WATERTOWN — Dr. Kim Servart Theriault will lecture on “Arshile Gorky: Between the Figural and Abstract” on Friday, September 18 at the Baikar Building in Watertown for the Tekeyan Cultural Association at 7 p.m. It is well-known in the Armenian community that Arshile Gorky (born Vosdanig Adoian, 1904-48) painted in the United States from 1920-48 after he escaped the Armenian Genocide. Indeed, Gorky’s story exemplifies the dilemmas engendered by displacement, an immigrant’s search for identity in a new world, and the success of the artist as an individual and as an important bridge between European Modernism and Abstract Expressionism. This “New American Painting” became the first internationally significant American art movement, and one that and has been perpetually influential worldwide since the mid-twentieth century. Arshile Gorky As Kim Theriault has discussed previously in her work, Gorky’s trajectory as a self-taught artist working his way through modern art’s progression and developing his own individual style, is a key part of his story, as is his Armenian background. Her presentation Friday builds upon that foundation by exploring the formal qualities of his art and the implications of his personal associations. Often referred to as “an artist’s artist,” Gorky’s work was always founded in direct observation. Whether drawing an image of a fellow artist, family member, or friend, or abstracting the structures, forms, or outlines of a landscape, Gorky maintained an attachment to the figural and representational because he sought out, retained, or forged an emotional connection to the individuals, spaces, and places that he presented in his compositions, even if his creations were abstracted renditions. Kim Servart Theriault holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Virginia and is Professor Emerita of Modernist and Contemporary Art History, Theory, and Criticism at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois. Author of Rethinking Arshile Gorky, Dr. Theriault contributed the essay “Exile, Trauma, and Arshile Gorky’s The Artist and His Mother” to the 2009 exhibition, Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective, organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and which traveled to the Tate Modern and Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. She has also shared her scholarship on Arshile Gorky at as a featured speaker at the Library of Congress, National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Zohrab Information Center in New York City, Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, Portugal, and institutions such as Oxford University, the University of London, the University of Michigan, and the Universities of California at Los Angeles and at Berkeley. Most recently she curated the exhibition, Arshile Gorky: Redrawing Community and Connections for the Armenian Museum of America. In addition to her approach to trauma, memory, and identity in the work of Arshile Gorky, Dr. Theriault has also pursued this interest in considering memorials and memorialization, which focus on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. Her articles “Re-membering Vietnam: War, Trauma and ‘Scarring Over’ After ‘The Wall’” and “Go Away Little Girl: Gender, Race, and Controversy in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial” form the foundation of her book project The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and its Infusion into American Culture, Conscience, and Consciousness. The recipient of a Society for the Preservation of American Modernists publication grant, invited participant to two National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institutes, Dr. Theriault has spent over a decade and a half assisting with the Educational Testing Service Advanced Placement Art History Test. She has also served on non-profit advisory boards, university committees, assisted in museums and galleries, and has acted as an awards juror for art historical publications and art exhibitions, and written art criticism. Having previously taught graduate students at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, Dr. Theriault currently teaches undergraduate art history courses at the University of Southern Maine, assists artists as a critique consultant, and is a poet, artist, and voiceover actor. The lecture location is 755 Mt. Auburn Street, Watertown, but the side entrance on Norseman Avenue should be used. Admission is complimentary. For more information on the lecture, email tcadirector@aol.com.