Friday 9 December 2005, 15.00–18.30
Saturday 10 December 2005, 10.30–18.00
The Exotic in the Modern
From Gauguin and Rousseau to Surrealism
Victor Segalen defined the exotic positively as ‘the perception of the diverse’. Segalen’s ‘exotic’ is usually associated with Paul Gauguin, but Henri Rousseau’s jungle pictures were often called ‘exotic landscapes’, as if the word conjured up a far-off world into which Western imaginations could harmlessly project.
This conference, convened by Christopher Green as a collaboration between Tate Modern and the Courtauld Institute of Art, aims to look at the reinvention of the exotic, as a dimension of Western culture’s engagement with its ‘others’, in the period between Gauguin and Rousseau at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century and the Surrealists. It has been prompted by the exhibition Henri Rousseau: Jungles in Paris at Tate Modern and focuses on developments in French art and culture between the 1880s and the Second World War, dealing with such themes as the exotic in avant-garde and popular culture, the exotic and ‘the primitive’, the exotic and ‘black diaspora communities’, and the exotic and travel.
A collaboration with the Courtauld Institute of Art
Tate Modern
Starr Auditorium
£30 (£20 concessions), booking recommended
Price includes refreshments
£30 (£20 concessions), booking recommended
Price includes refreshments
Programme
Friday 9 December
15.00
Registration
15.00–16.00
Introduction by Frances Morris, and opening discussion between Frances Morris, Christopher Green, Patricia Leighten and Petrine Archer-Straw.
16.00–16.30
Tea and coffee
16.30–17.00
Elizabeth Childs (Washington University in St Louis)
Title to be confirmed
17.30–18.00
Linda Goddard (Cambridge University)
The Writings of a Savage? Literary Devices in Gauguin’s Noa Noa
18.00–18.30
Discussion chaired by John House (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Saturday 10 December
10.30–11.00
Nancy Ireson (Courtauld Institute of Art)
11.00–11.30
Julia Kelly (University of Manchester)
The 'Shadow of Adventure': the Dakar-Djibouti ethnographic expedition (1931-33) and its presentation in Paris
11.30–12.00
Patricia Leighten (Duke University)
'A Rationale of Ugliness’: Primitivism at the Interface of Cubism and Its Audience, 1908–1913
12.00–13.00
Discussion chaired by Richard Humphreys
13.00–14.30
Lunch
14.30–15.00
Petrine Archer-Straw
Exoticism in Black and White
15.00–15.30
Robert McNab
The Surrealist Explorers of Ancient America
15.30–16.00
Discussion chaired by Caroline Brimmer
16.00–16.30
Tea and coffee
16.30–17.00
Christopher Green (Courtauld Institute of Art)
17.00–18.00
Concluding discussion between Elizabeth Childs, Julia Kelly, Robert McNab and Nancy Ireson, chaired by Frances Morris
18.00–19.00
Reception in the Starr Auditorium Foyer
This event is related to the Henri Rousseau: Jungles in Paris exhibition
