Henry Moore, probably the 20th century’s best-known sculptor, lived through two world wars and the Cold War and his work reflects this background throughout. In addition he was influenced by non-Western art and pioneered a return to direct carving. He is often associated with post-second world war huge public sculptures that suggest healing, harmony and reconciliation after the century’s traumas. However, the latest exhibition at Tate Britain reveals a darker, more erotic and perhaps disturbing view of Moore.

This lecture will introduce the arts and crafts of Vietnam, a country which has had to fight for its national identity politically speaking, but which has, in fact, always had its own identity in the field of arts and crafts. Influenced by maritime traders from Hindu India, and conquerors of the Kmer and Thai, by Buddhist and Chinese philosophies and latterly by French Colonial administration, all have tried and often succeeded in dominating this country through the centuries. In spite of this, Vietnam has its own cultural tradition particularly in the field of ceramics.

More about the arts and crafts of Vietnam can be found on Wikepedia or here.

Animated village scenes by Bruegel, a skating parson, a rich still-life of winter fruits and Turner's evocative depictions of avalanches and snow-storms. These will be studied during the lecture as well as landscapes under snow by Manet, the Impressionists and Cézanne, the winter hardships of Victorian urban and rural workers and nearer our own time, works by Georgia O'Keeffe, Terry Frost and Ken Howard. An intriguing variety of artistic responses to winter colour and cold.

More about artists who painted winter scenes can be found on the following sites:

Wordridden , Guardian, Wikimedia, ibiblio

In December 1895 Art Nouveau was just the name of new Parisian art gallery. By 1900 Art Nouveau had become the ultimate expression of modernity, decking the city’s new metro stations and dazzling the 50 million visitors to the World Fair……..A short-lived fad, however, fading away by 1905, and altogether supplanted by Art Deco in the 1925 International Art Deco Exhibition, which gave the new style its name.

Was it really supplanted? Is there really a distinction between Art Nouveau and Art Deco as so often assumed? We shall explore this question through the applied arts, but also through architecture, fashion and ballet, and within the context of the deep economic and social changes generated by industrialization.

More about Art Nouveau and Art Deco in Paris can be found on this website or on the Senses website in Brussels.

A Tiffany Window

The mosaics in the churches of Ravenna were created at a time of great political turmoil. In the 5th and 6th centuries invaders from Northern and Eastern Europe were playing havoc with the remnants of the western Roman Empire. In spite of this, artists and church leaders in Ravenna set about creating churches of great beauty and strength. Why and how did they do this? What can the mosaics tell us about the times in which they were created?

More about the mosaics of Ravenna can be found on the following sites:

The Italian Ravenna Mosaics site

The History World site

The Classical Mosaics site (Lots of photos.)

English cabinet making reached a near-unrivalled degree of excellence by the mid 18th Century largely thanks to the influence of new styles and methods of construction and decoration from the Netherlands, France and Belgium. By the mid 17th century, Antwerp had replaced Augsburg as the international centre for the creation of fantastic cabinets. Initially decorated with small oil paintings influenced by the baroque style of Rubens, Antwerp cabinets were later veneered with tortoiseshell to widen their fashionable appeal and stimulated the development of fantastic standards of marquetry and other forms of decoration resulting in the Golden Age of European cabinet making.

More about European cabinet making can be found on the Wikepedia website or on the Torkild website.

The Plantation Houses of Virginia and the Carolinas provide some of the finest examples of Colonial Architecture in America. Houses like Shirley, Westover and Drayton Hall show all the Palladian elegance of a Georgian Country House. George Washington's Mount Vernon and Thomas Jefferson's Monticello are more personal houses, entirely appropriate residences for their distinguished owners. In the final part of the lecture we move from the Old South to the Deep South and look at some of the spectacular houses of Louisiana and Mississippi - Parlange, San Francisco, Nottaway and Longwood among them.

More about American plantation houses can be found on the Wikipedia website.

This lecture looks at the ways in which direct encounters with Muslim culture through trade, diplomacy, crusades and pilgrimage created channels for cultural exchange between Venice and the Islamic world in the Middle Ages. It focuses on various sites of difference, including clothing, domestic space, language and religion. How were these differences perceived and negotiated in the course of commercial interaction in the emporia of the Eastern Mediterranean? Architecture is a particularly fascinating area of investigation because buildings cannot be transported, with the result that ideas are transmitted through images, portable objects, oral and written descriptions, and memory.

More about the Islamic influence on Venetian architecture can be found on the Wikipedia website or on the Great Buildings website.