London Lectures at King's Place
Gail-Nina Anderson will be contributing a series of lectures to the Talking Art programme at the King's Place Gallery, York Way, London, N1. Tickets can be booked online, and are always cheaper via the King's Place web site than at the door. Topics in the first season are:
- Monday 18 January, 6.30 pm: The colour White
- This is the first in a series of talks that focuses not on an artist or a subject, but on the particular qualities of a colour as it has been used in art. The lectures will illustrate the way that colours can come in and out of fashion, play different roles in pictorial composition, display changing cultural and symbolic meanings and become associated with certain painters and artistic movements.
White may seem so basic that we regard it as background rather than colour, but in art it can symbolise purity and represent light. Certain subjects demand it, from fashionably white gowns in Neo-Classical portraiture to dazzling Impressionist snowscapes. It gives us reflective highlights, minimalist abstracts and a wide array of draperies, doves and lilies. The examples discussed will include works by Whistler, Rossetti, Monet, Manet, Malevich and David.
- Monday 8th February, 6.30 pm: The Art of Fearful Imaginings
- The role of art goes far beyond simply delighting or informing the viewer, and this talk explores a particular strand of imagery designed to rouse a darker emotional response.
From Medieval devils to Romantic nightmares, spectral visions to exteriorised neuroses, art has given shape and expression to the things that lurk in those hidden corners we might prefer not to explore.
Painters such as Goya and Fuseli call up images intended to provoke a shudder - is this simply sensationalism or do we need to visit the dark side? Does the visualisation of our imagined horrors give them power or put them in their place, and why do we so often find ourselves laughing at what is meant to be scary?
- Monday 8th March, 6.30 pm: The colour Black
- Black may be the darkest of colours, but in painting it can provide an accent of velvety depth, of sophistication and of elegance. It can enrich the shadows but also sharpen the outlines, a colour for incisive design as well as the symbolically rich signifier of mourning and an ever-recurring fashion statement.
Works with a key-note of black will include images by Velasquez, Sargent, Tissot, Degas and Lowry.
- Monday 12th April, 6.30 pm: The Miner in Art
- This illustrated lecture celebrates the work of Norman Cornish (Born 1919 Spennymoor, County Durham) by providing an historical context for his telling images of working life.
From Mediaeval manuscripts to Post-Impressionist paintings and beyond, the figure of the worker has been represented in a wide variety of styles and artistic contexts. This talk will examine the changing meanings of such depictions and the unexpected visual poetry that can often be found in the imagery of labour.
University Gallery Lectures Spring 2010
All lectures take place in the University Gallery and Baring Wing, Northumbria University, Sandyford Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8ST (location), on Wednesdays at 6.00 pm.
To reserve a place, please contact the Gallery on 0191 227 4424
Price: £4.00 per person per lecture.
- Wednesday 13 January: Animals in Art - The Horse
- This will be the first of the animal-themed talks running through our 2010 lecture programme. In each case we will look at the different ways of representing a particular animal across a range of periods, styles and even cultures, exploring the shifting meanings assigned to it and the way such representations have affected our own culture's view of the animal.
The horse is the most ubiquitous of beasts in art, turning up in Pre-historic cave paintings, Renaissance epiphanies, classical sculpture, Bewick engravings and Indian miniatures. It can be the entire subject of a work by Stubbs, a detail in a Constable landscape or a visual exclamation by Picasso. This talk explores the ways in which artists represent the animal not simply for the sake of its physical beauty and power but also to articulate ideas about status, travel, labour and strength.
- Wednesday 27 January: The Career of Edwin Landseer
- As well as being one of Britain's greatest animal painters, Sir Edwin Landseer (1802-1873) was among the most popular artists of the Victorian era. He sculpted the lions in Trafalgar Square, worked on portrait commissions from Victoria and Albert and was a mainstay of the Royal Academy. His work was widely reproduced, with engravings of The Monarch of the Glen gracing so many walls that it has become a cliché of Victorian domestic taste. The more sentimental of his works have long been out of fashion, but his sensitivity to the Scottish landscape has recently fuelled a re-examination of his achievement. This talk discusses his work across a range of genres to ask whether we can still appreciate his robust, painterly style.
- Wednesday 3 March: Animals in Art - The Cat
- Feline imagery in art is as mystifyingly various as the cat itself, ranging from the Satanic to the cute, from symbols of lust to icons of domestic comfort. A goddess in Ancient Egypt, the cat has become associated with the feminine, the night and the seductively sinister, yet cats are also depicted as the companions of childhood, as useful working animals and as denizens of the urban environment. From alley cats to fluffy kittens, this talk explores our shifting visual and symbolic concept of the cat, including examples from the art of the Renaissance, the Impressionists and the Victorians.
- Wednesday 17 March: Painting the Sea
- How can an artist represent an immense body of water that shifts with the tides, changes mood with the weather, reflects the sky and constantly interacts with the shore-line? The sea offers a massive challenge to the naturalistic artist, one that has been taken up by Courbet and Monet, Turner and the Dutch marine painters of the 17th century. Yet it can also be shown in a more stylised way, its patterns defining the art of the Minoans, its symbolism explored by Victorian illustrators and humanised by Greek sculptors. From Cullercoats to the Aegean, from Poseidon to the Fighting Temeraire, this talk looks at our artistic attempts to define the ocean.
- Wednesday 28 April: Animals in Art - The Dragon
- A side-step in our animals series, this talk explores reptilian imagery, but via its most glorious mythological manifestation. In Christian art, snakes and dragons are the most potent symbols of evil, representing Satan and all things hellish - yet an endless succession of altarpieces, manuscripts and ecclesiastical carvings bear witness to our fascination with the concept. There are sea-monsters and serpentine foes in classical art, cousins to those dragons who haunt the landscape of Northern pagan mythology, hoarding gold and tempting heroes to unequal combat. In Chinese culture, however, the dragon is benevolent, associated with water and a highly popular decorative motif. This talk explores our visual construction of a fabulous beast whose shapes are as various as its meanings.