Cathy's Art Diary

Delightful exhibition at the RIBA exploring the principles of Palladian design and how they have been interpreted, copied and reimagined. There were some wonderful drawings and plans in this show and a few models. It was nice to have busts of Palladio and Inigo Jones watching over the proceedings. As a non-architect I would have liked a little more on the principles to take forward round the rest of the exhibition but I guess most of the audience for this show will already know a lot about this so I can see why they didn’t labour this aspect. I was most interested to see how the principles had been interpreted in later years such as how it was used in America 18th century houses such as Drayton Hall (which I have been to!) as well as modern homes. I had never associated Palladianism with post-modernism but there was a good section on how post war architects have reduced the style to abstract elements. I loved the design of the show with the drawings shown round t...

Exhibition at the Royal Academy which looks at the life and work of Andrea Palladio. The tape tour admitted straight away that it is strange to have an exhibition about architecture in a gallery as you can’t show their major works there however it pointed out that it was going to concentrate on the influences on him and how he influenced others. The tour was worth taking as the layout of the exhibition was a bit confused as it was in quite a small space and the tour directed you to the next piece and gave you a route around the works. I loved the models of buildings. They were all built on the same scale so you could tell their relative size. The rooms were beautifully decorated to match the themes. I loved moving from the slightly austere classical early room into the luscious red Venetian room. I hadn’t noticed it coming so it came as a surprise. I had thought I would go round quickly but was in there for about two hours as there was so much to see and discover, I thought I knew my ...