Art Between the Wars

Interesting discussion at Charleston Farmhouse about art and life between the two world wars.

This event was part of the Charleston Festival with over 40 events over 10 days. I was an all event ticket holder and am proud to say I think I was the only person that actually did all the events! I’m afraid if I blogged them all I’d be here for ever so I’m just blogging any of the events with an art or design theme. It was an exception festival this year, partly due to the joy of it being back in person and I came away brimming with ideas and inspiration.

Anyway back to this event which brought together Frances Spalding, talking about her book about the visual arts between the wars, and Nino Strachey, on hers about a new generation of the Bloomsbury Group in the 1920s. The event was chaired by Mark Hussey who write a biography of Clive Bell.

We started with a short talk by Spalding with excellent slides which wove the story of the art with what brought her to it. She discussed the rise of realism in art as a anti-dote to the mechanisation and brutality of war. She saw this coming to an end in 1936 with two exhibitions “Abstract and Concrete” and the First International Surrealism exhibition. I have since heard Spalding give a longer version of this talk for ARTscapades where it was great to see more images and hear about more fascinating artists.

Strachey looked at a younger generation of Bloomsbury in the 1920s and how they enchanted Old Bloomsbury. As Charleston was the country home of Old Bloomsbury it was a perfect setting for the talk. She ran through a wonderful selection of characters and their relationships giving an impression of a very modern queer group creating a family of choice. Very Tales of the City and we’d had heard Armistead Maupin just two nights before.

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