Lectures 2010 - 2011
Wednesday October 13th
The Works of Henry Moore
John Iddon
John Iddon is a lecturer and guide at both Tate Britain and Tate Modern. He ran an MA course in Heritage Interpretation at St. Mary’s University College and has lectured at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice and to the National Trust. He has also given art lectures on the Queen Mary II and on a Caribbean cruise as part of the Tate’s collaboration with P&O.
More about Henry Moore and his art work can be found on Wikepedia or on the Henry Moore website.
Henry Moore's
Family Group
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.
Wednesday November 10th
Dreams of the Far East: the Chinese Pavilion, its history and collection
Nathalie Vandeperre
Our speaker is the Head of the Department for the Far East at the Royal Museum of Art and History.
The emphasis of the talk will be on the styles and production of the porcelain featured in the Chinese Pavilion, one of the most beautiful, intriguing and unusual monuments in Brussels. It was originally built by Leopold II in 1903 as a caprice. Richly decorated with a fabulous collection of porcelain, it has since become an annex of the Royal Museum of Art and History.
More about Chinese porcelain and the Brussels Chinese Pavilion can be found on Wikipedia or on the Eupedia website.
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The Chinese Pavilion Brussels
Wednesday December 8th
Lucas Cranach and the Northern Renaissance
Frank Woodgate
Frank Woodgate is a lecturer and guide at the Tate Modern and Tate Britain and a lecturer at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. He is also a scriptwriter for the Living Painting Trust (art for the blind and partially sighted).
As Court Painter to the Elector of Saxony and friend of Martin Luther, Lucas Cranach the Elder has been called the chief artist of the Reformation.
Among his many achievements, he was a fine graphic artist and probably the first to paint in a radically new portrait style - full-length, life-size figures against an evenly-lit monochrome background.
He is perhaps best-known for his sensuous nudes, from Greek mythological figures to Old Testament heroines.
His works will be considered in the context of his great contemporaries such as Dürer and Titian.
More about Lucas Cranach can be found on the Bozar website and on the Wikipedia website. You will also find more information about German Renaissance painters on the Wikipedia website.
Wednesday January 12th
Art Nouveau and Art Deco in Paris
Thirza Vallois
Thirza Vallois has lived in Paris for 40 years. She holds several post-graduate degrees from the Sorbonne, including the agrégation (a competitive doctoral-level teaching qualification). She is the author of “Romantic Paris” as well as the 3-volume series “Around and About Paris”. She has written the Paris entry for the Encarta Microsoft Multimedia Encyclopaedia and contributes to various publications, television and radio programmes, notably the BBC, Travel Channel, Discovery, PBS, CNN and the Cultural Channel in France. In addition, she wrote “Three Perfect Days”, a video produced for United Airlines and screened on cable television worldwide.
Ceramic plate with Art Nouveau border
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
Wednesday February 9th
Glittering Prizes:
The Mosaics of Ravenna
Christopher Herbert
Christopher Herbert, who retired as Bishop of St. Albans in 2009, has gained a national reputation as an authority on Christian art. He was awarded an M.Phil. and a Ph.D. by the University of Leicester for research regarding “Images of the Resurrection in 15th century Northern European Art” and “Medieval English Easter Sepulchres”. He has been a guest lecturer at the National Gallery, King’s College London, Courtauld Institute and Westminster Abbey. He is an honorary citizen of Fano, Italy, and has been awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Hertfordshire and the University of Bedfordshire. He was a member of the House of Lords from 1999 until his retirement.
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.)
Mosaic from San Vitale in Ravenna
The Emperor Julian
Wednesday March 9th
The Golden Age of European Cabinet Making
Janusz Karczewski-Slowikowski
Janusz Karczewski-Slowikowski is a researcher in English furniture and an antique dealer. He also has practical experience in the construction, decoration and restoration of furniture.
The Boudoir of
Marie-Antoinette
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.
Wednesday April 6th
Plantation Houses of the American South
Roger Mitchell
Roger Mitchell studied history at Oxford and fine art at Leeds and was awarded the Churchill Fellowship to travel and study in the USA. A former college vice-principal, he now lectures for the University of Liverpool and for adult residential colleges. He describes himself as a social historian with a particular interest in architecture, and most of his lectures focus on the interaction between people and buildings.
Thomas Jefferson's House
Monticello, Albemarle County, near Charlottesville, Virginia
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.
Wednesday May 11th
BRIDFAS 25th Anniversary Celebration
Venice and the East:
Impact of the Islamic World on the Architecture of
Venice
Deborah Howard
Deborah Howard is a graduate of the University of Cambridge and Courtauld Institute of Art. She is currently a Fellow of St. John’s College and Professor of Architectural History in the Faculty of Architecture and History of Art at the University of Cambridge. Previously she taught at University College London, Edinburgh University and the Courtauld Institute, returning to Cambridge in 1992. Specialized in the art and architecture of Venice and the Veneto, her books include “Jacopo Sansovino: Architecture and Patronage in Renaissance Venice” and “Venice and the East: the Impact of the Islamic World on Venetian Architecture 1100-1500”. She is also the coordinator of a major project funded by the AHRC on “Architecture and Music in Renaissance Venice”.
At Professor Howard’s request, her fee for the delivery of the lecture will be donated to the Cambridge 800 Campaign – a major fund-raising effort to mark the University’s 800th Anniversary in 2009 and to provide an endowment to safeguard the University’s future excellence in research and scholarship.
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.
Ca' d'Oro façade overlooking the Grand Canal.
More about the Islamic influence on Venetian architecture can be found on the Wikipedia website or on the Great Buildings website.