Lecture 10: Art after the conquest of the air

If you missed Lecture 10: Art after the conquest of the air from Terence Maloon’s series The 50 years that changed painting 1867–1917, you can watch the recorded version below or on our Youtube channel. 

The lecture series continues on the first Sunday of each month till September 2025. Learn more about the upcoming lectures and book a seat here.

Lecture 10: Art after the conquest of the air
Pioneering flights by the Wright brothers and Blériot in the early twentieth century captured the imagination of a huge public, and that of visual artists as well. Coinciding with the early demonstrations of flight, new conceptions of time and space arose and altered forever the conventions of visual representation. Cubist and early abstract artists sought to recreate and to appropriate for their own advantage the heroic aura of the pioneers of flight. This lecture considers  artists who were the most conspicuous flight-fantasists: Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, Marcel Duchamp, Constantin Brâncuși, Kasimir Malevitch and Vladimir Tatlin.