Liberation Literature Lecture 2021

Tue 27 April 2021

Why the story changes: New understandings of art in occupied France
with Laurence Bertrand Dorléac, Professor at Sciences Po Paris

While historical facts remain the same, our understanding of history is subject to all kinds of variations. This is linked to new sources becoming more or less visible and accessible, but also to changing sensibilities and mentalities. Since the defence in 1984 of my doctoral thesis on art and the art world during the Second World War in France, most of the witnesses have disappeared, but some sources then prohibited are no longer hidden from view. Our interest in certain subjects has increased, whilst other subjects deemed worthy of attention then are thought less so today.

When the subject of French art in World War Two was first studied, we focused on the tip of the iceberg: official artistic life, censorship, anti-Semitism, cultural collaboration, the Vichy government program, the policies of the occupying Nazis. When re-examining the period twenty years later, on the occasion of the exhibition L'art en guerre (at the Modern Art Museum of the city of Paris and at the Guggenheim Museum), new sources emerged. Increasingly, our attention was directed towards underground and clandestine areas of history. The role of women was suddenly more important, and their place in the Resistance became central both in and through art.

In this talk, our research, writing and exhibitions will be used to show how history operates as a human and social science, anchored in the very historicity of human experience.

Following the lecture will be a Q&A with Laurence Bertrand Dorléac and Nicholas White, Professor of French Literature and Culture, University of Cambridge.

About the speaker:
Laurence Bertrand Dorléac is an art historian, professor at Sciences Po Paris, member of the Institut Universitaire de France, author of numerous books. She is curator of a number of exhibitions: Art at War, France 1938-1947, Musée d'art moderne de Paris, 2012; Guggenheim Bilbao, 2013; The Disasters of War, 1800-2014, Louvre-Lens, 2014; Artists & Robots, Grand Palais, 2018. She is preparing an exhibition on Things: A history of still life since prehistoric times for the Louvre Museum in October 2022.

Generously supported by the Chadwyck-Healey Charitable Trust.

Cost: Free