Cathy's Art Diary

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 ris...

Fascinating talk   at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival bringing together Sue Roe with her book on the surrealists in Montparnasse and Anthony Penrose, the son of Roland Penrose and Lee Miller, surrealists who lived in Sussex. I have to admit to a bias here as I know Sue Roe well and love the way she writes group biographies filling in lots of detail about what the world around her subjects and what was happening in Paris that they may have been influenced by. She started the event with a talk on the birth of surrealism and why it evolved in Paris after the First World War. She brought to life an array of characters. Penrose then talked his parent’s early lives and about his childhood in Sussex where many of the people Sue had talked about came to stay. He talked about Manray as an inventor of a fly trap, Paul Elliard smuggling poems out of France in the War which Penrose had translated and published and Picasso coming to stay when the press hounde...

Interesting book talk at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival by Rupert Thomson on his novel about the artists Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. Thomson began by reading a passage from the book then outlined the story of this remarkable couple. The women, having met in the 1909, took on masculine names and were later to become step-sisters. They are best known for the photographs of Cahun they collaborated to take. He talked about their place in the art scene of 1920s Paris, the people they met there and their political activism. He then went on to their life and resistance activity in occupied Jersey. In discussion with art historian Frances Spalding, they discussed how he approached the novel and why he chose to write in the voice of Moore. I had read and enjoyed the novel as ‘homework’ for the festival so was fascinating to hear more about how it was constructed and the decisions he’s made when writing it. 

Interesting talk at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival looking at the original and the new Civilisation television series. James Stourton, the biographer of Kenneth Clark, talked about the original series which he said was made by the BBC as a beacon for colour TV. It aimed to tell the story of Western civilisation and pioneered the idea of filming on location. He talked about the criticisms of the series and how these were highlighted by the fact that it came out at a time when society was changing and it hadn’t reflected this. David Olusoga, the historian and one of the presenters of the new series being made at the moment talked about the vision for this new version. He says it will still have personal views but there will be three presenters, himself, Simon Schama and Mary Beard, Olusoga’s sections focus on when cultures come together not just in crushing ways but also when they come together for mutual benefit. He also pointed out the new series i...