Architecture Open Lecture Series 2010 /11

• University of Greenwich
• School of Architecture & Construction
• Mansion Site, Avery Hill Campus
• Bexley Road, Eltham, London SE9 2PQ
• Norbert Singer Lecture Theatre (M055)

Wed 6 October 2010 18.30

Alan Powers
UNREAL CITY:LONDON SEEN BY POETS AND VISUAL ARTISTS, 1919‐1939

T. S. Eliot called London an ‘Unreal City’ in The Waste Land, the defining poem of English modern literature, published in 1922. The lecture will explore The Waste Land as a text for interwar depictions of London, with the revulsion towards modernity that drives its modernism of expression and its apocalyptic acceptance that fragmentation of the urban environment as the outward manifestation of inward alienation. Eliot also evoked a pastoral affection for London’s past, its lingering buildings, artefacts and social forms. Both modes of feeling were reflected by writers and visual artists working through the remaining inter‐war years, when a hidden face of London was revealed and a new understanding developed that has been an inspiration for subsequent writers. This love‐hate paradox will be explored through the poetry of John Betjeman and W. H. Auden, paintings of Paul Nash, Algernon Newton, Eric Ravilious and the ‘Euston Road School’, and the photographs of Bill Brandt.

Alan Powers is Professor in Architecture and Cultural History at he University of Greenwich. Alan took a degree and PhD in History of Art at Cambridge, and has written on many aspects of twentieth century visual culture. He is a joint editor of the journal Twentieth Century Architecture for the Twentieth Century Society, of which he is Chairman.