Lecture | The American West in France

How did the American West become part of the French imagination in the nineteenth century? Join us as Dr. Emily C. Burns, Associate Professor of Art History at Auburn University, explores the reciprocal dialogues between French and US culture through interests in the American West. What artworks by US artists—Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Remington, Alexander Phimister Proctor, Joseph Henry Sharp, and others—of iconic figures like cowboys and American Indians designed ideas about the West in France when they were exhibited in Paris? How did French artists render the American West from travel and from imagination? How did US artists take up the aesthetic of impressionism—itself tied to Paris—in evocative ways to depict a dynamic and momentary West? By thinking about the fluid mobility of ideas, images, art objects and styles between France and the United States, we will see how the American West became a point of transnational conversation in Dr. Burns’ talk titled "Mobile Arts, Fluid Ideas: The American West in France / France in the West."

Speaker:
• Dr. Emily C. Burns, Associate Professor of Art History, Auburn University

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