Kim Smith gave an invited lecture at the San Diego Museum of Art on September 15, at a symposium held in conjunction with the SDMA’s “Human Beast” exhibition of Expressionist art.

In her talk, “Franz Marc’s Abstractions: How To See Like An Animal”, Smith took a small piece in the exhibition by Marc entitled “Colored Flowers” as a starting point for considering the shift in style that occurs in the artist’s later work. Marc is best known for his lyrical paintings of animals, yet the little picture in the SDMA exhibition not only does not appear to represent animals, it is noticeably more abstract than much of his earlier and better known paintings. Prof. Smith proposed that Marc’s more abstract style represents a re-thinking of the possibilities of animal painting based on cognitive theories of divided perception.