Whips, Ships, Tusks, Scars, and Vines: Art Nouveau, Congo and Belgium, Then and Now
Whips, Ships, Tusks, Scars, and Vines: Art Nouveau, Congo and Belgium, Then and Now
Lecture and Discussion by Debora Silverman, Distinguished Professor of History and Art History, University of California, Los Angeles, with guests to be confirmed
This lecture rediscovers the explosion of creativity in fin-de-siècle Belgium, when artistic innovation, political radicalism, and imperial enthrallment shaped the avant-garde. Drawn from a forthcoming book, the lecture identifies Belgian Art Nouveau—known as “coup de fouet” or “whiplash style”—as a specifically Congo nature style, composed of Congo raw materials and inspired by Congo motifs. Design objects and texts by Henry Van de Velde and architectural works by Victor Horta will be featured in the presentation. These historical expressions of what can be called “imperial modernism” raise broader questions of the relationship between art and violence, the social context of visual form, and the force field of conscious and unconscious patterns that shape creative consciousness.
An initiative by Printmaking department in collaboration with KANAL-Centre Pompidou and CIVA.
Debora Silverman
Debora Silverman is Distinguished Professor of History and Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles. She teaches and has written widely on the visual arts, politics, and the emergence of the irrational in fin-de-siècle Europe, on Van Gogh, Gauguin, Gallé, Rodin, Ensor, and Klimt, as well as critical studies of art, colonialism, the Tervuren Royal Museum for Central Africa, and legacies of violence in the contemporary world. Her books include Selling Culture; Art Nouveau in Fin-de-Siècle France; and Van Gogh and Gauguin. Her forthcoming book is called Art of Darkness.
The following viewing and readings are recommended for this lecture and discussion:
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“Sikitiko, the Kings Hand” (video, 9 minutes)
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“Diasporas of Art: History, The Tervuren Royal Museum for Central Africa, and the Politics of Memory in Belgium, 1885-2014,” The Journal of Modern History (87:3), September, 2015: 615-667.
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“Art Nouveau, Art of Darkness: African Lineages of Belgian Modernism,” Part I,” West 86 th , The Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History and Material Culture, * vol. 18, no. 2, Fall 2011, pp. 139-181.
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“Marketing Thanatos: The Horror of Damien Hirst,” American Imago, vol. 68, no. 3, Fall 2011, pp. 391-424.
On the same thematic, you can discover the exhibition "Style Congo. Heritage & Heresy" in CIVA until Sunday, September 3, 2023. The exhibition explores the politics of cultural representation and appropriation through contemporary artistic and architectural interventions as well as historic documents and materials from CIVA's Collections.
© Henry Van de Velde, Bookbinding for Edmond Van Eetvelde, 1897 (collection La Cambre)