Film and Television were the most popular artforms of the 20thcentury 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 therestill remainsmuch 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.
Organised by Dr Tom Day (The Courtauld)
Session 2: Katherine Manthorne, ‘The Shop Girl in Movies and Fine Art’
ElizabethSparhawk-Jones (1885-1968) established her reputation depicting working class women — especially shop girls– in paintings likeShoe Shop(1911). Lois Weber (1879-1939) was a leading silent filmmaker whoseShoes(1916) follows five and dime clerk Eva Meyer. Unable to afford decent footwear, Eva succumbed to male advances and “sold out for a pair of shoes.” Examining the shared focus of painter and filmmaker on the young, single women flooding thelabourforce, this paperanalysesvisual strategies they formulated to convey experiences oflabourand longing from the perspective of their female protagonists.
KatherineManthornelectures and publishes widely on the Art-Film dynamic includingFilm and Modern American Art: The Dialogue Between Cinema and Painting(New York & London: Routledge, 2019; paperback, 2020) and several related essays: “Mexican Muralism and MovingPictures,” “John Sloan’s Cinematic Eye,”“Experiencing Nature in Early Film: Dialogues with Church’sNiagaraand Homer’s Seascapes,” “John Sloan, Moving Pictures, and Celtic Spirits,” and “Made in New Mexico: Modern Art & the Movies.” She teaches art history at the Graduate Center,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, includingAmerican Impressionism: A New Visionin 2014. She recently published an essay onCosmopolitanism and the Gilded Agefor 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’s paper at this event.
