Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting online conversation from London Art Week looking at the use of stone in painting. The talk chaired by   Emanuela Tarizzo from the Board of London Art Week split into two parts. Fabio Barry from the Centre for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery in Washington talked how stone has been used over thousands of years to decorate buildings, in essence to paint them. I was fascinated by the Byzantine idea of creating thin tile veneers of marble to set in repeat patterns called book-matching. Judith W. Mann from St Louis Museum of Art then talked about her current exhibition on painting on stone comparing artists who covered the whole stone and those who left some of it exposed to incorporate into the composition. I loved the attached image by Giuseppe Cesari of Perseus Rescuing Andromeda from 1593-4 painted on Lapis Lazuli which works the composition around the flaws in the stone. I didn’t know that painters sometimes worked on stone or ever thought...

Intriguing online exhibition and talk from London Art Week looking at art works on the theme of revolution and renewal. Curator of the online show, Arturo Galansino, Director of the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence talked with Emanuela Tarizzo of the Tomasso Gallery about the decision they made when grouping and choosing the works. Each gallery involved in London Art Week had submitted a work to the show which they grouped into the four themes of revolution in art, faces of revolution, spiritual renewal and moments in history. There were some fascinating pieces in the show including this beautiful coloured plaque by Eric Gill of Boxers from 1913, a beautiful portrait drawing of a man from the end of the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution, a Jan Breughel the Elder “Noli me Tangere” from the late 1630s and a Van Dyck portrait of Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Stafford which was probably owned by Charles I.