Cathy's Art Diary

Fascinating  online discussio n as part of the Charleston Festival at Home between the artist Ai Weiwei and Tim Marlow, CEO of the Design Museum.   As a regular all event ticket holder at the Charleston Festival, which was obviously cancelled this year, I have enjoyed the alternative online events they have run every evening throughout the festival. All the events were excellent but the others were more literary so they haven’t made it into this blog, however the last event was a firmly artistic one so I feel I can add it!   The discussion, which is available on Youtube, suffered a bit from Zoom sound issues, but was an interesting interview of this contemporary artist. They began by talking about the role of place in his art as he bases in Cambridge and Berlin leading on to how lockdown effects this sense of place and how it has affected his creativity. He said that his rather nomadic life keeps him alert even though it is uncomfortable and it fuels his creative ideas...

A fun series of videos by Philip Mould looking at pictures people had sent to him of themselves with art works in their homes following his first series of films from his own home “Art in Isolation”. There have been three films so far each focusing on a genre of art covering animals, landscape and portraits far. He uses the pictures to talk you through different aspects the genre. The pictures are beautifully filmed with close ups of peoples faces panning across to their art works. Most interestingly though it is a study of what stunning and eclectic art works people have in their homes.

Delightful series of online events from the Victoria and Albert Museum, delivered daily by email, to mark what would have usually been their members week. Due to a prior diary commitment I usually miss this week at the museum, so it was nice to get involved virtually this year. Each day a themed email was sent out with links to talks filmed in lockdown, videos and installation shots of old exhibitions, articles and short films about aspects of the collection.  I really enjoyed the variety of formats.  Monday looked at the history of the museum, Tuesday at watercolours to mark the cancellation of the Renaissance watercolours show, Wednesday was fashion, Thursday Rock, pop and performance and Friday looked at activities for and about children.  My highlights were a fun talk on Victoria and Albert’s involvement with the museum and collection. It was just a sound recording of a lecture but delivered so wittily that you didn’t miss what were obviously, from the au...

Fun quiz on the Royal Academy website with questions on women artists in their history. I’m pleased to say I got 9/11 and did feel quite chuffed. Some of the answers gave you links to articles or videos about the artist so it’s easy to get led into other activities. Turns out they have a couple of other quizzes too so I tried “ The Great Art Quiz of 2019 ” (8/14 but I learnt a lot) and“ How Picasso are you ” (Dios mío, you’re practically Picasso which rather surprised me).

Enjoyable series of short videos from the Metropolitan Museum filmed during lockdown highlighting recent exhibitions and specific works of art. These are emailed to members and patrons once a week, so I hope it is OK to share the links. Unfortunately, I deleted the first one and can no longer find it. Most take the form of a talk from the curator’s home with a Powerpoint presentation and are made rather endearing by their different styles of presenting and occasionally IT issue. It is a shame the start and end of each follows quite a prescriptive script, but the sentiments are welcomed. I certainly look forward to more arriving in my inbox.  Episode2: Crossroads: Power and Piety C. Griffith Mann, Michel David-Weill  Curator  in Charge of Medieval Art and The Cloisters. Looks at a new cross-departmental installation which brings together objects from the Medieval period across cultures which reflect religious power and piety. It groups 12 objects in four themes...

Series of excellent videos from Visit Flanders guiding you through various exhibitions and displays of Flemish art all filmed post lockdown. Each presenter has a slightly different style and all the videos come with subtitles which is particularly helpful for the two which are not in English. I love they cover which a wide period from Van Eyck to Ensor in the late 19 th century and you do start to spot similar themes and styles thought Flemish art. You have to draw parallels between Ensor’s “Entry of Christ into Brussels” and scenes like Bruegel’s Nativity. I wonder if there will be more in the series. Episode1 : Van Eyck I have reviewed this already as it is a film of the Van Eyck exhibition in Ghent. Episode2 : Bruegel This is set in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels and focuses on their collection of works by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Michel Draguet, the director fo the museum, takes us on a whistle stop tour of the pictures pausing to discuss...

Virtual version of the National Portrait Gallery annual exhibition for this portrait award. This is usually one of the highlights of my viewing year so it feels very odd to have to view I online however it has been presented well to give a sense of walking round the show, how the pictures work together and an idea of their relative size. It took me a while to work how to navigate around the virtual space and it did seem to freeze on me once but once I got going it was quite easy. You click on the pictures to see a closer image and its label. They also offer the usual chance to vote for your favourite. The unintentional themes this year seem to be realism and backgrounds often in the same picture. There were no weird abstract ones, so the show felt quite cohesive. In the realism camp with a lovely black and white portrait of Sir Lenny Henry by Martyn Burdon and Jamie Routley’s triptych of a sculptor friend from three angles with   the wonderful abstract pattern of clay ...

Well-constructed but slightly dull  course from the Open University on 15 th   century art in Venice.     The content of the course was excellent with a concentration on the work of the Bellini workshop under three headings, style, portraits and history paintings with a good overview at the start. There is an emphasis on the role of Byzantium and the East rather than classical antiquity in defining the art of the city. However, the style of presentation was a series of articles with no interactive content. It’s strange how quickly in lockdown we have come to expect a more engaging format and to give this course credit it was written long before current events. It would have been more stimulating however to have even had a Powerpoint with voice over so that you could see the image while listening to a description of its importance. I don’t think the course gave me anything that a good short book might have done.

Fascinating  presentation of recent research from the Mauritshuis Museum on the “Girl with the Pearl Earring” by Vermeer. I discovered this via an Alastair Sooke article in the Telegraph which gave an excellent overview of this project to use modern research techniques to assess this famous painting. However the museums own website provides a lot more insight. New discoveries include a green curtain in the apparently blank space behind the figure, a Vermeer signature and that there is no loop painted to attach the pearl to her ear. So much for the rather painful scene in the movie! There is one long video summarising the findings then two short ones looking at changes in composition and the pigments used. The long video is a PowerPoint with voice over by the conservator, Abbie Vandivere, and includes lots of interesting info-graphics and details of the technical images. The shorter two have a more lock down feel with Vandivere filming herself on her mobile phone which ...

Second pair of episodes in this fascinating series from BBC4 exploring national museum collections at a time of enforced closure. The first two episodes focused on exhibitions which had had to close due to the Covid outbreak whereas these two looked at specific galleries and talked about what the art and artefacts in them show us about the human condition. James Fox takes us around Tate Britain and Janina Ramirez looks at the British Museum. I found Fox’s tour started in such a melancholy way, talking about how art shows how we don’t suffer alone and that suffering is a human condition, that I found it hard to watch however it did cheer up and look at the human need for beauty and imagination. Ramirez took a more upbeat view from the start and looked at objects which demonstrated our need for love and spirituality although we did stray into death as well with a Mexican mosaic skull and cat mummies. Both pieces were beautifully filmed and drifted around the closed galler...