RES|FEST 19


Interesting videos of seven of the talks given at last years festival art historical research at the Courtauld Institute of Art.

I’d seen the event advertised but hadn’t managed to get along to it so was delighted to find these talks online in my digital wandering. I did find some of them a bit philosophical but there were some good highlights too. As galleries improve their digital offering these did feel a bit flat but they were a good record of how the talk was delivered on the day including jokes and technical hitches.

I liked Aviva Burnstock talking about some discoveries made by the Courtauld in the technical analysis of paintings. Most interesting was the discovery of a figure painting under Picasso’s Child with a Dove, which she compared in style to other works of the time for which it might have been a study and the discovery of a sketch for the Roundabout under a picture of Garsington by Mark Gertler.

Tom Nixon gave a lively talk on why people like climbing towers and what the historical context for this is. He took La Giralda in Seville as an example with various accounts of rulers climbing it to survey the city after it’s conquest.

Most thought provoking was Nicola Jennings on “Why we look at Old Masters”. This was particularly poignant at this time when we can’t get into galleries. She discussed how older paintings shed light on the human condition, how later artists are influence by them and how, in these days of falling footfall in the permanent collections of galleries, we can attract people back in.

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