Gabriel Gee
Associate Professor, Art History and Visual Communication
Department Chair, Art History and Visual Communication
Ph.D. Université Paris X
M.A. Université Paris X
B.A. Université Paris X
Office: Lowerre Academic Center, North Campus, Office 15
Phone: +41 91 986 36 51
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Profile:
Gabriel N. Gee holds a PhD in contemporary art history from the Université Paris X Nanterre (2008). His doctoral research focused on Aesthetics and politics in the North of England from the 1980s onwards. His book Art in the North of England. 1979-2008 was published by Ashgate (now Routledge) in 2017. He joined Franklin in 2011, where he teaches contemporary art history and theory. His current research interests include 20th century British and Irish art, the changing representations and imaginaries of port cities in the second half of the 20th century, as well as interconnected global histories, with a particular interest in urban architectural representation. He recently edited with Alison Vogelaar a volume on the Changing representation of nature and the city: the 1960s-1970s and their legacies (2018). He is co-founder of the TETI group, for Textures and Experiences of Trans-Industriality (www.tetigroup.org)
2020-2021 Courses:
| AHT 218T | Harbor Cities: Architecture, Vision, and Experience: Hamburg | FALL 2020 |
| Oceans, seas and rivers have long provided resources favorable to the growth of urban settlements. Cities built on water shores use natural fluxes as passageways for bodies, goods and ideas from a privileged position. Their harbors became gateways to both wealth and the unknown. This course will focus on the modes of representations of the harbor city in the 20th century, placing particular emphasis on the role of imagination in its past, present and future construction. In the 19th and 20th centuries, radical and rapid changes in maritime technology and the geographies of the world economy prompted dramatic transformations in the functionalities and the identities of harbor cities across the globe. The proud jewels of the ‘economie-monde’ in the Mediterranean as well as many of the industrial bastions of the 19th century empires fell into decline, while emerging economies prompted fast-paced development of their sea-linked cities to accommodate emerging trade. Throughout this process, the relation of harbor cities to their self-perceived identity significantly evolved. A sole focus on a city’s desires and assets has become unviable. For the once remote outside world has found multiple paths of its own making to gain access to the city’s shores. The course will consider the array of visions drawn by artists, poets, architects, urban planners, politicians, entrepreneurs, and everyday inhabitants in informing the modeling of harbor cities in the context of rapid and drastic physical and mental changes. The travel part of the course will include on-site visits and observation in Hamburg, Germany, with possible day trips to Kiel and Bremen. |
| AHT 334W | Artists' Biopics | FALL 2020 |
| This course looks at the representation of artists’ lives and artistic practices in film. Biopics explore a character’s personal journey, depicting a biographical tableau of a lifetime’s tribulation and achievements. The figure of the artist has long held a fascination for society. Misunderstood, decadent, melancholic, single-minded against the odds, and above all prophetic and visionary, the romantic potential of artists offered dramatic material to film directors and the film industries alike. At the same time, the cinematic medium provides a remarkable platform from which to enter the artist’ personal studio, and to gain an insight into the complex mechanisms of artistic creation. This course will explore both facets of artists’ biopics, engaging with the representation in film of the lives of artists such as Caravaggio, Frida Kahlo, Vincent Van Gogh and Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the works of directors such as Maurice Pialat, Dereck Jarman and Peter Greenaway.
(This writing-intensive course counts towards the Academic Writing requirements.) |
| AHT 103 | Introduction to Art History and Visual Culture II: High Renaissance to Contemporary Art | SPRING 2021 |
| The course is the sequel to AHT 102 and offers an introduction to the history of art and visual culture from the High Renaissance to the present day. It studies early modern painting, sculpture, architecture, and prints within their historical, social, and cultural contexts, as well as photography and new media in the modern and contemporary world. |
| AHT 216 | Introduction to the History of Photography | SPRING 2021 |
| This course offers an introduction to the history of photography from its inception in the early 19th century to the present day. It considers the specific historical development of the photographic medium through the evolution of both its technical possibilities during the period and the range of its applications. The course will question past and present readings of photographs, while reflecting on the peculiar modes of representation implied by the use of the daguerreotype, the calotype and the negative-positive photographic process, the commercialization of photographic equipment in the early 20th century, the introduction of the Kodacolour film in 1942, and the changes in the late 20th century with the introduction of the digital camera. It will consider a set of different objects favored by the medium, such as the landscape, the city, the portrait, the body, taking into account the historical socio-political contexts in which these various photographic practices developed. It will consider the history of genres within photography: documentary photography, photography as fine art, photography in advertising and media, fashion photography, as well as its archival and historical documentation. Finally, the course will emphasize the question of the impact and influence of photography on other artistic mediums, such as painting and literature, as well as on the modern and contemporary experience of the world. |
| AHT 218T | Harbor Cities: Architecture, Vision, and Experience (Naples) | SPRING 2021 |
| Oceans, seas and rivers have long provided resources favorable to the growth of urban settlements. Cities built on water shores use natural fluxes as passageways for bodies, goods and ideas from a privileged position. Their harbors became gateways to both wealth and the unknown. This course will focus on the modes of representations of the harbor city in the 20th century, placing particular emphasis on the role of imagination in its past, present and future construction. In the 19th and 20th centuries, radical and rapid changes in maritime technology and the geographies of the world economy prompted dramatic transformations in the functionalities and the identities of harbor cities across the globe. The proud jewels of the ‘economie-monde’ in the Mediterranean as well as many of the industrial bastions of the 19th century empires fell into decline, while emerging economies prompted fast-paced development of their sea-linked cities to accommodate emerging trade. Throughout this process, the relation of harbor cities to their self-perceived identity significantly evolved. A sole focus on a city’s desires and assets has become unviable. For the once remote outside world has found multiple paths of its own making to gain access to the city’s shores. The course will consider the array of visions drawn by artists, poets, architects, urban planners, politicians, entrepreneurs, and everyday inhabitants in informing the modeling of harbor cities in the context of rapid and drastic physical and mental changes. The travel part of the course will include on-site visits to museums and galleries in Naples, as well as direct engagement and documentation (video, audio) with the city. |
| AHT 350 | Museums and Art Galleries: Theory, History and Practice | SUMMER 2021 |
| (This course must be taken in conjunction with CLCS 310T)
This course looks at museum theory and practices at the beginning of the 21st Century, placing particular emphasis on art museums and galleries. Students will be encouraged to familiarize themselves with theoretical issues rooted in the historical development of national collections in the 19th century, as well as to consider a number of practical applications required of museum personnel in the present day. On the one hand, the course discusses a number of issues operative in the field of heritage and museum studies, such as authenticity, public(s) and reception, interpretation, historical discourse, memory, dark heritage. It will aim to present an archaeology of the museum realm informed and constructed by historical practice and discourses. Secondly, the course will aim to discuss a number of technical practical functions in the art museum and art gallery context, such as curating, conservation, law, marketing and design, public relations and research. Informed by theoretical and historical reflections, it will aim to explore the current technical operations active in the body-museum and the challenges that might lie ahead. A number of visits and workshops in museums in the Ticino region will be scheduled.
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Publications:
Books:
Gee G.N, Art in the North of England. 1979-2008, London, New York, Routledge: an Ashgate book, 2017.
Gee G.N & Vogelaar A. eds, Changing representations of nature and the city: the 1960s -1970s and their legacies, London, New York: Routledge, (2018).
Book chapter:
Gee G.N. “Beyond Narcissus : The metamorphosis of port cities in the 20th century”, in Gee G.N & Vogelaar A. eds, Changing representations of nature and the city: the 1960s -1970s and their legacies, Routledge, 2018
Gee G.N. “Les navires de croisière entre narcissisime et passages de civilisations – 1880 - 1970”, in Christine Peltre, ed. Genèse de la croisière moderne. Les formes d’une expérience, entre loisir et découverte (1830-1970), Mare & Martin (forthcoming 2020)
Gee G.N. “The late 20th century marine: ‘forgotten spaces’ and trans-industrial visions”, in Terms, Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art, Beijing (forthcoming 2020)
Gee G.N. “From stone to flesh: the deconstruction and reconstruction of the British monument” in Monument et modernité dans l’art et la littérature britanniques et américains, Marc Porée & Christine Savinel, eds, Paris, Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2015.
Gee G.N, “Markers, borders, crossings: on the representation of a divided space in Northern Ireland”, in Claire Dubois & Vanessa Alayrac-Fielding (eds), The foreigness of foreigners: cultural representations of the Other in the British Isles (17th- 20th centuries), Cambridge Scholar, 2015
Gee.G.N. “Learning from the post-industrial transition in Northern England: alternative developments in the visual arts (1979-2008),” in Cultural Economies in Post-Industrial cities: Creating a (different) Scene, ed. Myrna Breitbart, Farnham, Ashgate, 2013.
Gee, G.N. “Art without Commerce in the North of England”, in Art and Commerce in the United-Kingdom, Charlotte Gould & Sophie Mesplède (eds), Farnham: Ashgate, 2012.
selected Articles:
Gee G.N, “Painting within itself: the John Moores Liverpool Exhibition”, Journal of contemporary painting Issue 2, Vol.4, October 2018, pp.345-61
Gee G.N, “The metamorphosis of Cain: aesthetic in the trans-industrial city at the turn of the twenty-first century”, Visual Resources, Vol..4 October 2014
Gee G.N, “The catalogues of the Orchard Gallery: a contribution to critical and historical discourses in Northern Ireland, 1978-2003”, Journal of art historiography, n.9, 2013
Gee.G.N. “Malédiction et renaissance : lectures imagées de la ville du nord,” in Textimages, revue du dialogue texte-image, Varia 3, hiver 2013
Gee, G.N, “The representation of the northern city in the photography of John Davies (1981-2003)”, Visual Culture in Britain, Volume 11, Issue 2, December 2010.
Gee, G.N, “Valeurs instrumentales et valeurs de résistance dans l’art du Nord de l’Angleterre, 1979-2008” in Marges, “Valeurs de l’art”, Presses de l’université Paris VIII, n. 11, October 2010, pp. 76-80.
Gee G.N. “Négocier les ‘Troubles’, la Orchard Gallery à Derry, 1978-2003” in Textuels, revue Lettres, arts, cinéma, Presses de l’université Paris VII, September 2010.
