Description
James McNeill Whistler’s “Ten O’Clock” was performed on February 20, 1885, at the late-night hour named in the title. The leading lights of London’s social scene attended, including Oscar Wilde. Whistler's spritely, elegant monologue took issue with everything he regarded as adverse to the independent production and proper appreciation of art.
In this online talk, professor Linda Merrill discusses her current publication project, The Performance of Art: Whistler, Wilde, and the “Ten O’Clock” Lecture. Dr. Merrill examines how and why Whistler took to the podium to declare an end to the public’s participation in art and the role played by the comparatively unaccomplished Wilde. Her analysis considers the lecture’s rhetorical structure and interprets meaning in the contexts of its time and the author’s biography. The artist's manifesto—long neglected as a work of art in its own right—not only illuminates his own aesthetic philosophy but also presages the rupture between fine art and popular appreciation.
This program is part of the monthly lunchtime series Sneak Peek, where staff members and outside scholars share personal perspectives and new research related to the collections of the National Museum of Asian Art.
Linda Merrill, teaching professor in art history at Emory University, was curator of American art at the Freer Gallery of Art (now the National Museum of Asian Art) from 1985 to 1998, when she became the first Margaret and Terry Stent Curator of American Art at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Dr. Merrill has published several books on Whistler and his contemporaries, including A Pot of Paint: Aesthetics on Trial in Whistler v. Ruskin (1992), With Kindest Regards: The Correspondence of Charles Lang Freer and James McNeill Whistler, 1890–1903 (1995), and The Peacock Room: A Cultural Biography (1998). She organized the exhibition After Whistler: The Artist and His Influence on American Painting for the High Museum and the Detroit Institute of Arts in 2003, and co-curated, with Ruth Allen, an exhibition for Emory’s Michael C. Carlos Museum, Recasting Antiquity: Whistler, Tanagra, and the Female Form (2024). Dr. Merrill received her BA in English from Smith College and her PhD in the history of art from the University of London, where she studied on a Marshall Scholarship.
Cost
Free. Register in advance (required)
Get Tickets/Register
Accessibility & Accommodations
Captioning
Topics
Lectures & Discussions, Webcasts & Online
