Lecture: The Master of the Two Left Feet

Richard Meyer, Robert and Ruth Halperin Professor in Art History, presents a talk focusing on the obscure yet fascinating career of the folk artist Morris Hirshfield (1872-1946), a former tailor and slipper manufacturer who took up painting at the age of 65. Hirshfield's wildly stylized pictures of animals, landscapes, and female nudes attracted a great degree of attention in the 1940s, including a one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1943. Taking Hirshfield as case study, this talk considers the surprising dialogue between folk art and vanguard modernism at mid-century.