musical Quarterly vol.76, no.4, Winter 1992, pp.442-464
Review articles
‘Visual Music and the Case for Rigorous Thinking’ feature review, The Art Book vol. 13, issue 1, (February 2006), pp. 3-5
'Sighting Sound: Postmedia, a question of genre?', Art History, 24, No. 1 (March 2001), pp. 139-146.
‘Paul Klee Painting Music’ (Art History, vol. 21, no. 4, Dec. 1998, pp. 621-622)
‘Carl Andre’s Minimalism, More or Less’ (RA Magazine, April 2000)
‘Canto d'Amore: Classicism in Modern Art and Music 1914-1935’, Apollo, vol. CXLII, No. 435 (May 1998), pp. 55-6.
‘Sounding Out’, The Oxford Art Journal, 20:1 (1997), pp. 105-109.
'Bending the Bars' The Journal of Musicological Research, 14 (1994), pp. 128-131.
‘Critical Aesthetics & Postmodernism’ and ‘Art & Embodiment’ (Art History, vol.17, no. 2, June 1994, pp.296-297)
'Music, Meaning and Visual Representation', Art History, 13, no. 3 (September 1990), pp. 414-419
A regular reviewer for The Art Book.
Media reviews and broadcasting
Radio: Austrian National Radio discussing the musical legacy of the composer J.M. Hauer with reference to the aesthetics of musical and artistic minimalism (broadcast March 1995).
BBC Radio 3 ‘Music Matters’ on Futurism and the music of machines (broadcast Sept. 1996).
BBC Radio 3 ‘Music Matters’ on Braque and music in relation to the R.A. exhibition 'Braque: The Late Works' (23 Jan.-6 April 1997) (broadcast Jan. 1997)
BBC Radio 3 ‘Music Matters’ on Obukhov’s Gesamtkunstwerk the ‘Book of Life’ (Oct. 1998)
BBC Radio 3 ‘Festival Music Matters’ on John Cage’s visual art (broadcast Aug.1999)
Phoenix TV News (China): Interview on Vienna Café project (Oct. 2008)
Electric Sky Productions ltd Interview on the symbolism of fish in Paul Klee’s art (released in US 2009 and More4 (UK) 2010)
Selected conference papers and presentations
Institute for Advanced Studies, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 'Opera's Offspring: the Gesamtkunstwerk and Film' (Keynote: Interrelations Among Music, Dance and the Visual Arts Feb. 21-25, 2010)
Université Paris Sorbonne, Fifth Annual Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology (CIM09), 'Instrumental Choreography in David Gorton's Capriccio for solo cello' (with Drs D. Gorton and N. Heyde, RAM) (Oct. 2009)
Lentos, Kunstmuseum, Linz, Austria, 'Sycretism: Art and Music in the Modern Period' (Keynote: See This Sound symposium, Sept. 2009)
University of Oxford, Music Faculty Graduate Seminar, 'Rethinking Music Iconology’ (May, 2009)
Institute of Musical Research, School of Advanced Study, University of London ‘Music as Musical Iconography’(April, 2009)
Ludwig Boltzmann Institut, Linz, Austria ‘to paint for the ear’: Music’s Synaesthetic Shadow’, (Nov. 2008)
University of Thessaloniki, Greece, Fourth Annual Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology (CIM08),‘Performing structure: Music, art and space’ (with Dr David Gorton RAM) (July 2008)
University of Reading ‘Synaesthesia: the Visible in Music and the Audible in Art’ (May, 2008)
Royal Academy of Music Research Forum: Late Beethoven 'Finding Language for Late Beethoven' and Round Table with pianists Daniel-Ben Pienaar and Roderick Chadwick and musicologist Amanda Glauert (Feb. 2008)
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester ‘Kandinsky, Klee and Picasso: Musical Models in Modernism’ (June, 2007)
Institute of Musical Research, Institute of Advanced Study, University of London (Nov. 2006) ‘Sighting Music: Listening With Eyes Open’
Oxford University, Art and the Senses (October, 2006) ‘Seeing Sound: Music and the Senses’
Tate, Modern, Kandinsky: Abstraction across Media (September, 2006) ‘Kandinsky: Musicality and Abstraction.’
Picture This and Opera North, Colston Hall, Bristol, September, 2006) Mariele Neudecker: Kindertotenlieder ‘Modern Art and Classical Music’
Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London (January 2006) Samuel Palmer: A British Romantic Artist Reassessed ‘Palmer and the Persistence of the Pastoral in English Music of the Twentieth Century’
Royal Academy of Music, London (April, 2005) What is a Violin? ‘ Museums as Sounding Boxes: Relationships between the Aural and the Visual.’
Tate, St Ives, Visual Music (September, 2004) Keynote: ‘The Absent Sound of Dada: The elusive contribution of Jefim Golyscheff.’
University of Nottingham and Nottingham City Museum, Andy Warhol: His Art & Life (1928-1987) (May, 2002) ‘John and Andy get ordinary’: Ontology in the work of Cage and Warhol.’
Tate, Modern, Artists Discover Cinema: Paris, Vienna & Moscow 1913-1930 (March, 2001) ‘Schoenberg’s Die glückliche Hand and Film: Beyond the Condition of Music?’
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, XX century art: Achievements, Traditions and Innovations (Dec. 1999) ‘The Art Work of the Future: the Gesamtkunstwerk reworked’
Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences and Letters, Warsaw, Poland, Art & Politics (Sept. 1996) ‘Post-Cagian Performance: Politics, Aesthetics and Nature’
Institut für Musikwissenschaft der Universität Wien, Austria, Konstruktiver Realismus im Zwölftonspiel (Nov. 1994), ‘Josef Matthias Hauer and Minimalism’
Curatorial and research consultancies
Vienna Café Festival A principal investigator for the international conference, exhibition, series of concerts, film showings, lectures and readings 7- 24 October For further information see: www.rca.ac.uk/viennacafe/index.html
Improvisation and Synaesthesia: A conference and series of concerts exploring improvisation and correspondences between the senses. Presented in conjunction with Birkbeck College, Royal Academy of Music (Jazz and Organ Departments) and the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience & Dept of Psychology, University College London. Hosted by York Gate Collections, RAM and St Marylebone Parish Church. March 31- April 1, 2006
Annual series of talks, workshops and concerts organized and directed in conjunction with Tate, St Ives:
- Visual Music (September, 2004)
- Dialogues in Sight and Sound (September, 2005)
- Instruments of Abstraction (September, 2006)
- Minimal Means: Art and Music from the 60’s (June and September, 2007)
For more details see:
Curator: Crawford Arts Centre, St Andrews: ‘Separate Elements’ exhibition and installation of work by the sound-sculptor Charlie Hooker (April-June 1992)
Curator: Pallant House Gallery, Chichester: ‘Sighting Music’ exhibition, 30 June – 16 September 2007
Consultant curator: Pallant House Gallery, Chichester: ‘Eye-Music: Art and Music’ 30 June – 16 September 2007. Sainsbury Center of Visual Arts, UEA, 2 October – 9 December 2007
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