Cathy's Art Diary

M ajor exhibition at the British Museum of the life and death of China’s first emperor Qin Shihuangdi. The first half of the exhibition focused on the emperor’s life looking at how he unified the country both militarily, administratively and emotionally. I must admit I found this section a little bit superfluous. Although I am sure if was good to give a context to the terracotta warriors, which I am sure is what most people had come to see, the sparse nature of the artefacts made this a rather reading based section and a bit stodgy. It felt a little like a way of controlling the flow of people to the meat of the exhibition. Talking of the meat the figures themselves were not disappointing. They were put into the context of the death of the emperor although I found myself viewing them as art artefacts in their own right. I was most struck by how different they all were. The image you get from photo’s of the tomb is of an amorphous group of figures more astonishing for their numbers that...

Talk at the National Gallery in their “Wine, Nibbles and Talk” series given by Norman Coady. This was an interesting talk concentrating on the use of colour in Veronese but also looking at its comparisons to music. The speaker, a free lance art historian, made some fascinating and witty comparison between opera singers and artists of this period likening Titian to Maria Callas and Veronese to Joan Sutherland. There was much talk of how Veronese used colours against each other and to provide rhythm to a picture. I must admit for me the wine and nibbles element of the talk was a bit superfluous. It was not a particularly social environment. I had hoped for a more seminar style approach given the difference in price to the usual lecture ticket.