Ocean Liners in Interwar London: Art and Performance

Описание: 22 May 2024

Speaker: Faye Hammill - Professor of English Literature at the University of Glasgow
Respondent: Professor Bruce Peter - Professor of Design History, The Glasgow School of Art.

This talk is part of a series entitled 'Out to Sea', which will focus on the influence of oceans and their coasts, in relation to Britain and its global empire, on visual and architectural imagination and production.
Paul Mellon Centre and Online
Ocean liners fascinated the artists and writers of the 1920s and 1930s: as machines they were awe-inspiring and even terrifying; as designed spaces, they were innovative, glamorous and visually compelling; as social environments, they enabled new encounters and personal transformation. Yet passenger steamships are also associated with inequality and oppression, with danger and death. They were agents of empire and industrialisation, and could symbolise everything that was wrong with the culture of modernity. Drawing on research for her project "Ocean Modern", Faye Hammill explores the multifaceted representation of ocean liners in the creative arts. Focusing on the theatres of interwar London, she will discuss plays set on shipboard as well as ballets and musical entertainments featuring liners. Among those involved as designers, writers or composers were the Sitwells, Constant Lambert, Cecil Beaton, Edmund Dulac, Edward Burra, John Banting, Vanessa Bell, Sutton Vane, Noël Coward and Gladys Calthrop, all of whom were connected with one another through social and professional networks. The talk will shed light on relationships between visual, performance and print cultures through attention to scripts and stage directions, sets and costumes, and cover designs for published and recorded materials.