Magical Objects and the Gothic Imagination in Post-War Britain

The Lee B. Anderson Memorial Lecture by Lynda Nead (The Courtauld Institute of Art)

Wednesday, April 23, 2025

38 West 86th Street, Lecture Hall

gallery@bgc.bard.edu

$15 General | $12 Seniors | Free for people associated with a college or university, people with museum ID, people with disabilities and caregivers, and BGC members

This lecture examines the presence and power of the Gothic imagination in British art and culture in the 1940s and 1950s. Focusing on a film, a painting, a photograph, and a novella, Lynda Nead explores how objects from the past find their way into the present, upsetting the aspirations and certainties of post-war reconstruction and modernization. In contrast to the realist tradition that characterized postwar British culture (evoking good taste, social responsibility, and national identity), these magical objects point to another tradition—one that expresses sexual desire, emotion, melodrama, and horror.

Lynda Nead is visiting professor of history of art at the Courtauld Institute of Art. She has published widely on the history of British art and culture and on gender, sexuality, and visual representation. Her publications include The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality (shortly to be reissued as a Routledge Classic); Victorian Babylon: People, Streets and Images in Nineteenth-Century London (Yale University Press); The Tiger in the Smoke: Art and Culture in Post-War Britain (Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre). She has recently completed British Blonde: Women, Desire and the Image in Post-War Britain, which will be published by Yale University Press in autumn 2025. Material from this book was developed for the Paul Mellon Lecture series which she gave at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2024. She has been a trustee of the Victoria & Albert Museum and is currently a trustee of the Holburne Museum, Bath, and the Campaign for the Arts, a charitable organization in the United Kingdom that works to champion and expand access to the arts and culture.

Lee Anderson, who worked for a time as an arts education teacher, has been referred to as the godfather of the Gothic revival in America. It is largely because of his impressive personal collection that the style has been rekindled among designers and other tastemakers. Lee passed away in 2010, but he left a legacy of philanthropic support through the Lee B. Anderson Memorial Foundation, whose mission is to support programs and organizations that advance an appreciation for the decorative arts.

Image: Bill Brandt, “The Antique Shop,” as reproduced in Camera in London (London and New York: Focal Press, 1948) fig. 50. © Bill Brandt Archive