Transnational Modernisms Research Cluster (TMRC)
'Russian Girl with Compact' by Laserstein (1928)
Contents
- About
- Activities and events 2010/11
- Activities and events 2011/12
- Staff committee
- Postgraduate student committee and areas of research
About
The Transnational Modernisms Research Cluster has core research strengths in the study of British, German and Soviet art and visual culture across national and international boundaries. The group was founded in Spring 2010 in order to consolidate existing research in this area within the History of Art department at the University of Bristol.
Researchers within the group are concerned with the study of cultural dialogues and visual exchange within and across nation states and national borders. Of particular interest is the dynamic relationship between the hegemonic constructions of national identities and the conflicting concerns of the international avant-garde.
Current research focuses on Internationalism and Cultural Exchange in Britain between 1870-1918; the impact and legacies of German Expressionism and Weimar culture, with a focus on the avant-garde internationalism of Der Blaue Reiter; and the visual culture of sport in the twentieth century with particular attention to the cultural and visual history of the Olympic Games.
Poster for the
1937 Annual Fizkultura Parade
Activities and events 2010/11
For further information on the following events, including how to attend, email Dr Dorothy Rowe at d.rowe@bristol.ac.uk
Thursday 9 September 2010
ICE one day workshop
Title: Sites of Internationalism at the Fin de Siècle: Between Metropolis and Cosmopolis (Northumbria University)
Organiser: Dr Daniel Laqua (University of Northumbria)
Speakers: Sarah Victoria Turner (University of York), Andrew Stephenson (University of East London), Charlotte Ashby (University of London), Elizabeth Kramer (Northumbria University), Stefan Couperus (University of Utrecht), Charlotte Alston (Northumbria University), Simon J. James (Durham University), Wouter van Acker (Ghent University), Malcolm Gee (Northumbria University).
Monday 4 October 2010
Research seminar
Title: Otto Dix’s ‘Dirty Modernist Jew’
Speaker: Dr James van Dyke (University of Missouri, Columbia)
Monday 7 March 2011
Research seminar
Title: Charles Alfred Stohard (1786-1821): Hero of Historicism
Speaker: Dr Philip Lindley (University of Leicester)
An emerging area of interest within the Research Cluster is the art-historical interpretation of medieval art in the post-medieval period; currently under discussion is a project on the modernist reception of medieval art. Dr Lindley has been invited by the group to discuss and share his research interests in this area.
Monday 21 March 2011
Panel discussion
Title: New Perspectives on Transnational Modernisms.
Speakers: Dr Grace Brockington, Dr Mike O’Mahony and Dr Dorothy Rowe (University of Bristol)
Venue: Lecture Theatre 1, 43 Woodland Road, 4.10pm – 6.00pm
This panel discussion and debate has been conceived as the formal inauguration of the Transnational Modernisms Research Cluster within the History of Art Department at the University of Bristol. Each participant will present a brief position paper about their research in relation to the theme followed by a panel discussion.
Monday 11 April 2011
Conference
Title: Cultural Exchange: Russia and the West (funded by BIRTHA)
Organiser: Theodora Clarke (PGR student, University of Bristol)
Keynote speaker: Dr Mike O’Mahony
A one-day postgraduate conference which aims to explore the nature of cultural exchanges between Russia and the West. This unique conference is an opportunity to re-examine artistic creativity during the twentieth century, a time of revolutionary and ideological change, and to look at cultural connections between Russia, Europe and the United States.
Russian history is marked by key moments of contact and exchange which have shaped and transformed its cultural heritage. Our aim is to trace the history of cultural production during a period of artistic and political evolution within and outside of Russia. The development of Russian culture within national and international contexts will be considered with a focus on art, literature and music.
'Venetian Maps - Ceramicists'
by Lubaina Himid (1997)
Wednesday 27 April 2011
The RX-Research Exchange in History of Art Network Prostgraduate Conference 2011 announces a one-day conference taking place on Wednesday, 27 April 2011 at the University of Bristol
Title: Boundaries? New Histories of Art, Architecture and Design.
Keynote speaker: Dr Camilla Smith, University of Birmingham.
Call for papers: Proposals for papers of 20-minutes' duration are invited from postgraduates from a diverse range of research specialisms. For more information download New Histories of Art: Call for papers (pdf 346KB)
Activities and events 2011/12
Friday 14 - Sunday 16 October 2011
Conference
Title: Heavenly Discourses: Myth, Astronomy and Culture (Wills Memorial Building, University of Bristol)
Organiser: Nicholas Campion (University of Wales Trinity Saint David and Darrelyn Gunzburg (University of Bristol)
Speakers: Professor Ronald Hutton (University of Bristol), Dr Ed Krupp (Director, Griffith Observatory, CA, USA), Professor Elliot Wolfson, (New York University), Professor Roger Beck, (Emeritus Professor, University of Toronto), David Malin,(British-Australian astronomer and photographer).
2011 is the fiftieth anniversary of the first human space flights, by Yuri Gagarin. On 12 April 1961, he became the first human in outer space and the first to orbit the Earth. This conference is held to commemorate the moment that human beings first left the planet and will celebrate all aspects of astronomy’s relationship with culture. In almost every human culture the sky functions as a backdrop for mythical encounters, employing the celestial environment as a stage set for narratives of human and divine experience. This academic conference will explore the ways in which astronomy is employed to shed light on the human condition, manage human society, reveal higher truths or give voice to the imagination. This conference will bring together scholars to examine the relationship between astronomy and culture through the arts, literature, religion and philosophy, both in history and the present.
October – November 2011
Autumn Art Lectures
Title: Art and Sport (Wills Memorial Building, University of Bristol)
Organiser: Dr Mike O’Mahony
Speakers: Professor Donna Landry (University of Kent), Professor Michael Hatt (University of Warwick) Dr Jo Longhurst (Royal College of Art), Dr Philip Dine (National University of Ireland, Galway), Professor Paul Wells (Loughborough University), Professor Lynda Nead (Birkbeck College, University of London).
Friday 25 November – Saturday 26 November 2011
Conference
Title: Der Blaue Reiter Centenary Conference
Organisers: Dr Dorothy Rowe (University of Bristol); Dr Christopher Short (UWIC) and Dr Marko Daniel (Tate Modern)
Keynote speakers: Dr Annegret Hoburg (Lenbachhaus, Munich) and Professor Peter Vergo (University of Essex)
Venue: Tate Modern, London
An international academic conference being held at Tate Modern to mark the centenary of the first exhibition of Der Blaue Reiter at the Galerie Thannhauser in Munich on 18 December 1911.
Der Blaue Reiter - Call for papers (pdf 184Kb)
Visit also Tate Modern Events and Education
'Esperantist' plate by Walter Crane (1905)
Staff committee
Dr Grace Brockington
Grace Brockington’s research examines the interface between art and internationalism, primarily at the long fin de siècle (ca. 1870–1920). She is particularly interested in the figure of the cosmopolitan artist, Anglo-German cultural relations before the First World War, and efforts to create a self-consciously transnational art scene in an age of rising nationalism. Some of these themes are explored in her edited collection Internationalism and the Arts in Britain and Europe at the Fin de Siècle (Peter Lang, 2009). Her recent monograph, entitled Above the Battlefield: Modernism and the Peace Movement in Britain 1900–1918 (Yale, 2010), examines the survival of cultural internationalism through the dark days of the First World War. Brockington’s new research project focuses on the artist Vanessa Bell and her contribution to European modernism, and she is working towards an exhibition about Bell’s experimental years. She is General Editor of the Peter Lang series Internationalism and the Arts at the Fin de Siècle and leads the international research network ICE (‘Internationalism and the Arts, 1870-1920’). ICE is an interdisciplinary project which explores the interface between internationalism and the arts at a seminal historical moment. It brings together academics and curators from across the world to debate the problems and possibilities of artistic and cultural exchange and encounter in the period, and to explore the implications of ‘transnational history’ for teaching, research and display in the arts and humanities.
'Relay Race on the B Ring Road'
by Aleksandr Deineka (1947)
Dr Mike O’Mahony
Mike O’Mahony’s research interests have focused largely on two areas: the art and cinema of the Soviet Union c.1917-1945 and the representation of sport and the body in visual culture. Both of these areas intersect closely with the research theme ‘transnational modernisms’. The concept of cultural dialogues and exchange across borders is pivotal to much of his research on the Soviet Union, as reflected in analysis of works that engage with margins in geographical, temporal and metaphorical senses. He also examines cultural exchange between the Soviet Union and the West both in the early stages of the Soviet Union and right through to the Cold War era. The ways in which the West sought to promote modernism within the Soviet Union is also of great importance. These interests extend to an analysis of the dialogues that have emerged when western artists, collectors and cultural commentators have visited the Soviet Union. Research on the filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein for his book Critical Lives: Sergei Eisenstein (Reaktion 2008) has also dealt extensively with transnational dialogues. Eisenstein’s personal experiences as a traveller - acting as a quasi-cultural ambassador in France, Britain, the USA and Mexico during the 1920s/30s - are analysed alongside his films, as cultural products distributed at home and in the international arena. Recent research interests regarding the visual representation of sport have focused on the concept of ‘Olympism’. From the moment of its revival in the modern era, the Olympic movement explicitly sought to foster international communication and peace through the Olympic Games. This idealistic internationalist concept has constantly been contested and re-articulated, particularly within the visual arts.
Dr Dorothy Rowe
Dorothy Rowe’s research is divided along two specific areas of interest, German modernism and aspects of contemporary diasporic art in Britain, both of which are informed by thinking through issues of ethnicity and gender. Published research on German modernism has included several studies of Jewish artists and intellectuals in Berlin in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including the artists Lesser Ury and Lotte Laserstein and the sociologist Georg Simmel. Berlin as a site of cosmopolitan internationalism during the Weimar era is of particular interest in relation to the theme of transnational modernisms, as are more recent explorations of the international avant-garde in the regions, in particular Cologne and Hanover Dada. Other research is related to the exploration of the origins, contexts, histories and legacies of the German Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter. Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky’s concept for Der Blaue Reiter Almanac, (first published in December 2011) together with his fellow editors Franz Marc and August Macke, was a distinctly global one encompassing a variety of art forms and essays on an international scale, including works as diverse as Japanese art, Russian folk art, children's drawings, Bavarian glass painting and artworks by a number of contemporary European artists, musicians and writers. Such diverse content suggests a number of related research questions around the concept of transnational modernisms within the early twentieth century. Rowe’s research on contemporary diasporic art in Britain is informed by a revisionist approach to histories of British art since the 1980s in relation to contemporary concerns with transnationalism, globalization and the legacies of modernism.
Postgraduate student committee and areas of research
- Theodora Clarke: Russian Art in American Collections, with a focus on Katherine Dreier and the Societé Anonyme
- Rachel Flynn: Graham Sutherland in Wales, England and Europe
- Colin Glen: Ian Hamilton Finlay’s use of Photographic Documentation
- Joanna Karlgaard: Frederick Sandys and Victorian Illustration
- Elizabeth Robles: Masks and Masking in Black British Art since the 1980s
- Elisa Sai: Aeropittura, Futurism and Space in the 1930s: Continuity, Innovation and Reception
- Peter Stilton:British Art 1957-1969: Art and Science Under the Spectre of Hiroshima
- Georgina Webb-Dickin: Memory and the Monument: the creative response of Berlin to the vanishing Berlin Wall
- Holly Williamson: The Life and Work of Lucy Lee-Robbins and the influence of late Nineteenth Century Parisian fashions upon her art
We are grateful for the generous support of an anonymous donor.