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UB Will Host Noted Art History Expert


Dr. Hollis Clayton will give a free talk on artist John Singer Sargent, the electrification of Paris and its influence on his and other artists' works.
"In the Luxembourg Gardens" by John Singer Sargent; 1879; Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The University at Buffalo Department of Visual Studies will host Dr. S. Hollis Clayson, professor of art history and Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities at Northwestern University.

Clayson's talk, titled John Singer Sargent's Paris Moon Light: Twilight Disenchanted?, will explore her work analyzing the electrification of Paris and its impact on the art of the time.

Clayson will speak at 7 p. m. on Thursday, March 28, at the Buffalo History Museum. The talk is free and open to the public.

Specializing in the social history of 19th-century Parisian art, Clayson has organized 3 exhibitions and has written: two books; more than 30 articles, book chapters and exhibition catalogues; and given more than 100 conference talks. The recipient of numerous grants and fellowships for her scholarly work, her excellence in teaching has also been recognized by several awards. Her long career has culminated in appointment as next year's Samuel H. Kress Professor at the National Gallery of Art, one of the most prestigious academic appointments in the world.

Clayson argues that Sargent's most "impressionist" canvases, the two Luxembourg Garden paintings of 1879, are instead extraordinary redefinitions of the Whistlerian nocturne that respond explicitly and imaginatively to the electric street lights that newly impinged upon the Jardin du Luxembourg, the largest green space on the Left Bank. From within the matrix of illumination discourse, Sargent's canvases displace the brutality of electric into the poetry of reflected moon light.

 

 

Niagara Falls Reporter - Publisher Frank Parlato Jr. www.niagarafallsreporter.com

Mar19 , 2013