Sites of Interchange: Modernism, Politics and Culture in Britain and Germany, 1919-1951

Courtauld Institute of Art, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN

This conference sets out to explore the connections between British and German culture during the period 1919-1951, in the fields of art, architecture, design and craft, photography, art history and theory, and art pedagogy. How did the British learn from and influence the Germans in these areas? How did the Germans learn from and influence the British? And what is the significance of these cultural connections today?

The conference is being organised on the occasion of the London 1938 exhibition project at the Wiener Library in London (13 June to 31 August 2018) and the Liebermann-Villa am Wannsee in Berlin (7 October 2018 to 14 January 2019).

The conference is supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and by the British Council.

Organised by Dr Robin Schuldenfrei (Courtauld Institute of Art) and Dr Lucy Wasensteiner (University of Bonn / Courtauld Institute of Art).

Further information online here: https://courtauld.ac.uk/event/sites-interchange-modernism-politics-culture-britain-germany-1919-1951-2

PROGRAMM

Friday 2 November 2018
Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN

13.30-14.00
Welcome Address

14.00-15.30
Multimedia: Defining the Human and Society

14.00
Dr Leah Hsiao (University of York)
“Dislocation of Amateurism: Moholy-Nagy in Britain, 1935-37”

14.30
Prof. Keith Holz (Western Illinois University)
“Kokoschka’s Postwar World Picture: Between Progressive Humanism and Rearguard Attachments (1945-1951)”

15.00
Dr Artemis Yagou (Deutsches Museum Munich)
“Play, Design, Politics: Technical Toys, Design Policies, and British-German Exchanges in the First Half of the 20th Century”

15.30-16.00
Break

16.00-17.30
Critics

16.00
Dr Shulamith Behr (Courtauld Institute of Art)
“Reframing Exilic Identity for a German Audience: Joseph Paul Hodin’s Encounter with Else and Ludwig Meidner and its Aftermath”

16.30
Prof. Karen Koehler (Hampshire College)
“Walter Gropius and Herbert Read: Abstraction, Empathy, Industry and Translation”

17.00
Antonia Behan (Bard Graduate Center)
Interchanged Threads: Traditions of Modernism in Ethel Mairet, the Bauhaus Weavers, and Nikolaus Pevsner

18.00
Keynote: Richard Calvocoressi, “‘Artistic bad manners’: modern German art and the British”

19.00-20.30
Reception

Saturday 3 November 2018
Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN

10.00-12.00
Architecture & the Urban

10.00
Prof. Burcu Dogramaci (Ludwig Maximilian University Munich)
“Metropolitan Exile: London, Refugee Artists and Places of Contact in the 1930s and 1940s”

10.30
Prof. Emeritus Dirk Schubert (HafenCity University Hamburg)
“Planning the Modern City: Continuity and Fractions of Town Planning in London and Hamburg before and after World War II”

11.00
Prof. Volker M. Welter (University of California Santa Barbara)
“Zehlendorf in London, Hiddensee in Walberswick, but Nothing in Berlin?: The Double Exile of Ernst L. Freud, Architect”

11.30
Valeria Carullo (Royal Institute of British Architects)
“‘New Eyes for Old’: How the New Vision and the New Objectivity Changed the Photography of Architecture in Britain”

12.00-13.00
Lunch break

13.00-15.00
Institutions

13.00
Dr Elisa Dainese (Dalhousie University)
“From Germany to London: Erwin Anton Gutkind on the African Village”

13.30
Dr Ina Weinrautner (Provenance Research at the German Foreign Office)
“9 Carlton House Terrace: A Showcase for Nazi Ideology”

14.00
Dr Lee Beard (Independent Scholar)
“Exhibiting Contemporary British Art: The Anglo-German Club”

14.30
Dr Ulrike Meyer Stump (Zurich University of the Arts)
“Dorothy Warren and ‘The Smartest Private Art-Gallery Place in London’: Promoting Exchange with Berlin, 1927-1934”

15.00-15.30
Break

15:30-17:30
Photography

15.30
Dr Jordan Troeller (Harvard University)
“Class and the Politics of Exile in Lucia Moholy’s English Portraits”

16.00
Prof. Michelle Henning (University of West London)
“‘A Hundred Years’: Lucia Moholy and German Photography History in Britain”

16.30
Dr Clara Masnatta (ICI Berlin Institute of Cultural Inquiry)
“Unfamiliar Albums: Photographers Grete Stern and Gisèle Freund in London Transit”

17.00-17.30
Closing Remarks