2019-20 Art History Lecture Series at Gage — arthistoryblogger.blogspot.com

The Art History Lecture Seriesfeatures Gage teaching artists, with each speaker exploring a different topic. These lectures present art history from a unique viewpoint and will provide students with a look inside the artists and movements that helped shape art from the Renaissance through the 20th Century.Register online for a single lecture, a quarterly series or the entire program, and delve into the techniques, ideologies and personalities that define art in our world.  All lectures take place on Wednesday evenings: 7:00pm-8:00pm. Josef Albers, Homage to the Square, 1967, Modern Art Museum of Fort WorthWednesday 10/23Mike Magrath — High Kitsch  Kitsch is the beautiful lie that eats truth.  Join us to chart the evolution of Kitsch from its origins as aspirational culture among the 19th century bourgeois to the ubiquitous cultural language of the 21st century consumer society.  Wednesday 10/30Carol Hendricks — Artemisia GentileschiArtemisia Gentileschi was one of the most successful and respected painters from the Italian Baroque era. She was the first woman accepted into the Florentine Academy. She lived and worked in Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples and London receiving numerous commissions. Artemisia had a reputation as being extremely skilled in depicting portraits and historic figures and her work influenced the next generation of painters. Wednesday 11/13Charles Emerson — Aspects of the New ColorColor was always doing something other than just being attractive.  Making space, modeling form, interacting with other colors in various ways, including structure and space. From a single surface flat color to an ambiguous layered fluid space, the one simple color has many choices as to how it appears. The difficulty comes in reading, or seeing what that same color is doing in multiple situations.  Color is only color as to how much, where it is used, and which application technique is used.  We will look at examples from Josef Albers up to and including contemporary art. Wall painting of Reindeer, Lascaux Cave, France, c-15,000 B.C.Wednesday 11/20Hamid Zavareei — History of PigmentsMapping a journey through time from pre-historic human ancestors to present day production of color is a fascinating exploration that is part and parcel of human civilization and art making as one of its main pillars. Delving into what this substance called pigment is and how it has literally painted the human history is the subject of this lecture, touching its origins and following the stages of its development to present day.Théodore Géricault, Raft of the Medusa, 1819, LouvreWednesday 1/15Gary Faigin — Ripped from the Headlines: How Breaking News Became Great ArtPainting, unlike photography, is usually at a distance from the hubbub of daily life.  Art of the past tended to avoid work that was too specifically about a particular recent event, like a battle or an execution. The glorious exceptions to this pattern are few in number, but count amongst the most famous and beloved works in art history.  In this lively talk, Gary Faigin looks at masterpieces like the Raft of the Medusaand Guernica, examining their fascinating historical background, composition, and execution.  Wednesday 1/22Kristin Frost — Contemporary PortraitureLook at examples of portraiture from around the world, focusing on how they influenced each other and the overlaps between cultures. Learn how contemporary artists (such as Kara Walker, Yasumasa Morimura, Jenny Saville, Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald) are changing the rhetoric in this field in terms of race and gender.The Great Wave off Kanagawa, from Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji, Katsushika Hokusai, c-1831, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkWednesday 2/5Rebecca Albiani — HokusaiKatsushika Hokusai’s 36 Views of Mount Fuji include some of the most iconic images ever made. Whether the prolific artist was making color woodblock prints, book illustrations, or drawing manuals, his work was rich in humor and natural beauty.Wednesday 2/12Edie Everette — Charles Burchfield: Watercolor as VocabularyPainting exclusively in watercolor was unusual in the early 20th century, yet Burchfield chose that medium as his own, outright dismissing people who cautioned that the medium was too fragile to become a legacy. He also created a 'vocabulary' of shapes that represented moods, working them into his land and townscapes. This lecture will discuss what Burchfield, who struggled also with wanting to be a writer, may be visually 'telling' us. Wednesday 3/4David Martin — Social Realism and the American Scene: A Northwest PerspectiveDavid F. Martin will focus on regional artists and their depictions of scenes from everyday life in the Northwest during the 1930’s and 40’s. Many of the works reflect the industrial, political and social aspects of the Great Depression and WWII era. Beginning in the late 1920’s younger American artists were turning away from the dominant influence of European Impressionism and Modernism in search of a completely unique representation of America. These artists utilized subject matter depicting the unique elements of their individual regions and often celebrated the urban and rural environments as well as local industries and recreational activities.On the other side of the spectrum, some Northwest artists used their talents to reflect their interest in communist and socialist ideology, as well as labor causes and racial and class inequities. The Leftist movement was so strong in Washington State that in 1936,” Postmaster General James Farley stated…“There are forty-seven states in the Union, and the Soviet of Washington”.Winged human-headed bull (Lamassu)Neo-Assyrian Period, reign of Sargon II (721-705 BC)Khorsabad, ancient Dur Sharrukin, Assyria, Iraqphoto- © Luidger/ public domain, via Wikimedia Commons  Wednesday 3/18Kathleen Moore — The Arts of Mesopotamia Mesopotamian civilization existed for well over 3,000 years, from the formation of the first cities at the end of the fourth millennium B.C. to the early years of the Roman Empire.  This region of the world produced varied and fascinating cultures including the Sumerian, Assyrian and Akkadian in the region that linked Asia, Africa and Europe. Diana, Augustus Saint-Gaudens 1893–94, Metropolitan Museum of ArtWednesday 4/8 Mardie Rees — Augustus Saint-GaudensSaint-Gaudens was an American Beaux-Arts sculptor working in the style of the American Renaissance. He studied at Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design in New York, the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and also in Rome. After his return to New York he achieved major critical success for his sculptures, monuments and coin designs.Svanen (The Swan), No. 17, Group IX, Series SUW, Hilma af Klint, 1914-1915Wednesday 4/22  Linda James — Spirituality and Abstraction  In 1986, Maurice Tuchman curated an exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art called “The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985.” The exhibit was organized based on the well researched theory that the genesis of abstract art was inextricably tied to spiritual ideas current in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The pioneers of abstraction – Wassily Kandinsky, Hilma af Klint, Piet Mondrian, Kasimir Malevich and Frantisek Kupka – had abandoned representational art in favor of an art form that allowed them to express their inner spiritual lives. This lecture will focus on those artists and the artists who followed them – their work, their stories, their impact.

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