In this talk Dr Saul Nelson analyses a single painting, Grace Hartigan’s 'The Persian Jacket' (1952), in order to draw a few conclusions about late modernism. In particular, Nelson interrogates the relationship between fashion and painting presupposed by a kind of art that looks backwards, across the history of modernism, rather than forwards towards some new mode of artmaking. Citational in title and form, submissive in production, The Persian Jacket embodies its simultaneous proximity to institutionalised narratives and the capacity for transformation and critique that might emerge from such proximity. It offers a mode of painterly practice in which myths of heroic individualism are overturned.

Speakers:
Dr Saul Nelson, Department of History of Art, University of Oxford - https://www.hoa.ox.ac.uk/people/saul-nelson
Alexandra Solovyev, Faculty of History, University of Oxford - https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/people/alexandra-solovyev