THE ARMENIAN INSTITUTE

THE ARMENIAN INSTITUTE

and

THE ARMENIAN STUDIES AT SOAS (UNIVERSITY OF LONDON)

PRESENT

LECTURE

RETHINKING ARSHILE GORKY: GENOCIDE, IDENTITY AND TRAUMATIC MEMORY IN MODERNIST AMERICAN ART

By Dr. Kim S. Theriault

Wednesday, 10 February 2010 at 7:30

Khalili Lecture Theatre, School of Oriental & African Studies, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, WC1H 0XG

(Tube: Russell Square)

Though known for his difficult beginnings and tragic end, many of the details of Gorky’s biography are unknown or eclipsed by his own or his family’s storytelling. Born Armenian in Turkey prior to the Armenian Genocide of 1915, his family fled, but his mother died of starvation in his arms before they could immigrate to America. Around 1925, the young immigrant changed his name and moved to New York City to become an artist. Attempts to clarify his story in three recent biographies, as well as the appearance of the artist as a character in a feature film, depict Gorky as a tragic figure. In this lecture, Dr. Theriault addresses Gorky’s specific experience by exploring the foundations for his actions. Her theory is that Gorky’s art and his life becomes a vehicle through which one can examine the effects of trauma on the individual in such a way as it facilitates the construction of a new life in America.

Chaired by Professor Hugh N. Kennedy, Head of Department of the Languages & Cultures of the Near & Middle East

Kim Servart Theriault is an Associate Professor of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois. She completed her doctorate at the University of Virginia in 2000 with her dissertation “Re-Placing Arshile Gorky: Exile, Identity, and Abstraction in Twentieth-Century American Art” and has presented numerous lectures on the artist. She has contributed an article to the catalogue of the current exhibition “Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective”, soon to open at the Tate Modern. Her book on the artist, Rethinking Arshile Gorky offers new interpretive insights into Gorky’s work, elaborating upon the themes of displacement, trauma, and memory as well as identified issues of identity, originality, and mourning.

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