2021
Perceptive print-making: Grosvenor School linocuts and the middlebrow market
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Speakers
- Hana Leaper — John Moores Painting Prize Senior Lecturer and Development Manager, Liverpool John Moores University
- Jennifer Farrell — Moderator — Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Prints and Illustrated Books, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
In 1926, the artist, writer, and teacher Claude Flight wrote The Art of To-day, in which he described what he saw as the role and responsibilities for contemporary artists, particularly in relation to what he termed “the collective spirit of the times.” That same year, Flight began teaching the color linocut technique at London’s Grosvenor School of Modern Art, a method he believed most accurately reflected the principles for a more modern, democratic art that he promoted in his writings.
In this series of talks, speakers discuss color linocuts made by artists affiliated with the Grosvenor School (known as the Grosvenor School artists) and their creation, exhibition, reception, and marketing over a series of decades. A symposium on the occasion of Modern Times: British Prints 1913-1939 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Claude Flight proposed that the linocut could revolutionise print ownership. This talk explores Flight’s beliefs, and how effective the work of the Grosvenor School artists actually became in generating an aspirational middlebrow market for the ‘art of to-day’.
