Thursday, March 18, 2021 (All day)
Time: 10:30 for 10:45 am – 3:30pm
Venue: Art Workers’ Guild, 6 Queen Square, WC1N 3AT
Lecturer: Valerie Woodgate
Cost: £38 (including coffee & biscuits)
To a large extent, all art is about other art. In this study day we will compare Old Master paintings with modern treatment of the same subjects, and examine the extent to which modern art is inspired by the example of earlier eras. In many ways, modern art has a surprising amount in common with the Old Masters, but there are also, of course, many differences and reinterpretations of subject and style. We will consider the effect of these differences, and whether they add to, or change, our understanding of the subject and its message.
The works will include all of the traditional genres, i.e. History Painting, which encompasses elevated subjects from the Bible, Greek mythology and classical history (concerned with people “greater than ourselves”); Portraits, including the self-portrait; Genre (pictures of the everyday lives of people “like ourselves or less than ourselves”); Landscape and Still-Life. In each case we will see the way in which treatment of these subjects has changed over the centuries, up to the modern era. Comparisons will be made between many Old Masters and modern artists, and will include Poussin, Ruisdael, Constable, van Gogh, Rembrandt, Picasso, Masaccio, Titian, Manet, Chagall and Dali.