The International Context of the Art of St Ives 1948-60

这个合作博士课程的重点是1948年至1960年期间与圣艾夫斯艺术家殖民地相关的英国艺术家与国际上生产的抽象艺术之间的接触。这是受战争影响的新一代艺术家从毕加索、布拉克、马蒂斯等战前大师的阴影中崛起的时期，也是美国抽象表现主义的主导地位被确立为战后绘画的霸权运动的时期。虽然研究可能集中在许多不同类型的相遇上，但其基本成分是对英国艺术家在欧洲大陆或美国同行作品的直接经验进行实证调查，无论是以某些艺术家在英国的实际存在和他们的作品的形式，还是以讨论他们的出版物的可用性或英国艺术家前往特定地点的旅行，如威尼斯双年展。这项研究的必要性是为了抵制将圣艾夫斯艺术家的实践孤立在国家边界内的普遍倾向，并将其定位为美国绘画的衍生品。美国抽象表现主义的影响及其焦虑是对圣艾夫斯的描述中根深蒂固的组成部分，尤其是因为圣艾夫斯的主人公帕特里克·赫伦（Patrick Heron）在20世纪70年代初对美国评论家所谓的民族主义偏见发起了备受瞩目的攻击。然而，关于圣艾夫斯艺术家和美国人的作品之间究竟有什么联系的研究却很少。该研究项目的背景是泰特圣艾夫斯美术馆的翻新，该美术馆将于2014年重新启动，由泰特英国美术馆展览主管、该领域的领先学者克里斯·斯蒂芬斯策划的圣艾夫斯艺术展览。该展览还将在米德尔斯堡现代艺术学院展出。博士项目将通过为展出的艺术建立新的联系和背景，直接融入展览。展览的概念配置仍在制作中，学生的愿望是帮助设计特定房间的主题，参与作品的选择，为目录写作，并为更广泛的展览解释做出贡献。虽然抽象表现主义在战后绘画史上占据主导地位，但当时人们并不认为它与欧洲大陆的绘画有明显的区别，后者在英国更为人所知。战后，英国艺术家不可避免地将目光投向了巴黎的发展。与此同时，新兴的巴黎艺术家在伦敦展出。同样，英国艺术家也会看到意大利、德国、荷兰、比利时、丹麦、瑞士、西班牙和德国出现了新的绘画形式。“真实的艺术”、“非正式的艺术”和CoBrA艺术家的作品在美国人之前就已经为人所知。然而，关于战后欧洲绘画的英语研究仍然很少，也没有人研究它在英国艺术家中的形象和对英国艺术家的影响。博士生将能够利用泰特丰富的资源，包括视觉和书面资源来纠正这种情况。泰特档案馆收藏了大量圣艾夫斯主要人物的论文，如本·尼科尔森、芭芭拉·赫普沃斯和特里·弗罗斯特，以及那些与欧洲前卫艺术有联系的英国艺术家，如威廉·吉尔和斯蒂芬·吉尔伯特，以及该时期的主要历史学家和评论家。此外，泰特图书馆还拥有无与伦比的相关展览目录、期刊和蜉蝣。在这个研究项目中，利害攸关的不仅仅是战后英国艺术的地位，而是对战后英国艺术生产的文化联系和动态的正确理解

This collaborative PhD takes as its focus the encounters between British artists associated with the artists' colony in St Ives and the abstract art being produced internationally in the period 1948-60. This is the period when a new generation of artists shaped by the war emerged from the shadow of the masters of the pre-war period such as Picasso, Braque and Matisse, and before the dominance of American Abstract Expressionism was secured as the hegemonic movement of post-war painting.While there are many different types of encounter on which the research might focus, its essential ingredient is the empirical investigation of the direct experience of British artists of the work of their counterparts in mainland Europe or America, whether that be in the form of the actual presence in Britain of certain artists and their work, the availability of publications in which they were discussed or British artists' travels to particular sites of encounter, such as the Venice Biennale.The necessity of this study is to counteract the prevailing tendency to isolate the practice of St Ives artists within national boundaries and position it as derivative of American painting. The influence of American Abstract Expressionism and anxieties thereof are well established components in accounts of St Ives, not least because of the high-profile attacks on American critics' supposed nationalistic bias launched in the early 1970s by Patrick Heron, a St Ives protagonist. However, little research has ever been done on exactly what contact there was between St Ives artists and the work of the Americans.The context for the research project is the refurbishment of Tate St Ives which will be relaunched in 2014 with an exhibition on the art of St Ives curated by Chris Stephens, Head of Displays at Tate Britain and leading scholar in the field. The exhibition will also be shown at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. The PhD project will feed directly into the exhibition by establishing new connections and contexts for the art on display. The conceptual configuration of the exhibition is still very much in the making and the aspiration is for the student to help devise themes for particular rooms, take part in the selection of works, write for the catalogue and contribute to the interpretation of the exhibition more widely.While Abstract Expressionism has come to dominate histories of post-war painting, at the time it was not recognised as significantly distinct from continental European practice which was better and more immediately known in Britain. After the war, British artists inevitably looked to developments in Paris. At the same time, emerging Parisian artists were exhibited in London. Similarly, British artists would have seen new forms of painting developing in Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Switzerland, Spain and Germany. 'L'art autre', 'art informel' and the work of CoBrA artists were known before that of the Americans. Yet, there are still few Anglophone studies of post-war European painting and none examining its profile among and impact upon British artists. The PhD student will be able to utilise the wealth of resources at Tate, both visual and written to rectify this situation. Tate Archive holds extensive collections of papers of the leading St Ives figures, such as Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Terry Frost, as well as those of British artists more commonly known to have associated with the European avant-garde such as William Gear and Stephen Gilbert and leading historians and critics of the period. In addition, Tate Library has unrivalled holdings of relevant exhibition catalogues, journals and ephemera. At stake in the research project is not simply the status of British art in the post-war period but a proper understanding of the cultural connections and dynamics of art production in th