Cathy's Art Diary

Excellent online lecture from ARTscapades comparing the work of Anselm Kiefer and Vincent Van Gogh. Although the talk was instigated by the current exhibition of the same title at the Royal Academy, Ben Street made it more than a description of the show and instead developed a clear and well thought out discussion of the similarities in the artists work despite working about a century apart. He explained how Kiefer, the contemporary artist, has always responded to Van Gogh’s work from his first trip out of German using a travel grant to retrace Van Gogh’s travels in Europe. He spent time comparing works by both artists and tracing the links. He discussed the concept of ‘deskilling’ in art as well as how both artists view the role of artists. My favourite section looked at how we view older art with contemporary eyes bringing to it events which have happened since the work was painted. For example how can we look at Van Gogh’s painting of his boots without thinking of the image...

Excellent online study day from the London Art History Society on Philip Guston. Ben Street took us clearly through the different phases of Guston’s career from figurative painting to abstraction and back to figurative work. He explained the themes of the work and placed the in the context of the times in which they were painted. I didn’t know Guston’s work but wanted to see the exhibition at Tate Modern and was looking for a good introduction to the artist and this gave me a good grounding for when I did see the show a week or so later (watch out for my review of that). Street had covered some themes which didn’t come out clearly in the show and I felt it gave me a chance to view the work without obsessive reading of labels.  

Interesting lecture from ARTscapades giving a guide on how to enjoy art. Ben Street talked about his new book “How to Enjoy Art: A Guide for Everyone” which he has written for people who might find art galleries intimidating and who feel them need to bring knowledge they don’t have to art. I have done talks with Ben before and like his approach and this was interesting but I suspect, in the case of this audience, he was preaching to the converted. He has drawn on his experience of working in galleries as an educator and academic to look at the barriers that the buildings and how the art is displayed can be off putting. He compared how we read books which takes time and how we can go round a gallery taking in multiple images quickly often creating mental overload. He said that art comes wrapped in words in a museum and how important it is to look first and read after. He said that the words are often about things outside of the object such as who the artist is, when it was painte...

Excellent three week online course from the London Art History Society looking at 20th century American art. Over three weekly lectures Ben Street built an argument about how American art in the last century was focused on defining and questioning what it is to be America. Rather than going chronologically through the period he picked three themes to discuss making interesting links between artists and pictures. He also used photographs, sculpture, land art, installations and even memorials as well as paintings as his examples. In week one he looked at landscape in particular rural art to show how “The Real America” has often been defined as the Mid-West agricultural areas and in week two he contrasted this to images of the city which embody ideas of immigration and industry. In the last week he brought these themes together by taking identity as his theme and looking at figurative art, I discovered lots of artists I hadn’t come across before including Jacob Lawrence, shown here...

Excellent study day organised by the London Art History Society on Matisse. The course was led by Ben Street who delivered four great lectures without notes using a well thought out slides to take us through the story. The day was split up well and, although I thought I knew Matisse’s work quite well, I learnt a lot. We began by looking at Matisse’s early work, although he came to art relatively late in life for an artist, including the start of Fauvism and his role in it. We also discussed how his work doesn’t show the usual subjects of the time such as the city but chose more traditional subjects such as landscapes and still lives albeit in a radical style with strange colour combinations. We then looked at his most radical period from 1912-17 and how this was fuelled by travelling to Algiers and the role of two collectors. We talked about how he painted “Dancers” and “Music” for Serge Shchukin, the Russian textile magnet. In the afternoon we started by looking a...