Belonging And Not Belonging: the immigrant experience in modern British art
British art has been enriched by the presence of artists from elsewhere for many centuries. In her lecture Monica Bohm-Duchen will examine the experience, reception and contribution of émigré artists to this country from the late nineteenth century to the present day. The diverse backgrounds of these artists notwithstanding, certain leitmotifs recur: the initially ambivalent, often hostile response of the ‘host’ culture; issues of ‘otherness’, displacement, dislocation and loss; xenophobia versus internationalism; the creative tensions between assimilation and separatism, integration and isolation, mainstream and margins; and the more recent concepts of globalisation, multiculturalism and cultural hybridity. Artists she will discuss include Hans Holbein and Anthony van Dyck, James McNeill Whistler and John Singer Sargent, David Bomberg and Mark Gertler, John Heartfield and Oskar Kokoschka, Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach, Anish Kapoor and Mona Hatoum, Chris Ofili and Yinka Shonibare.
Monica Bohm-Duchen is a writer, lecturer and exhibition organiser. She has worked for the Tate Gallery, the National Gallery, the Royal Academy of Arts, the Open University, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Birkbeck University of London and the Courtauld Institute of Art. She was the initiator and Creative Director of Insiders/Outsiders: Refugees from Nazi Europe and their Contribution to British Culture, a nationwide arts festival which took place between March 2019 and March 2020, and continues to offer an online events programme (see https://insidersoutsidersfestival.org/).
Refugees c.1941 ©Josef Herman Estate. With kind permission Ben Uri Collection
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