“Post-Impressionism,” a term invented and used by Roger Fry in the exhibition he organized in London in 1910, became a deeply influential critical and historical construct that was (and sometimes is still) used widely in Britain and America. Critics and historians often uncritically deployed the highly selective, Franco-centric and exclusively male model that emerged from the writing on Fry’s two post-impressionist exhibitions that privileged Cézanne, Gauguin, van Gogh, Matisse and Picasso, who were regarded as a natural group, and Seurat was soon added to the list. The currency, significance and lasting impact of this canon of foundational artists on subsequent generations of art practice, criticism, art historical education and the marketing, collecting and exhibition of modern art in these two countries has been insufficiently examined. We seek to make fresh comparative and discursive analysis of the substantial impact and pervasive reception of this critical strain of modern art in Britain and America and beyond.
Organised by Elizabeth Childs (Steinberg Professor, Washington University in Saint Louis), Anna Gruetzner Robins (Professor Emerita, University of Reading) and David Peters Corbett (Professor of American Art and Director of the Centre for American Art, The Courtauld).
Programme
“Crossing Borders, Constructing Canons: ‘Post-Impressionism’ in Britain, America and Beyond’”
You can find the speaker biographies here
Thursday 10 June and Friday 11 June
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Thursday 10 June 2021 (11am – 4.30pm)
11:00 David Peters Corbett, Introduction
11:05 SESSION 1 Post-Impressionism
Chair: Anna Gruetzner Robins
Anna Gruetzner Robins ( University of Reading)
Introduction: Transmitting Post-Impressionism
Frances Fowle (University of Edinburgh and National Galleries of Scotland)
Post-Impressionism and Philanthropy: The Maitland Collection at the National Galleries of Scotland
Discussant: Elizabeth Childs (Washington University in St Louis)
11:45 Break
11:55 SESSION 2 Responses to Fry – Case studies of individual artists and critics
Chair: Elizabeth Childs
Andrea Rosen (Fleming Museum of Art, University of Vermont)
Wood Gaylor, Primitivism and American Folk art after the Armory Show
James Church (PhD Candidate, Kingston University)
The Art of 1910: C. Lewis Hind and The Post Impressionists
Discussant: Anna Gruetzner Robins
12:30 Q&A session chaired by David Peters Corbett
12:50 Lunch Break
13:20 SESSION 3 Post-Impressionism in the United States: collecting and exhibitions
Chair: Elizabeth Childs
Susan Behrends Frank (The Phillips Collection, Washington DC)
The Influence of Roger Fry’s Vision and Design on Duncan Phillips’s Aesthetic Vision and Exhibition Strategy for The Phillips Collection
Sandra Zalman (University of Houston)
Post-Impressionism at MoMA, then and now
Discussant: Anna Gruetzner Robins
14:00 Break
14:10 SESSION 4 Post-Impressionism in Russia
Chair: Anna Gruetzner Robins
Ilia Doronchenkov (Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow)
The Avant-Garde’s Trojan Horse: The Golden Fleece exhibitions (Moscow 1908, 1909) and the arrival of Post-Impressionism in Russia
Katarina Lopatkina (Helsinki)
Between Moscow and Leningrad: displaying French modern art in the Soviet Union, 1920 – 1950s
Discussant: Christina Lodder (University of Kent)
14: 50 Q&A: Chaired by Elizabeth Childs
15:10 Break
15:20 KEYNOTE
Introduction: Gavin Parkinson (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Richard Shiff (Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art, University of Texas at Austin)
Expression and Abstraction during the Early Twentieth Century
16:10 Open discussion, moderated by Gavin Parkinson (Courtauld Institute of Art)
16:30 End
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Friday 11 June 2021 (11am – 4.35pm)
11:00 SESSION 5 International responses to Fry
Chair: Anna Gruetzner Robins
Craig Clunas (University of Oxford)
‘Alternative Criteria Must be Sought’: Post-Impressionism in China and Beyond
Paul Bevan (Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford)
In search of a Chinese Matisse
Discussant: Sam Rose (University of St Andrews)
11:40 Break
11:50 SESSION 6 The Reach of Post-Impressionism
Chair: Elizabeth Childs
MaryClaire Pappas (PhD Candidate, Indiana University)
Explaining Expressionism: Liljevalchs Konsthall and Swedish Expressionism
Gavin Parkinson (Courtauld Institute of Art)
A Surrealist Manifesto for Symbolism: André Breton and Dessins Symbolistes
Discussant: Sam Rose (University of St Andrews)
12:25 Q&A chaired by David Peters Corbett
12:45 Lunch Break
13:15 SESSION 7 Fry’s Artists: addressing the legacies I: Cézanne, Van Gogh
Chair: Elizabeth Childs
Elizabeth Childs
Legacies of the Post-Impressionists: Tracing the Impact
Anne Robbins (National Gallery, London)
‘Controversy, admiration, misunderstanding, and enthusiasm’: Aspects of Cézanne’s reception in Britain
Discussant: Richard Shiff (University of Texas)
Joost van der Hoeven ( Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)
Van Gogh’s Popular Status and the Canon in America 1913-1936
Discussant: Frances Fowle (University of Edinburgh)
14:10 Break
14:20 SESSION 8 Fry’s Artists: addressing the legacies II – Gauguin, Seurat
Chair: Anna Gruetzner Robins
Elizabeth Childs (Washington University in St Louis)
Case studies in Gauguin’s reception (Chicago 1913)
Discussant: Belinda Thomson (University of Edinburgh)
Marnin Young (Yeshiva University)
Was Seurat a Post-Impressionist?
Discussant: Paul Smith (University of Warwick)
15:10 Q&A chaired by Anna Gruetzner Robins
15:30 Break
15:40 SESSION 9 Fry’s Artists: A panel discussion of Matisse and Picasso
Chair: Anna Gruetzner Robins
John Klein (Washington University in Saint Louis)
Framing Matisse
Discussion by Richard Shiff
16:05 Open Discussion chaired by Elizabeth Childs and Anna Gruetzner Robins
16.35 End
