Film and Television were the most popular artforms of the 20th听century in America. Their cultural influence was felt across spheres as diverse as politics, fashion, design and publishing. Notwithstanding the wealth of academic discourse on the cultural, industrial and social history of the moving image in relation to these and other fields there听still remains听much work to be done on how American artists figured film and television as both distinct subjects and tools for the creation of artworks. This lecture series will present a varied roster of talks that will examine the moving image as both subject and practice in American art. We will explore a diversity of periods, artists and approaches to both film and television, observing the Art History of the moving image from an interdisciplinary perspective.听
Organised by Dr Tom Day (The 91自拍)听
Session 2: Katherine Manthorne, 鈥楾he Shop Girl in Movies and Fine Art鈥
Elizabeth听Sparhawk-Jones (1885-1968) established her reputation depicting working class women 鈥 especially shop girls鈥 in paintings like听Shoe Shop听(1911). Lois Weber (1879-1939) was a leading silent filmmaker whose听Shoes听(1916) follows five and dime clerk Eva Meyer. Unable to afford decent footwear, Eva succumbed to male advances and 鈥渟old out for a pair of shoes.鈥 Examining the shared focus of painter and filmmaker on the young, single women flooding 迟丑别听labour听force, this paper听analyses听visual strategies they formulated to convey experiences of听labour听and longing from the perspective of their female protagonists.
Katherine听Manthorne听lectures and publishes widely on the Art-Film dynamic including听Film and Modern American Art: The Dialogue Between Cinema and Painting听(New York & London: Routledge, 2019; paperback, 2020) and several related essays: 鈥淢exican Muralism and Moving听Pictures,鈥 鈥淛ohn Sloan鈥檚 Cinematic Eye,鈥澨淓xperiencing Nature in Early Film: Dialogues with Church鈥檚听Niagara听and Homer鈥檚 Seascapes,鈥 鈥淛ohn Sloan, Moving Pictures, and Celtic Spirits,鈥 and 鈥淢ade in New Mexico: Modern Art & the Movies.鈥 She teaches art history at the Graduate Center,听City University of New York.
Frances Fowle is Chair of Nineteenth-Century Art at the University of Edinburgh and Senior Curator at the National Galleries of Scotland. She has curated numerous exhibitions on late nineteenth and early twentieth-century art, including听American Impressionism: A New Vision听in 2014. She recently published an essay on听Cosmopolitanism and the Gilded Age听for the Terra Foundation for American Art and is curating a forthcoming exhibition on George Bellows and the Ashcan School. She will be a respondent to Professor Manthorne鈥檚 paper at this event.
