2009-10 season's lectures

Lecture: October 2009

Images of Cleopatra, an exploration of her life and its portrayal in art and music.

Elizabeth Rumbelow

BA BMus DipEd

October 2009 - extra lecture

Morocco: Magic and Mystery - an artist's impression

Helen Sijsling

MA

Lecture: November 2009

Royal courts of India

Ann Peerless

This lecture on the Royal Courts of India will look at some of the Mughal and Hindu Courts and how one influenced the other.

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From the eighth century onwards, the Muslims invaded India, but it was one dynastic family who stayed to develop an empire which produced one of the richest and most spectacular courts that India had known.
Some of the Hindu rulers collaborated with the Mughals and prospered; others fought bitterly, with disastrous consequences, but all were influenced by them.
As the Mughal Empire developed and flourished, so it eventually declined, and it was the turn of the British who came to trade and who took control and expanded, supporting the Hindu Princes and their courts.
We shall study the magnificent architecture of forts and palaces decorated with jali pierced screens and pietra dura and the incredibly detailed miniature paintings of the royal courts of the Mughals in Delhi, Agra, Fatehpur Sikri and Lahore and some of the Hindu royal families including Jaipur and Udaipur with its beautiful Lake Palace.

All the slides have been taken on site in India or from original manuscripts.

Biographical details:

Ann Peerless lectures for the V&A and the British Museum, as well as being a guest lecturer for NADFAS and Swan Hellenic in India and Vietnam. She was previously Course Director and Tutor for the University of Kent School of Continuing Education and Senior Lecturer in Art, Coloma College. She has a wide experience in adult education, schools and Holloway (Women's) Prison. Ann has been commissioned by the Government of India and Air India for design work and photographic exhibitions, and has travelled and researched in India, Taiwan, China and parts of SE Asia.

websites (Mughal):
British Museum     BBC     EdWeb Project     Wikipedia

Lecture: December 2009

The Medici

James Gilpin

The Medici family skilfully established themselves as the unofficial rulers of republican Florence during the Renaissance and went on to become Grand Dukes of Tuscany in the 16th century.

The lecture explores the development of the family and the economic, political and artistic influences which enabled them to sustain their rule over the city until the early 18th century.

The following aspects are covered:

• The development of the Medici bank in the early 15th century
• The main political events of the 15th and 16th centuries - the exile of Cosimo, the Pazzi conspiracy, the exile of Piero, the election of Leo X and Clement VII and the Sack of Rome
• Family alliances, infiltration into the church and the French royal family
• The main artistic commissions, including San Lorenzo, the Medici palace and San Marco
• The urban residences and rural retreats

About James Gilpin

After graduating in Art History from Cambridge University in 1993, James qualified as an accountant and spent over 7 years working in investment banking in the City of London. James, however, has always been passionate about Italian art and culture and has travelled extensively throughout Italy. He began learning Italian at the Italian Cultural Institute in London in 2003 and also completed courses in Rome, Venice and Florence.

After leaving investment banking in 2005, James decided to devote himself to what he loved most: the Italian visual arts, language and culture. He spent a year living in Rome, working as a language teacher and freelance tour guide, and gained a real insider's view of Italian life.

As well as managing White Hat Tours (which he founded in 2005), James also works as a freelance lecturer, giving talks on a variety of subjects relating to the Italian visual arts.

Suggested reading:
Christopher Hibbert: Florence
Christopher Hibbert: The rise and fall of the house of Medici
Paul Strathern: The Medici

websites:

Lecture: January 2010

WONDER WORKERS & THE ART OF ILLUSION

Bertie Pearce

BA (Hons)

From the beginning of time the fascination with magic and the impossible has been widespread. Egypt was the cradle of magic. Sorcerer Priests used scientific principles to create illusions for the edification of worship and to hold power over the people. Where there was power there was magic. Then there is the age-old skill of sleight of hand, which proves that 'the hand is quicker than the eye'. Magicians were known as 'Jongleurs' lest they be sentenced to death for 'witchcraft and conjuration' under the edicts of Henry VIII.

With the emergence of the Music Hall, Magic gained a new respectability and audiences flocked in their thousands to watch the extraordinary feats of The Great Illusionists. This gave birth to legendary tricks such as pulling a rabbit from a hat and sawing a lady in half. And if magicians guarded their secrets with their lives, how was the Magic Circle formed ? - Home to 10,000 secrets.

Even Today in our super technical age of ipods and broadband, the wonder and surprise of magic are as popular as ever, not forgetting the Harry Potter craze.

Wonder Workers and the Art of Illusion is a whistle stop tour of the history of mystery from 3000BC to the 21st century and be careful! - you might be amazed and bewitched.

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Extra lecture: January 2010

Flamenco - traditional to modern - part 2

Mark Shurey

Mark is a local osteopath working in Nerja and Granada. He studied Flamenco Guitar for many years.

This year's presentation by Mark follows on from last January's much-acclaimed talk entitled "Flamenco: Traditional to Modern. An introduction to the world of Modern Flamenco and the understanding between Guitar and Dancer."

Lecture: February 2010

Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth

Jo Walton

BA Dip Hist Art (Oxon)

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After university, Jo Walton began teaching and lecturing. She later ran the Atrium Bookshop in Cork Street, in the heart of London's artworld, and worked with Christies. She now combines freelance lecturing with work in publishing and as a Guide at the two London Tate Galleries.
She talked to us in 2003 (Donatello) and in 2006 (Bernini and baroque Rome).

Read about:

Henry Moore     Shelter sketchbook
Barbara Hepworth

Lecture: March 2010

Libya Uncovered -
The Magnificence of Leptis Magna, Sabratha and Cyrene

Christopher Bradley

B Eng (Hons) FRGS

Closed for many years, Libya is slowly exposing its ancient Phoenician, Greek and Roman cultures. The 3rd century AD is the golden age of the very finest examples of Roman mosaics and art.

Ancient rock paintings deep in the Sahara show the artistic skills of semi-nomadic traders 10,000 years ago. The Phoenicians developed the early trading ports of Sabratha and Leptis Magna, whilst the Greeks built the magnificent city of Cyrene. But it was under the powerful Roman Empire that Leptis Magna became the greatest city in Africa, when local leader Septimius Severus became emperor. His huge public buildings are adorned with magnificent carvings, and the private villas of the wealthy show more personal tastes of design and artwork. Many of these villas have only recently been uncovered, showing that the 3rd century AD was the golden age of the very finest examples of Roman mosaics and art. During Byzantine control, a unique Berber culture also developed in the mountains, where they created strange architectural homes and granaries. The arrival of Islam brought new forms of mosaics, Ottoman-influenced mosques and ornate houses inside Tripoli's old city.

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More information

Recommended reading:

• 'Libya: The Lost Cities of the Roman Empire1 by Robert Polidori (Konemann 1999)
• Islamic Architecture of North Africa' by Antony Hutt (Scorpion 1977)
• 'Berlitz Pocket Guide to Libya' by Chris Bradley (Berlitz 2006)

Websites:
Leptis Magna:

Extra lecture: March 2010

100 years of Nerja

Pablo Rojo Platero

A talk about the last 100 years in and around Nerja.
It will be illustrated with about 80 old prints /photographs (digital presentation with laptop).
He has written a book about Nerja which has been translated from Spanish into English; it will be on sale after the lecture.

Lecture: April 2010

The Pilgrims of Babylon - the artists of Montmartre

Douglas Skeggs

MA (Cantab)

There is no name more evocative of Bohemian life: the high spirits, the decadence and the poverty, as well as the spirit of revolutionary art in Paris, than Montmartre. In reality it was little more than a run-down suburb overlooking the city, a labyrinth of alleyways, bristling with windmills. And yet the shackled studios that spilled down the hillside of Montmartre would become the inspiration and home to some of France's greatest artists. From the Moulin de la Galette where Renoir painted Parisians dancing in the afternoon sunlight, to Toulouse Lautrec's vivid images of the Moulin Rouge, the smoke filled cabaret where the can-can was danced, to the shabby garrets of the Bateau Lavoir where a group of artists headed by Picasso would paint canvases that would shake the foundations of Western art, this lecture charts the course of this extraordinary artistic life.

Douglas Skeggs
Douglas Skeggs read Fine Art at Magdalene College Cambridge and has been a lecturer on paintings since 1980. In that time he has given over 4000 lectures to universities, colleges and art societies. He was the director of 'The New Academy of Art Studies' for three years and is presently a regular lecturer at 'The Study Centre', Christie's course 'The History of Art Studies' and other London courses. Among his more improbable venues for lectures are the bar on the QE2, MI5 headquarters, the Captain's Room at Lloyds, and an aircraft hanger in a German NATO base. Overseas he has lectured in Belgium, France, Germany and Spain, and has taken numerous tours around Europe. He helped set up the Abercrombie & Kent "Private Label tours" and is presently cultural adviser to Ultimate Travel. He has written and presented various TV documentaries, notably the Omnibus programme on 'Whistler' and the exhibition video on 'William Morris.' Three one-man exhibitions of his paintings have been held in England and Switzerland. He has published five novels, which have been translated into 8 foreign languages, and his book on Monet, 'River of Light', has sold 30,000 copies in England, America and France.

Douglas talked to us about Monet in April 2009.

Lecture: May 2010

Picasso, Man Ray and Max Ernst through the eyes of Lee Miller and Roland Penrose

Antony Penrose

In 1937 an extraordinary group of Surrealist artists took a holiday on the river Fal in Cornwall. Among them were some of the most original painters, sculptors, writers and photographers of the 20th century.

This summer, Falmouth Art Gallery recreates this unique event in The Surrealists on Holiday, a major new exhibition that opens on 19 June. It promises a fresh insight into the social and artistic world of Roland Penrose and Lee Miller, and features a collection of their previously unpublished photographs of some of the leading lights of the Surrealist movement, including Max Ernst, Man Ray, Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Eileen Agar, Leonora Carrington and Paul Eluard. Alongside will be works by each of these artists.

Roland Penrose is generally credited as bringing Surrealism to Britain and was a driving force of the movement, producing some of its most enduring images. He developed close and lasting friendships with Picasso, Miró, Man Ray, and Ernst. He married Lee Miller, who is acknowledged as one of the greatest photographers of all time. Her photographs of World War II remain some of the most startling images of the atrocities of war ever taken.

It was while researching a biography of his mother Lee Miller that Antony Penrose discovered the extraordinary photographs taken by her and Roland on that holiday to Cornwall. In the summer of 1937 Roland had rented his brother Beacus's house at Lambe Creek situated by the River Fal in Cornwall.

Antony Penrose writes in the exhibition catalogue:
The creeks of the Fal estuary have an ancient reputation as a refuge for wanted men. Smugglers, privateers, pirates and just regular criminals have all defied authority from secret places on these rugged, leafy shores. In June 1937 it was the turn of the Surrealist artist Max Ernst to test their efficacy.

'Ernst had just arrived from Paris and was staying with Roland Penrose at his house in London when he learned that a warrant had been issued for his arrest. The grounds were that his exhibition at The Mayor Gallery in Cork Street contained pornographic material. Max's work was as always stridently Surrealist, and it was clear that not even the most enthusiastic policeman would be able to bring a charge on the basis of pornography, but there was no mystery as to the origin of the warrant.

Max had fallen in love with the British painter Leonora Carrington, who aged 20 was 26 years his junior and the daughter of a prominent Lancashire family who vehemently disapproved of the relationship. Leonora's father had persuaded the police to take an interest with a view to having Max deported. Fortunately, Roland had previously agreed to rent his brother Beacus's Lambe Creek House for three weeks and without a word to anyone they all left for Cornwall.'

Just a few days before his arrival in Lambe Creek, Roland had met Lee Miller, the new love of his life at a fancy dress party in Paris. Roland described the experience of his first glimpse of Lee Miller as being struck by a bolt of lightning. The sensation was compounded when at that precise moment the entire party was thrown out in the street by the owners of the house who had returned unexpectedly, and severely disapproved of their daughter's Surrealist friends.

For Roland the first two days at Lambe Creek were spent in frantic preparation, filling the house with food and wine against the eagerly anticipated arrival of Lee, who came in the company of Roland's other closest friends, the Surrealist poet Paul Éluard and his wife Nusch, and the Paris-based American photographer Man Ray with his girlfriend Ady Fidelin.

Man Ray's career had forged ahead steadily, and he was recognised as a prominent Surrealist photographer, painter and maker of enigmatic objects. His most famous piece, Object to be Destroyed, was made when he fixed a photograph of Lee's eye to the pendulum of a metronome whilst in a jealous rage. The relentless ticking of the vacillating eye reminded him of every second she was absent with another lover.

Henry Moore and his wife Irena were visiting Cornwall and called in at Lambe Creek. The Belgian Surrealist poet and art dealer Édouard Mesens arrived to stay. Back in Belgium a few weeks later he would introduce Roland and Lee to the painters Paul Delvaux and René Magritte. He came with Joseph Bard the writer and Eileen Agar, the British Surrealist painter who wrote: 'It was a delightful Surrealist house party that July, with Roland taking the lead, ready to turn the slightest encounter into an orgy. I remember going off to watch Lee taking a bubble-bath, but there was not quite enough room in the tub for all of us. The Surrealists were always supposed to be such immoral monsters, but I for one did not go to bed with everybody who asked me. When would I have had time to paint?' In fact Eileen found time for an intense affair with Paul, while Joseph willingly diverted himself with Nusch.

World War II was to drastically impact on the lives of all those who took part in this Cornish idyll. By 1952 Paul and Nusch Éluard had died, mainly as a result of the privations they suffered as members of the French Resistance. Max Ernst and Leonora Carrington, Man Ray and Ady Fidelin were torn apart by the war. All but Ady went on to distinguished careers as artists, and Carrington still lives and works in Mexico and America. Roland Penrose continued to work as an artist until he died, but was also known for his biographies of Picasso, Man Ray, Joan Miró and Antoni Tàpies. He was knighted for his services to contemporary art, which included founding the ICA in London. Lee Miller buried her career as a photographer after the war, possibly as a result of the traumas she had witnessed as a combat photographer with the US Army. Her photographs of Max Ernst and his wife the American painter Dorothea Tanning taken in 1950 at Killiow, Beacus Penrose's new house, were some of the last she took.

Antony Penrose writes: "By now Surrealism in its revolutionary status had been another casualty of the war, with its most vociferously reviled works becoming revered exhibits in museums. But no museum can contain its spirit, and Surrealism is today an inseparable part of our lives, informing us, provoking us and pointing us to a reality that lies beyond our normal compass. Surrealist art and artefacts may be behind glass, but we still have its genius with us, and Lambe Creek has a small part of that genius to call its own."