In this talk, Mark Hallett will offer an in-depth exploration of the artistic practice of R.B. Kitaj during the 1960s and 1970s. Focusing on three major works from these two decades, Hallett will argue that the artist’s pictures from the period need to be recognised as ambitious painted collages, the contents of which are drawn from a wide array of visual sources, from film stills to book illustrations. Kitaj translated these materials into kaleidoscopic meditations on history, sexuality, cinema and art, in which the viewer’s role becomes akin to that of the detective poring over the clues of a crime scene.
With contributions from:
Professor Mark Hallett is the Märit Rausing Director of the Courtauld Institute of Art. As an art historian, he is best known for his many publications on British art, and for his curatorial involvement in a series of major exhibitions at venues including Tate Britain, the Royal Academy, the Wallace Collectionand the Yale Center for British Art. His work ranges from major monographs and exhibitions devoted to the eighteenth-century artists William Hogarth and Joshua Reynolds, to publications on modern artists such as Michael Andrews and Frank Auerbach. He also co-edited and contributed to the major online publication, The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition: A Chronicle, 1769–2018. More recently, he oversaw a film project focusing on The Procession, a celebrated installation by the artist Hew Locke.