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The Courtauld | Crossing Borders, Constructing Canons: “Post-Impressionism” in Britain, America and Beyond
June 11, 2021 @ 5:00 am - 10:00 am
“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.
Thursday, 10 June 2021, 5:00am–10:00am CT
5:00am Introduction – David Peters Corbett (The Courtauld)
5:05am SESSION 1: Post-Impressionism
Anna Gruetzner Robins (University of Reading) – “Transmitting Post-Impressionism: Britain and America”
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)
5:45am Break
5:55am SESSION 2: Responses to Fry: Case studies of individual artists and critics
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
6:30am Lunch Break
7:00am SESSION 3: Post-Impressionism in the United States: collecting and exhibitions
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
7:40am Break
7:50am SESSION 4: Post-Impressionism in Russia
Ilia Doronchenkov (Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow/European University, St Petersburg) – “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)
8:20am Break
8:40am KEYNOTE
Gavin Parkinson (The Courtauld) – Introduction
Richard Shiff (Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art, University of Texas at Austin) – “Expression and Abstraction during the Early Twentieth Century”
Open discussion, moderated by Gavin Parkinson (The Courtauld)
10:00am End
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Friday, 11 June 2021, 5:00am–10:00am CT
5:00am SESSION 5: International responses to Fry
Craig Clunas (University of Oxford) – “‘Alternative Criteria Must be Sought’: Post-Impressionism in China and Beyond”
Paul Bevan (Departmental Lecturer in Chinese Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford) – “In search of a Chinese Matisse”
Discussant: Sam Rose (University of St Andrews)
5:40am Break
5:50am SESSION 6: The Reach of Post-Impressionism
MaryClaire Pappas (PhD Candidate, Indiana University) – “Explaining Expressionism: Lilevalchs Konsthall and Swedish Expressionism”
Gavin Parkinson (The Courtauld) – “A Surrealist Manifesto for Symbolism: André Breton and Dessins Symbolistes”
Discussant: Sam Rose (University of St Andrews)
6:25am Lunch Break
7:00am SESSION 7: Fry’s Artists: addressing the legacies I – Cézanne, Van Gogh
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)
7:55am Break
8:05am SESSION 8 Fry’s Artists: addressing the legacies II – Gauguin, Seurat
Elizabeth Childs (Washington University in St Louis) – “Case studies in Gauguin’s reception (Chicago and Paris)”
Discussant: Belinda Thomson
Marnin Young (Yeshiva University) – “Was Seurat a Post-Impressionist?”
Discussant: Paul Smith (University of Warwick)
8:55am Break
9:05am SESSION 9: Fry’s Artists: A panel discussion of Matisse and Picasso
John Klein (Washington University in Saint Louis) – “Framing Matisse”
Elizabeth Cowling (University of Edinburgh) – “Framing Picasso”
Panel discussion moderated by Nicholas Watkins (University of Leicester)
15:40 Open discussion
Moderated by Anna Gruetzner Robins and Liz Childs
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