The Harwood Museum of Art of the University of New Mexico and The Couse Foundation present “From Paris Ateliers to Taos Adobes: How Irving Couse & Joseph Henry Sharp Brought Beaux-Arts Aesthetics to the American West,” a lecture by Art Historian Marie Watkins on Friday, Oct. 16 at 7 p.m.
Photo: “Call of the Flute” by E.I.Couse, 1913, oil on canvas, on loan from private collection.
This lecture is held in conjunction with the exhibitions “Kindred Spirits and the Adobe Connection: E.I. Couse and J.H. Sharp” and “A Painter and his Camera: Model Studies by E.I. Couse.” The exhibitions, open through Sunday, Oct. 18, launch The Couse Foundation’s centennial celebrations of the year the two men became neighbors.
The lecture is free to members of Harwood Museum Alliance or The Couse Foundation or $8 for nonmembers.
Couse and Sharp are arguably the most dedicated academics of the Taos artists. Underlying the style of their painting is the influence of Paris and the beaux arts tradition from their student days. These artists, along with their Taos colleagues, transformed American art. What they learned in Paris didn’t stay in Paris, but unfolded into a rich and diverse Taos panorama.
Watkins is assistant professor of art history at Furman University in Greenville, S.C. holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Furman University, master’s degrees in zoology from Clemson University and in art history from Tulane University, and a doctorate in art history from Florida State University. While living in Berlin, Germany, for eight years, she attended the Freie Universität, where she continued her studies in art history. She also curates exhibitions in the humanities and the sciences.
Her interests include the impact of patronage on western American art and how the nature of art collecting shaped late 19th and early 20th century culture. Forthcoming works by Watkins include a chapter on Sharp for the Gerald Peters Gallery publication, “The Taos Society of Artists.” She is in the preparatory stages of organizing an exhibition on Sharp and his patrons and is writing a book of interpretative essays investigating Sharp’s work thematically and exploring wider cultural issues in order to enter Sharp into the dialogue of the meaning and purpose of art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
For more information, call (575) 758-9826 ext. 110 or visit: Harwood Museum.
The Harwood Museum of Art of UNM is located at 238 Ledoux Street in Taos and is open Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and Sunday, noon-5 p.m. Admission is $8, or free on Sundays to New Mexico residents.
Media Contact: Sari Krosinsky, (505) 277-1593; e-mail: michal@unm.edu
Posted by scarr at October 9, 2009 12:48 PM