Migration and Movement: Shifting Identities, Cultural Traditions and Artistic Techniques

Intriguing online lecture from the National Gallery looking at migration in art.

Bethan Durie from the National Gallery education department takes two pictures from the galleries own collection to look at migration in art and the artist as migrant. She gave other examples of each genre and used five other pictures to highlight other themes.

Interestingly she used “The Thames Below Westminster” by Claude Monet from 1871 as it was painted when he was in exile in London from the Franco-Prussian War. She felt the melancholy colours and painting of fog reflect his sense of displacement. She also discussed how this picture reflects the modern world showing the newly constructed Houses of Parliament and Embankment as well as steam boats on the river. She compared this to artists who deliberately migrate in search of new artists ideas such as David Hockney and his move to California in the late 1960s.

“The Men of the Docks” by George Bellows from 1912 was use to illustrate migrants in art. The dockworkers shown were probably recent migrants to New York who had come to find a better life but instead find themselves queuing for daily work unloading ships at the snowy water front. Their aspiration is highlighted but he modern city across the water. She painted out that about this time 70% of the population of the city were migrants or their children. She made an interesting comparison to Dorothea Lange’s photograph “Migrant Mother” showing a woman displaced by the Depression.

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