Thomas Crow
Friday, January 24, 2003
7:30 p.m.
Harold M. Williams Auditorium
François Boucher possesses the paradoxical distinction of
standing for an entire epoch in art history—the French Rococo—while
remaining underestimated as an artist and almost unknown as a personality.
Often he appears as little more than a vehicle for the impulses
of his patrons or for the relaxed, decadent ethos of his time.
Yet Boucher, this art-historical enigma, operated across some of
the most significant changes ever to take place in the institutional,
ideological, and economic underpinnings of European art, all the
while maintaining his professional dominance and representative
stature. This lecture will address some of the reasons for Boucher's
soft-focus historical identity as well as some of the reasons why
his work has recently attracted renewed interest to the point of
genuine controversy in its interpretation.
Thomas Crow is director of the Getty Research Institute and professor
of art history at the University of Southern California. He was
previously Robert Lehman Professor of Art History at Yale University
and chair of history of art at the University of Sussex in the UK.
His first book, Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century
Paris, appeared in 1985 and won a number of awards. He has since
published on French painting of the Revolutionary period (Emulation,
1995) and on the art of the later twentieth century (The Rise
of the Sixties, 1996, and Modern Art in the Common Culture,
1996). His latest book, The Intelligence of Art, addresses
the critical and historical understanding of art objects. A contributing
editor of Artforum, he writes frequently on contemporary
art and cultural issues.
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