Instructor: F. Baumgartner
This course explores the relation between the creative process and the respective conditions of expatriation, emigration and exile from the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789 until the end of the Bourbon Restoration in 1830. While all three conditions involve distance from one’s home, the personal and historical factors that define them varied significantly, with corresponding differences in the way that the creative process was approached.
Examining the cases of Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Jacques-Louis David and Francisco de Goya among others, this course focuses on the works artists produced while away from their native land, often by constraint rather than choice. Topics of discussion include: the Grand Tour and cosmopolitanism circa 1789; the category of the émigré(e)-artist; Revolution, gender and exile; uprooting and creative paralysis/creative fury; the refashioning of artistic identity; and the relation to history and the recent past.
