Research Forum Archive
autumn Term 2010
joint london seminar for early modern visual culture and research seminar: Modern and Contemporary
Canvas to Canvas: Companion Paintings in the 19th-century United States
Monday, 15 November 2010
18.00, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Speaker(s): Wendy Ikemoto (Terra Foundation for American Art Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Rose Marie San Juan (r.sanjuan@ucl.ac.uk) and Joanna Woodall (joanna.woodall@courtauld.ac.uk)
This paper examines the 'why' and 'how' of companion paintings in the antebellum United States. Why did the paired form proliferate in 19th-century America, and what did it signify? The paper suggests that companion paintings sorted the world into characteristic dualisms: for example, black and white, good and evil, north and south. Through limited case studies, it demonstrates also the critical potential of the form to subvert its own categorical divisions.
The London Seminar for Early Modern Visual Culture is organised jointly by The Courtauld Institute of Art's Research Forum and University College London’s History of Art Department
As Terra Foundation for American Art Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, Wendy Ikemoto is teaching a BA3 Special Option Going Global: International Perspectives on Early American Art.
For further information about the Terra Foundation for American Art and this initiative see www.terraamericanart.org
