Another Busy Thursday

Just like last Thursday, this one is full!

At 4 p.m. today, in the M. Smith Griffith Auditorium, we have the annual Willson Center/GMOA Lecture, which this year is being delivered by Sujata Iyengar. Dr. Iyengar teaches English Renaissance literature in UGA's English Department and will be speaking on "Pop Goes Shakespeare: Illustration, Adaptation, and Appropriation in the Arden Shakespeare Covers, Second Series."

During the late 1970s a group of English artists retreated from the increasingly conceptual and abstract London art world to the countryside, styling themselves (in emulation of both the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and of Samuel Palmer’s Brotherhood of Ancients) the Brotherhood of Ruralists. The Ruralists encompassed a variety of styles and approaches, but the Arden 2 Shakespeare covers designed by the Ruralists and marketed aggressively by Methuen shared what founding member Peter Blake called a “magic realism,” a deep engagement with the textual world of Shakespeare within a mythologized English landscape. The Arden Shakespeares sold well, but the mainstream British art establishment continued to accuse the Ruralists scathingly of “loud commercialism,” pretentious sentimentality, and anti-intellectual, anti-modernist nostalgia; the Oxford Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art coyly notes of the Ruralists, “some critics found [them] . . . insufferably twee and self-conscious.” This talk, however, considers the Ruralists’ book-covers as postmodern Pop Art and suggests that what seemed at the time to be narrow-minded insularity now strikes us as an ecological and concentration on the natural world; what seemed to be trendy modernizing now looks like the postmodern trait that Fredric Jameson and others identify as “pastiche,” and that what seemed merely trite or sentimental now appears as a historical resistance to the “schizophrenic” loss of affect found in late-20th-century commercial art.

At 5:30 p.m., we have a gallery talk on "Pattern and Palette in Print: Gentry Magazine and a New Generation of Trendsetters," from our own Mary Koon, editor at GMOA, and co-curator Clay McLaurin, chair of the fabric design program at the Lamar Dodd School of Art. Want to learn more about the exciting project that led to this exhibition? Come ask them questions.

Then stay for the second film in our series "Dress the Part: Fashion in Movies and Magazines," when we screen "Funny Face," the 1957 musical starring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire about the world of Paris fashion.

Everything is free and open to the public. Parking on campus in surface lots surrounding the museum is also free beginning at 5 p.m.

Willson Center/GMOA Lecture Photos

Our wonderful interns took some photos at the lecture yesterday afternoon, and while slideshows aren't quite as exciting as pictures of people dressed up fancy (to some of us), we think it's wonderful to see the crowd that turned out for Nina Hellerstein's talk on Jean Charlot's murals.

Don't forget!

The Seventh Annual Willson Center/GMOA Lecture is taking place this afternoon (Wednesday, March 3) at 4 p.m. in room 314 of Sanford Hall on the UGA Campus.

Nina Hellerstein, professor of French and head of the department of Romance languages at the University of Georgia, will present “Franco-Mexican Artist Jean Charlot (1898-1979), His French Connections and His Mexican-Inspired Murals on the UGA Campus.”

Jean Charlot was born in Paris of French, Spanish and Mexican Indian descent. He studied informally at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris and eventually moved to Mexico, where he became one of Diego Rivera’s assistants. Rivera and the other members of the Syndicate of Revolutionary Painters, Sculptors and Engravers of Mexico dedicated themselves to producing public art for the lower or popular class of society.

In the early 1920s, Charlot was among the artists who assisted Rivera in painting frescos on the walls of the Ministry of Public Education in Mexico City. His contributions to the project included nine decorative shields and three murals of Mexican folk scenes: “Cargadores” (Burden Bearers), “Lavanderas” (Washerwomen), and “Danza de los Listones” (Dance of the Ribbons).

Other influences on Charlot’s work include Indian folk-religious activities he observed during a trip to Chalma and Mayan artifacts he came in contact with while he was staff artist of the Carnegie Institution expedition to Chichén-Itzá on the Yucatán peninsula.

The years from 1941 to 1944, when Charlot was invited by Lamar Dodd to be the artist-in-residence at the University of Georgia, are of particular relevance to Hellerstein’s lecture. Charlot instructed art students at the university while working on murals in the area. The murals painted by Charlot on campus can be seen beneath the portico on the front of the Fine Arts Building and in Brooks Hall, next door to where the lecture will take place.

The lecture is 100% free and open to the public, and you can either park downtown and walk across North Campus or in the North Campus or Tate Center parking decks. We hope to see lots of you at this wonderful lecture organized by our department of education alongside the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts.

GMOA in the News

The Franklin College of Arts and Sciences is plugging the upcoming Willson Center/GMOA Lecture on its site here.