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Zurbarán Centre for Spanish and Latin American Art

The Orient Within by Claudia Hopkins

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11 December 2024 - 11 December 2024

6:00PM - 7:00PM

This talk will be delivered online via Zoom

  • Free

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Zoom talk presented by Claudia Hopkins

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The Orient Within by Claudia Hopkins book cover

Claudia Hopkins will present aspects of her research from her recent monograph: Art and Identity in Spain 1833-1956. The Orient Within (Bloomsbury, 2024). The book examines how Spanish artists shaped perceptions of Al-Andalus and northern Morocco, from Spain's liberal revolution of the 1830s to the end of the Protectorate of Morocco in 1956. Combining art history with a cultural studies approach, and using exemplary case studies, Hopkins foregrounds the diverse issues that underpin Orientalist expression: reflections on history and the nation, cultural nationalism, gender and sexuality, aesthetics and art commerce, colonialism and racial thinking. In the process, the book challenges over-familiar understandings of Western Orientalism.
Beyond Fortuny and Sorolla, many unfamiliar artists and exhibitions are introduced, amongst them Villaamil, whose nostalgic landscapes evoked the loss of Andalusi culture; Bécquer, who celebrated Spanish-Moroccan peace-making through the lens of Velázquez; the Symbolist Rusiñol, whose images of the Alhambra are infused with melancholy; Morcillo, whose extraordinary camp images opened a new space for male subjectivity; Tapiró and Bertuchi, who dedicated their lives to Morocco, and the Moroccan Sarghini, who participated in the state-funded Painters of Africa exhibitions in Franco's Madrid.
About the speaker: Claudia Hopkins is Professor of Art History at Edinburgh College of Art and Honorary Professor of Hispanic Art at Durham University, where she served as the Director of the Zurbarán Centre for Spanish and Latin American Art between 2020 and 2023. Her work been supported by the Leverhulme Trust, the Carnegie Trust, the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at Edinburgh, the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Spanish Embassy, the Cervantes Institute, and the Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica. Her catalogue Romantic Spain: David Roberts and Genaro Pérez Villaamil (CEEH, Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, 2021), won the Mark A. Roglán Award from The Custard Institute, Meadows Museum for exemplary scholarship on Spanish art, and the Jonathan Brown Award from the Society of Global Iberian Art (SIGA) for exceptional achievement in an exhibition catalogue. Her recent book Art and Identity in Spain 1833-1956. The Orient Within (2024) makes an original intervention in the field of Spanish art studies and contributes new material to the ongoing debates about ‘Orientalism’.
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This online event will be chaired by Professor Andy Beresford. To join the event, please use this zoom link: 

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