A blog to explore the interests of an original renaissance woman; arts, sciences, poetry, librarianship and everything in between.
Showing posts with label Applied art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Applied art. Show all posts
Monday, 27 July 2015
Frames in Focus: #Sansovino Frames at the National Gallery
Thanks largely to a rediscovery of a love of free form dancing enhanced by fermented sugar beverages, art and writing has been rather neglected over the past few weeks. Sometimes you need to examine what is beyond the immediately visible; to step outside the frame, if you like. Which is what I've been doing so it was with a sense of familiar relief that on a lunchtime stroll I headed to the National Gallery to find whatever took my fancy.
Tuesday, 23 June 2015
Coral: Science, Mythology, Metamorphoses
A Little Girl with a Basket of Cherries © National Gallery |
Which is why on Saturday, three weeks after returning from my Adriatic travels, I found myself in the peace of the Warburg library up to my eyes in books. I was surrounded by volumes exploring the evil eye, gem lore, history of science and natural philosophy, and Italian coral fishing.
Sunday, 25 January 2015
Dresden Conference: The one with Horse Blood and the Hunt
Can't resist this mirror |
As Donna Roberts had already noted, 'cabinets of curiosity' have been the topic of many shows to greater and lesser critical success. Marion Endt-Jones suggested we were in a new age of curiosity, citing a raft of shows, from the Manchester coral show, various European exhibitions and the growth in alternative wunder- museums. She suggests that this revival is not just inspired by surreal art but a wholesale 'questioning of institutions'. It is also a reaction to the corporate nature of the white cube, an inevitable and long overdue rethink of ubiquitous bland, open, unnatural, cold galleries.
Labels:
animals,
Applied art,
art,
art history,
birds,
cabinets of curiosity,
conferences,
controversy,
Donna Roberts,
Dresden,
hunting,
installation art,
Mark Dion,
museums,
VAM,
Victoria and Albert Museum,
whimsy
Sunday, 23 February 2014
Eyes of Gods: The Interiority of Sculpture
Reconstruction of Zeus |
This inner power is conveyed through their 'voice' as well as through the eyes. The Egyptian Colossi of Memnon started to make a noise after being damaged by an earthquake. They became famous because they realised the possibility of an interior voice. The skill of a sculptor is to make a figure look like it is on verge of speaking, making them articulate in both physical and spiritual form.
Monday, 2 July 2012
Ut pictura poesis: Or, poetry in stillness
Paul Writing, c.1894 by Camille Pissarro |
My poetic weekend started Friday with Edmund de Waal, potter and author giving a lecture at the National Gallery. Ostensibly it was about how he approached the challenges of writing about art and his art collecting forebears. However given his thoughtful sensitive approach, his talk went much deeper and he shared what has happened to his art as a result of his writing and it set me thinking about poetry.
Thursday, 16 February 2012
V&A Photographic Archive: Photography as Art
The Victorians proved problematic in my previous archive visit post so in the interest of balance, the next one is far more cheerful. The V&A story begins with an intriguing polymath, civil servant and inventor: Henry Cole (15 July 1808 – 18 April 1882). He was responsible for organising the Great Exhibition (1851) and then founding and developing a science/art collection in the South Kensington area which would both educate the masses and improve British industrial design. As the first General Superintendent of the Department of Practical Art, South Kensington Museum (1857-1873) he recognised the new phenomenon of photography had the right blend of art and science to be relevant to the museum.
Saturday, 4 February 2012
Mending Broken Hearts: Meaningful not mawkish
Let me put this to you straight; I don't have an issue with Valentine's Day. I am secretly an old fashioned romantic and a day in cold mid February celebrating the hotness of love is to be enthusiastically lauded. In fact knowing it to be rooted in ancient Roman feasts celebrating Juno Fructifier and Lupercalia makes it far sexier, fascinating and visceral than a semi Christian non feast day. It's more the tenuous connections commercial organisations make that get me steaming. An excuse to sell you something meaningless when your lover would rather more time with you; to simply hold hands in a park, giggle in a gallery, or something far more intimate.
This isn't going to be a tedious diatribe about the evils of commercialism (or religion). Though I retain my art critic's hat, I'm embracing and exonerating this exhibition from my usual cynicism. I'll allow them to seduce as many visitors into buying art objects for charity.
This isn't going to be a tedious diatribe about the evils of commercialism (or religion). Though I retain my art critic's hat, I'm embracing and exonerating this exhibition from my usual cynicism. I'll allow them to seduce as many visitors into buying art objects for charity.
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