Pre-Raphaelites: The Last Romantics or the First Moderns?

Tickets at the door: $15/$5 student concession
Wednesday 9th August, 6pm - 8pm
Footbridge Theatre
University of Sydney

This presentation revisits the art of the Pre-Raphaelites, including some icons of Victorian art, including Ford Madox Brown's 'Chaucer' (Art Gallery of New South Wales) and works by Millais, Rossetti, Holman Hunt and Burne-Jones. It asks how these paintings, and the artists who made them, relate to earlier British and French art of the Romantic generation, and how they engage with a modernity that was distinctively Victorian.

Tim Barringer, Paul Mellon Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of the History of Art at Yale University, has published and lectured widely on British art and visual culture, art and empire, and on American art. His books include 'Reading the Pre-Raphaelites' (Yale, 1998) and 'Men at Work: Art and Labour in mid-Victorian Britain’ (Yale, 2005). He is editor of 'Colonialism and the Object' (with Tom Flynn, Routledge 1997) and 'Frederic Leighton: Antiquity, Renaissance, Modernity' (with Elizabeth Prettejohn, Yale 1998). Forthcoming co-edited collections include 'Art and the British Empire' (Manchester, 2007) and ‘Writing the Pre-Raphaelites’ (Ashgate, 2007). He was curator (with Andrew Wilton) of 'American Sublime' (Tate Britain; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art & Minneapolis, 2002), the catalogue of which won the AXA/Art Newspaper Prize and the Henry Russell Hitchcock Award of the Victorian Society of the USA.

The Audio-Visual Nexus, Delhi-London, 1911-12
Specialist Seminar, Dept Art History & Theory
7 August, 1.00 - 3.00pm
Room 209, RC Mills Bldg, Fisher Rd, University of Sydney
No booking required, Free
This paper adopts a multi-sensory approach, examining the combined effect of sound and image – of music and art – at two parallel events. The first, the Delhi Durbar, saw a reigning British monarch receive the fealty of the 'native princes' of India in a spectacular ceremony, accompanied by massed bands; the second, a 'Coronation Masque' called 'The Crown of India' was staged at the Coloseum Music Hall in London, with elaborate stage designs and music by Sir Edward Elgar. The paper considers the affect of the visual and the aural in the promotion of an imperial propaganda both at the imperial centre and in the colony, and suggests that the fractures and fragmentations of empire can be discerned even in these most blustering of imperial performances.

Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario in Contexts
Seminar, Nation Empire Globe Research Cluster
11 August, 12.00 - 2.00pm
Level 8 Common Room, Brennan McCallum Bldg, Manning Rd, University of Sydney.
No booking required, Free
Based on a major loan exhibition in preparation at the Yale Center for British Art, this paper examines the production of art in Jamaica around the period of apprenticeship and emancipation (1834-8). It looks at the representation of the plantation landscape and the image of enslaved men and women, and concludes with an analysis of Belisario's 'Sketches of Character'. This spectacular set of colour lithographs, referring back to the genre of 'Cries of London', represents the 'jonkonnu' festival, which combines African and European performance traditions in a subversive 'Cries of Kingston'.

Sponsored jointly by the Power Institute & the Nation Empire Globe Research Cluster, Faculty of Arts, University of Sydney. If you would like to be on our email list for public lectures & seminars, please send us your details. Further Information: Helena Poropat, tel: 9351 4211 The Power Institute Foundation for Art & Visual Culture, University of Sydney NSW 2006