Programme Jan – Jun 2015

THEME:    Modern Art

ILLUSTRATED SEMINARS AND GROUP VISITS

Wednesday 14 January 2015 10.30 – 12.30, HAMPSHIRE RECORD OFFICE.

A modernist in Canada: The Art of Emily Carr
Illustrated seminar by Beth Taylor
Beth Taylor will introduce us to the work of Emily Carr. Born in Victoria, Vancouver Island, in 1871, Emily Carr pursued a career as a professional painter from her teenage years. She studied in San Francisco, in London, St. Ives and Hertfordshire before ill health interrupted her progress as an artist. From 1910 she studied at the Academie Colarossi in Paris (where her tutors included Harry Phelan Gibb and J.D Ferguson) and in Brittany with Frances Hodgkins. It was this later contact with the expressive colours of Fauvist works which helped her to find her artistic voice. Determined to make art which was ‘Canadian’, Carr made many studies of the indigenous art of British Columbia but is perhaps best known for the exultant images of the forest that were made later in her career when she was in contact with the Canadian Group of Seven. Recognition came late in her life but her creativity never diminished, taking the form of writing when she could no longer paint. We will explore Carr’s work and discuss the importance of primitivism and the spiritual in her work and whether it was possible to have an essentially ‘Canadian’ art in the modern period.

Wednesday 21 January 2015: An all day visit to Dulwich Picture Gallery

From the Forest to the Sea
An opportunity to view the work of the Canadian artist, Emily Carr. This is the first UK exhibition dedicated to Emily Carr – one of Canada’s most beloved and esteemed artists. It includes her forest paintings, her work recording the art of the aboriginal coastal communities and her later sky paintings, beach scenes and landscapes, bringing together the artist’s paintings with her sketchbooks, writings, watercolours and drawings.
(Numbers limited to 30)

Wednesday 11 February 2015 & Wednesday 11 March 2015 10.30 to 12.30, Winchester Discovery Centre

Looking at Modern Art
Illustrated seminars by Mary Acton
In the first of these two seminars, Mary Acton will consider some of the questions most commonly asked about the art produced in the period up to 1945. Why does it appear so different from the art of the past? Why is it so difficult to understand? How should we approach it? The best way to understand modern art is to look closely at it, and to consider the different elements that make up each art work – composition, space and form, light and colour and subject matter. We will cover key art movements including Expressionism, Constructivism, the Bauhaus, and Surrealism by looking at a range of artistic forms such as architecture and design, sculpture and Collage as well as works on canvas.

In the second session we consider the later period after 1945 where we will look at the advent of Post-Modernism and the idea of the installation and also, the disillusionment that followed after 1945 and the political and cultural influence of the Cold War. In that climate, the protests of 1968 and the so-called failure of Modernism will be discussed, especially in the field of architecture. We will look at various kinds of installation, the development of Conceptual art and the advent of Land Art. In addition, we will consider the survival of painting and sculpture in what must has seemed to some to be a hostile environment.

Monday 23 February 2015: A morning visit to Southampton Art Gallery

Visit to the Conservation Studio
An opportunity to learn about the techniques, treatments and processes involved in conserving paintings and their frames.
Collecting the Modern: David and Lisa Brown, a talk by Tim Craven
Tim Craven, curator of Southampton Art Gallery, will introduce us to the bequest of modern works to the gallery by David Brown. David Brown’s work as an advisor to the gallery ensured that a policy of collecting living artists was pursued, gaining Southampton an international reputation. He left significant art works to the Gallery as well as a fund for future purchases that would reflect the “complexity of life and art”.
Meet the Maker: Tim Craven
As well as working as a curator, Tim Craven trained in fine art and conservation and he has always pursued his own art practice. He will talk to us about his work – dense and intricate landscapes of woodland and water courses, complex and rhythmic natural imagery in photo-realist style.
(Numbers limited to 15)

Wednesday 18 March 2015 10.30 to 12.30, Winchester Discovery Centre

A Courtly Vision: Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry
Illustrated seminar by Dr Gillian White
The Très Riches Heures of the Duc de Berry offer an intriguing, beautiful and compelling insight into the world of late medieval chivalry, piety and artistic creativity. This lecture looks at the illustrations of this famous work and at the patron and artists who produced it, examining the intricate world of reality and imagination depicted and the society that gave it life.

Thursday 26 March 2015 2.00pm: A visit to the Fellows Library, Winchester College.

The Librarian, Richard Foster, will introduce us to some of the illuminated manuscripts and books in the collection. Books have been central to the School since its foundation and the library holds volumes given by William of Wykeham in the 1380s, including a life of Thomas Becket by William of Canterbury, with one of the earliest representations of Becket, and a late fourteenth century copy of Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon. Over the centuries there have been many major gifts so that the library now occupies eight rooms.
(Numbers limited to 15. A further visit can be arranged later that afternoon if there is sufficient demand)

Wednesday 22 April 2015 10.30 to 12.30, Winchester Discovery Centre.

The Demand for Renaissance Masters and the Tradition of Art Forgery
Illustrated seminar by Dr Antonia Whitley
Dr Whitley will give a seminar on this theme which provides an opportunity to explore the phenomenon of systematic art forgery, as took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Issues to address include: are we dealing with a bunch of swindlers in search of easy gains who, thanks to the naivety and wealth of art lovers (especially from abroad), were able to ‘get away’ with forging Old Masters?
Or, were there other reasons why the return to techniques borrowed from Medieval and Renaissance painters became important in this period?
Siena was by far the leading Italian city in the production of ‘antique paintings and objects d’art’ and thus provides our case study for today

3 – 7 May 2015: WAHG visit to Berlin

Full details of this visit were circulated in October 2014.

Wednesday 13 May 2015 10.30 to 12.30, Winchester Discovery Centre

Bringing Design into Life: John Piper
Illustrated seminar by Diana Wooldridge
John Piper described the creation of his tapestry at Chichester Cathedral as ‘bringing design into life’. In this seminar, Diana Wooldridge will examine the design and construction of the tapestry as an example of collaborative art and relates this to Piper’s work in other formats. We will explore the contexts of the influence of the Arts and Crafts Movement and the revival of modern tapestry and also the commissioning of religious art in the post 1945 era. We will also consider the theatricality underlying Piper’s tapestry and his other work.

Wednesday 20 May 2015 10.30 – 4.00, Study Day, Winchester Discovery Centre

The Art and Architecture of Berlin: From the Brandenburger Tor to the Holocaust Memorial
Led by Beth Taylor
In this illustrated seminar,we will consider the history of the city from 1795 until the present day and the impact that its history has had on the art made and commissioned in the city. We will study art works and architecture from the neo classicism of Schinkel and the romantic paintings of Friedrich to the later 19th century paintings of a prosperous and growing city, the Berlin Secession, the impact of World War 1 on the work of Dix and Grosz, Berlin Dada and the art of the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich’s National Socialist art, the rebuilding of the post war period and political division of the city into East and West, and the late 20th century reunification, culminating in the Jewish Museum and the Holocaust Memorial.
Lunch will be from 12.45 to 2pm (details of lunch options will be circulated nearer to the date)

Wednesday 10 June 2015: Day visit to Mells and Chippenham

Time Remembered: The Great War in the Village and in the Town
Guided tour led by Dr Antonia Whitley
“Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair England, where our day is spent.
In 1914 break to new mutiny,
Where patriotic blood renders lives rent…”
Dr Whitley writes: Our theme is not the Montagues and the Capulets despite my parody of Romeo and Juliet’s prologue, but of two other families: the Horners in Mells and the Wilsons in Chippenham. We journey in the morning to the unspoilt picturesque village of Mells, focusing on Lutyens War Memorial and then, in the Church of St Andrew’s, on Munnings Horner Memorial, a romantic image among a clutch of other contemporary and interesting memorabilia. The churchyard contains the graves of Siegfried Sassoon and Ronald Knox.
After lunch, we motor on to St Andrew’s in Chippenham. The purpose of our visit is to study the stunning stained glass window designed by the sensational Christopher Whall to commemorate the loss of the three sons of the Wilson family.
If the plight of Romeo and Juliet’s tragedy touches your heart, so will that of these two families who between them lost five sons
(Numbers limited to 22)

Wednesday 17 Jun 2015 10.30 to 12.30, Winchester Discovery Centre

How New York stole the Idea of Modern Art
Illustrated seminar by Barry Venning
Clement Greenberg, the noted American art critic, observed that when Hitler occupied Paris in 1940, the art world’s centre of gravity shifted to the USA, and to New York in particular. In this seminar, Barry Venning, will look at the way in which America came increasingly to dominate the making, marketing and selling of art between 1940 and the early 1960s, with a particular focus on the art of the New York School – the abstract work of artists such as Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Hans Hofmann and  Willem de Kooning,. These developments will be set against the social and political changes of the period, including WW2, the mass media, the Cold War and the growth of the consumer society.