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Dr Gemma Blackshaw
Teaching Interests: I’m interested in the making and breaking of artists’ careers in the competitive modern art markets of Vienna, Paris, Berlin and Munich. Block-buster exhibitions are still constructed around the notion of the ‘singular’ artist- favourites with the public from my research-period include Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch and Gustav Klimt. In my work, I uncover the strategies used by patrons and critics to promote an artist’s ‘singularity’, and the factors- from personal rivalries to political agendas- which determined their decisions to support one artist over another. Accordingly, when I teach the 19th and early 20th century art modules on the undergraduate programme, my slant is on the image of the artist, the revitalising of portraiture, the role of art criticism, the rise of commercial galleries and private collectors, and the arguments and alliances of the modern art community. I am particularly committed to teaching art history from an interdisciplinary angle, embracing such areas as literature, medicine and philosophy, as well as the more traditional areas of art historical inquiry. To this end I recently devised a module entitled 'The Interdisciplinary City' on Vienna 1900. Research Interests: I’m particularly fascinated by the hostile art world of Vienna 1900 and have published on the young, male artists such as Richard Gerstl, Oskar Kokoschka, Max Oppenheimer and Egon Schiele who navigated their way through it. In 2004 I was awarded a 4-year Arts and Humanities Research Project grant to pursue my interest in the imaging of Vienna’s modern artists as ‘mad’. The fruits of this can be seen in my co-curated exhibition 'Madness and Modernity: Mental Illness and the Visual Arts in Vienna 1900' which opened at the Wellcome Collection, London in April 2009 and travels to the Wien Museum, Wienna in 2010 and accompanying co-edited book of the same title. Future research plans include 'The Voice of the Critic in Vienna 1900', a book project with Dr Edward J. Neather including English translations of the early reception of modern art in the city, and work towards a single-authored book on portraiture in Vienna 1900. Publications: See Lisa Appignanesi’s review of Madness & Modernity for the New Statesman at: Click Here Hear Gemma Blackshaw in conversation with Natasha Mitchell, presenter of ABC radio programme ‘All in the Mind’ on Madness & Modernity at: Click Here 'Rediscovering Anton Romako', in 'From the Ausgleich to the Jahrhundertwende: Vienna 1867-1890’, Austrian Studies, March 2009 'The Jewish Christ: Problems of Self-Presentation and Socio-Cultural Assimilation in Richard Gerstl's Self-Portraiture', Oxford Art Journal, 29:1 2006, pp. 25-51. ‘Breaking the Mould?’ Review of Claude Cernuschi’s Re/Casting Kokoschka: Ethics and Aesthetics, Epistemology and Politics in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, Art History, vol. 27, no. 2, April, 2004, pp. 335-34. Grants: 2003 awarded AHRC major research project grant for ‘Madness and modernity: art, architecture and mental illness in Vienna and the Habsburg Empire 1890-1914’. I was a co-applicant on this grant, managed by Dr Leslie Topp, Birkbeck College London. 2000-2002 awarded AHRC scholarship for PhD 1998-2000 awarded School of Historical Studies Bursary, University of Birmingham for MPhilB
Current and past MRes supervision:
Conferences: ‘Hysteric Bodies: The Salpêtrière Photographs and Egon Schiele’s Self-Portraits’ at AAH annual conference, Oxford Brookes University, March 2001.
Link to Gemma's strand at AAH 2004
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