Josephine Baker, a urinal and a paradise found

Josephine Baker’s banana skirt. Paul Gauguin’s singular mythmaking. Tracey Emin’s unmade bed. Marcel Duchamp’s upturned urinal.

Our lecturers examine these crucial moments in art history – and much more – in our collaboration with the Great Exhibition of the North. We’ve teamed up with the 80-day festival this year to bring an outstanding array of talks to Newcastle’s Tyneside Cinema.

Ahead of their talks, we spotlight lectures from three of our experts.

The Cult of the South Pacific: From Cook to Gauguin

Leslie Primo unpicks the idea of paradise found, in a lecture that spotlights the European
fetishisation of the exotic. We start with the discovery of Tahiti in 1767 and delve into two
centuries’ worth of European mythmaking. He’ll take us on a journey through the South Pacific through painted images of the island, from the artists that travelled with Captain Cook’s expeditions and their people, through to Paul Gauguin’s infamous depictions of the ‘noble savage’.

Can you describe your lecture in three words?

‘Myth versus reality.’

Leslie Primo gives lectures and guided tours at both the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. He has also presented a series of talks at the National Maritime Museum and the Courtauld Institute.

23 August, 6.30pm
For tickets and more information, click here

Conceptual Art: Whatever Were They Thinking About?

In 1917, Marcel Duchamp changed art forever, when he tipped up a urinal and called it art – an act that revolutionised Western culture. By the 1960s, words and ideas had replaced paint and clay as art materials in philosophical, political and wilfully difficult works. The theory itself had
become the art. Fast forward to the 1990s: Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin were giving us
taxidermy and unmade beds.

‘Should we take it seriously?’ asks Arts Society Lecturer Raymond Warburton. ‘Should we laugh with it – or at it? And what part did Yoko Ono play?’ The lecture will reveal all.

Can you describe your lecture in three words?

‘Conceptual! Art! Really?’

Raymond Warburton is an art historian and guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, who leads public tours of all the permanent displays and also undertakes exhibition tours.

1 September, 11am
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Those CRAZY Years: Life and Art in Paris During the Jazz Age

If you could be alive at any time, in any place – surely it would be Jazz Age Paris. In the years after World War I, the city danced free from the manacles of occupation, determined to enjoy peace while it lasted. It was an era of roaring rebellion, peopled by American jazz musicians, Dadaists and Surrealists, and fronted by the ineffable Josephine Baker at the Folies Bergère, naked but for pearls and a girdle of bananas.

In her lecture, Linda Collins considers the Paris of the time from an art historical perspective, as well as the heady culture that erupted from a new-found freedom.

Can you describe your lecture in three words?

‘Les années folles!’

Linda Collins is a lecturer for Historic Royal Palaces and the National Trust. She is also a freelance lecturer at Tate Modern and the National Gallery.

8 September, 11am
For tickets and more information, click here