Thursday 21 August, 2014
6:00pm BST
Weston Room, Norwich Cathedral Hostry
Speaker
Paul Greenhalgh (Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts)
About the Talk
Japanese visual culture has impacted European culture on an ongoing basis for many centuries. However, the impact was most intense and impressive in the modern age. First of all and perhaps most dramatically, the visual arts at the fin de siècle owed much in their embracing of modernity to Japan. In the closing decades of the 20thCentury, with its economic miracle at full height, Japan was a powerful player in post-modern culture. The lecture will compare and contrast these two moments in order to characterise Japanese influences on western modern culture.
About the speaker
Paul Greenhalgh is the Director of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, one of the UK’s principal institutions for the study and display of art. Paul trained as a painter and then an art historian at the University of Reading and the Courtauld Institute of Art. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Brighton. His former roles include Director and President of the Corcoran Gallery and College of Art (Washington DC), President NSCAD University (Canada), and Head of Research at the Victoria and Albert Museum (London). He has taught in schools of art and design in numerous countries, including Cardiff College of Art, where he began his professional career, and the Royal College of Art. As an art historian, his specialist areas include: art and design 1850-1940; Modernism in design and architecture; Art Nouveau; expositions, expos, and world fairs; the history of ceramics; the history and theory of style; and the contemporary crafts. Since returning to Europe in 2010, he has been appointed to a number of public roles, including Chair of Art, Design, and Art History for the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF), and Chair of the Arts Advisory Committee for the University of Edinburgh. He has lectured all over the world, and has published numerous books and articles, including Ephemeral Vistas (1989), Modernism in Design (1993), Art Nouveau 1890-1914 (2000), The Persistence of Craft (2003), The Modern Ideal (2005), Fair World (2010), L’Art Nouveau: la Révolution Décorative (2013). He was born in Bolton, Lancashire, and his passion for Bolton Wanderers is exceeded only by his love of art.
The Third Thursday Lecture series is funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and Yakult UK.