Join us as the Manton Centre for British Art holds a lecture delivered by Altair Brandon-Salmon: Electric Contrasts: Kenneth Clark and Vision in 1930s Britain.
In 1938, the National Gallery in London issued One Hundred Details from Pictures in the National Gallery, written by its director, Kenneth Clark. Paintings in the collection were presented as cropped, black-and-white pairs. Clark captured the different approaches to viewing art, informed by Heinrich Wölfflin, Aby Warburg, and Bernard Berenson. Yet the book was not rooted in the past, but was shaped by cinema, television, and the radio. One Hundred Details emerges as a pivotal re-imagining of art history itself, privileging the effect of a work’s detail over the whole image, and reaching a new audience for Old Master painting.
This event is organised by Professor Steve Edwards, Manton Professor of British Art and Director of the Manton Centre for British Art, The Courtauld.
With contributions from:
Altair Brandon-Salmon is an art historian and a lecturer in Civic, Liberal, and Global Education at Stanford University. His scholarship on modern art has appeared in Art History, Art Journal, British Art Studies, and the Oxford Art Journal. He has been a curator for the Sheldonian Theatre and Campion Hall, University of Oxford, and he is currently a guest curator for Projects Twenty Two. His book, Rubble: Art, the Blitz, and London in Ruins, is forthcoming in spring 2027.