Join Dr. Jonathan Gross, Columbia alumni and Professor in the Department of English at DePaul University, for the second presentation in his series on artistic expressions of "Modern delusions of grandeur." In this presentation Dr. Gross interrogates William Blake’s statement regarding Fresco Painting - “The Art has been lost: I have recovered it" - and how his concept of the “portable frescoe” relates to Jose Clemente Orozco’s "Dive Bomber and Tank" (1940). Orozco’s “Dive Bomber and Tank,” at the Museum of Modern Art, is a six-panel fresco, which he completed as a movable work of art, doing so in full view of his audience. Dr Gross explores how the painting comments directly on the military industrial complex, years before Eisenhower used that term and World War II made Europe a killing-field. The presentation concludes with an analysis of why Orozco engaged not with Eisenhower but with the mind-forged manacles Blake saw in London and how “Dive Bomber and Tank” connects to the vision of Lewis Mumford in The Culture of Cities (1938). This presentation offers us a radical new way of thinking about the origins of Orozco’s work and its continued artistic and intellectual legacy for our contemporary existence.

Date: Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Time: 6:30 p.m. Central | 7:30PM Eastern | 4:30PM Pacific

Location: Zoom Video Conference

Cost: Free