Cathy's Art Diary

Excellent online six week course from the National Gallery examining six major texts on art from Vasari to John Berger. Amy Mechowski led us through the course with a format of her giving a lecture on the book and the author then inviting a speaker who has reacted to the work either via art or writing. This was a really good grounding in art historical thinking and the format led you to think more widely around the subject.  The books were : * Giorgio Vasari’s “Lives of the Artists” 1550 * Charles Baudelaire's “The Painter of Modern Life” 1863 * Ernst Gombrich’s “The Story of Art” 1950 * Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” 1936 * Linda Nochlin’s “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” 1971 * John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing” 1972   Guest speakers were: * Jenny Graham from the University of Plymouth who discussed how Vasari created the canon of artists and established the idea of what an artists should be. She then t...

Fascinating exhibition at the Academia Gallery in Venice recreating the ceiling Giorgio Vasari painted for Palazzo Corner Spinelli. Over the last 40 years the gallery has been acquiring the nine panels shown here which were shown together in a new display   which will enter the permanent museum itinerary in a dedicated hall. It was being shown with two short videos about how it had been recreated and installed. I would have liked to know a bit more about where all the panels had been acquired and where they had been. No end date given unveiled 28 August 2024