Piero della Francesco will always stand out in my memory of studying the History of Art at Oxford University. In the first module of the first term of the Certificate course we listened to the wonderful Mary Acton explaining how to look at paintings. She used a number of themes to illustrate her lectures: composition, space,…
Piero della Francesca and the ‘art’ of Looking at Art.
Piero della Francesco will always stand out in my memory of studying the History of Art at Oxford University. In the first module of the first term of the Certificate course we listened to the wonderful Mary Acton explaining how to look at paintings. She used a number of themes to illustrate her lectures: composition, space,…
Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life. An important new retrospective in Wakefield opening in May.
Art in the U.K. is to soon to become accessible once more. As we approach an opening up of art galleries, museums and other centres again, I am starting to make my travel plans. Very near the top of the list, if not my first aspiration is to return to Wakefield to visit what could…
More on Grace Jones and her music and art
Grace Jones: Camera, Disco, Studio at The Nottingham Contemporary was an enjoyable post to write and the feedback referred to her great music. Nightclubbing was my entry point and it was great to listen to it again. It is a great album containing some of Jones’s own work and a number of great covers. There…
Grace Before Jones: Camera, Disco, Studio at the Nottingham Contemporary.
Nottingham Contemporary. This art space has been on my ‘must visit’ list for a while. Opened in 2009, and designed by the London Architects, Caruso St John, it has a great sense of concrete modernity, decorated with traditional lace. Situated in the centre of the Lace Market, in the oldest area of Nottingham, it reflects…
More on Richard Wilson, Italianate landscape influence and Mountainous Wales
Cader Idris is a very popular mountain, and an enjoyable Painting of the Month, judging by your feedback on Richard Wilson’s eighteenth century painting. It inspired me to do more reading and research on Wilson. As well as meeting Francesco Zuccarelli while in Venice, and being persuaded away from portraiture, it is clear that Claude…
The Welsh Landscape Artist, Richard Wilson – March Painting of the Month
St David’s Day, the 1st of March, is often accompanied by a spell of mild weather, as if if to lull us into believing Spring had arrived. There are nearly always some very cold nights to follow just to check our enthusiasm. But, it is a time of year when we start to notice the…
February Painting of the Month (3) is Renoir’s Dance in the City
Renoir painted three, almost life size, paintings of dance scenes early in 1883, for the art dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel. These paintings mark a change from the artists Impressionist leanings towards the more classical themes of David and Ingres. The third of these, which I have featured in my February “Painting of the Month” is Dance…
More Pop Art at the Pallant House Gallery
Brigitte Bardot features in my banner to accompany the feature on Pop Art at Pallant House Gallery. The Bardot print of 1968 is from a series created by Gerald Laing while in New York. Gerald Laing, who hailed from Newcastle Upon Tyne, had an initial career as a soldier but left the Army in the sixties…
British Pop Art at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester.
Pallant House Gallery is one of a number of fine art spaces outside London along the South Coast. It contains one of the best collections of Modern and twentieth century British Art in the U.K. The collection is based on a gift of the ex Dean of Chichester Cathedral, Walter Hussey in 1977. There have…
