Tag: French Art

Melbourne Masterclass - ‘Paris is the World’

Melbourne Masterclass: “Paris is the World”- The history of Old Regime and revolutionary Paris (17th and 18th centuries) | 9-12 January 2018 | The University of Melbourne and the National Gallery of Victoria ‘Paris is the world’ wrote Marivaux in 1734. “The rest of the earth is merely its suburbs.” His soaring elegy to the French capital captured the city’s central place in the imagination of the Enlightenment. This masterclass will examine how Paris became synonymous with gleaming architectural wonders, harmonious facades, and numerous public squares, in the context of France’s social, political, and cultural upheavals during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Beginning with Henri IV’s and Louis le Grand’s search for urban grandeur, Paris was transformed by and for its elites into a new Rome. At the same time, a Paris of the people, particularly in the overcrowded ghettos of the…

Melbourne Masterclass: Van Gogh’s Four Seasons

Monday, 1 & 8 May and Wednesday, 17 & 24 May 2017, 6.00pm–8.30pm In partnership with the National Gallery of Victoria’s Melbourne Winter Masterpiece exhibition Van Gogh and the Seasons, the Faculty of Arts is pleased to present a masterclass exploring the life and art of one of the most recognisable artists of the 20th century, Vincent van Gogh. The four seasons run like a thread throughout Van Gogh’s art work and for the artist represented the circle of life in all its beauty and majesty. By focussing on a different season each week this four-part masterclass, Van Gogh’s Four Seasons, will explore the artist’s work and the varied shades of his personality and life experiences. Each session includes evening lectures and talks by some of the University of Melbourne’s finest scholars and NGV’s Senior Curators, light refreshments and the privilege…

NGV acquires Degas sculpture

Edgar Degas Dancer looking at the sole of her right foot (Second study) c. 1900–10, cast 1919–37 or later bronze 47.3 x 24.3 x 20.8 cm Czestochowski/Pingeot 59 (cast T) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased with funds donated by Leigh Clifford AO and Sue Clifford, 2016

At today’s preview for the new Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibition - Degas: A new vision - the NGV announced that one sculpture in the exhibition will be staying in Melbourne. Degas’s ‘Dancer looking at the sole of her right foot (Second study)’ has been purchased for the NGV collection with funds donated by Leigh and Sue Clifford. Many of Degas’ sculptures were unknown during his lifetime. After the poor reception of his now-famous ‘Little Dancer’ (a cast of which is in the exhibition) in 1881 he kept much of his work in sculpture secret. He modelled in wax and is known to have remade and often destroyed works. Around 150 wax studies were found in his studio when he died in 1917 and 74 of these were salvaged and cast in bronze by the Adrien-A. Hébrard Foundry, Paris, and their Milanese master craftsman Albino Palazzolo. The NGV’s new sculpture is…

New Book | Representations of Renaissance monarchy Francis I and the image-makers

New book Representations of Renaissance monarchy Francis I and the image-makers by Lisa Mansfield from the University of Adelaide. About the book Representations of Renaissance monarchy analyses the portraits and personal imagery of Francis I, one of the most frequently portrayed rulers of sixteenth-century Europe. The distinctive likeness of the Valois king was widely disseminated and perceived by his French subjects, and Tudor and Habsburg rivals abroad. Complementing studies on the representation of Henry VIII, this book makes a dynamic contribution to scholarship on the enterprise of royal image-making in early-modern Europe. The discussion not only highlights the inventiveness of the visual arts in Renaissance France but also alludes to the enduring politics of physical appearance and seductive power of the face and body in modern visual culture. Coinciding with the five hundredth anniversary of Francis I’s accession, this book will…

NGV Appeal to buy François Marie Poncet’s 1782 Vénus

The NGV is asking for donations to support its acquisition of François Marie Poncet’s 1782 ‘Vénus’. Poncet was a French sculptor who was a pupil of the famous Etienne-Maurice Falconet at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris. He left for Rome in 1760 and spent much of his career in Italy. His first fifteen years in Rome seem to have been spent at the fringes of the Académie de France (he had twice entered the Prix de Rome but been unsuccessful), in contact with British, German and Scandinavian Neo-classical artists. In 1771 he was elected to the Accademia degli Arcadi, and on a journey to Paris in 1775, Poncet stopped in Lyon, where he was received (reçu) as a member of the Lyon academy. At Ferney he made a bust of Voltaire, a striking masterpiece of great realism and vitality. In…

News | NGV announces ‘Degas’ as the 2016 Melbourne Winter Masterpieces Exhibition

The NGV today announced that next year’s Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibition would be Degas: A New Vision. The major retrospective is being developed by both the National Gallery of Victoria and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, it will open in June 2016 in Melbourne and then travel to Houston in October 2016. After two winter exhibitions based around collections (the Prado in 2014 and the Hermitage in 2015) the NGV is returning to an exhibition based around a single artist. The last such exhibition was Monet in 2013, though single artist exhibitions have been few and far between in the NGV’s winter programming. At the same time they are returning to familiar (and typically popular) territory with nineteenth-century French Art. Based on the announcement the Degas sounds like it will be a solid exhibition, led by Degas expert Henri…

WAYLA | Marie-Anne Collot’s Bust of Diderot | Katrina Grant

This weekend is the final weekend of the NGV’s Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great. There are talks, drawing and music events over the weekend (see more here http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/whats-on/programs-events/). I gave a talk at the first Friday Late event on Marie-Anne Collot’s bust of Diderot and thought I would share some of my thoughts on this portrait as a final farewell to the exhibition. In the current exhibition at the NGV of ‘Treasures from the Hermitage’ we enter the exhibition face-to-face with Catherine the Great’s formal royal portrait by Alexander Roslin, a portrait that embodies her position as an autocratic ruler. She is flanked by marble busts of two of France’s leading Enlightenment thinkers, Voltaire and Diderot. Both men enjoyed a type of friendship with Catherine, writing letters and sharing ideas. Catherine was well-travelled, well-educated, spoke…

Exhibition | Impressions of Paris: Lautrec, Degas, Daumier, Atget | Monash Gallery of Art

MONASH GALLERY OF ART| 17 July—20 September 2015 The exhibition Impressions of Paris: Lautrec, Degas, Daumier, Atget is now open at the Monash Gallery of Art. The exhibition features over 120 prints, posters and photographs drawn from the collection of the National Gallery of Australia. The exhibition focuses on the work of artists Honoré-Victorin Daumier (1808–1879), Edgar Degas (1834–1917), Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864– 1901) and Eugène Atget (1857–1927). Lautrec, Degas and Daumier were consummate draughtsmen whose innovative compositions and embrace of modern subject matter played a significant role in artistic developments in France over the nineteenth century. Atget, the only specialist photographer among these artists, spent much of his life documenting the streets of Paris as they underwent modernisation. The generation of French artists who followed Daumier in the nineteenth century were inspired by his critical observations, which became an extraordinary…

Lecture | Matisse and the Near East - Petra Chu | NGV International

In the course of his long career, the French artist Henri Matisse (1869-1954) repeatedly looked at non-Western art for inspiration. Japanese prints, Persian and Indian miniatures, Byzantine icons and mosaics, Chinese brush paintings and art theory, and textiles from across the world, all inspired him at one time or another. Among these varied exotic art forms, Far-Eastern art—Chinese and Japanese–played a unique part in the artist’s career, one coming at the beginning, the other at the end of his career. Both Chinese and Japanese art affected his approach to, and his thinking about, art. But while Japanese art shocked him into an entirely new way of thinking about the relation between representation and reality, Chinese art and, especially art theory, confirmed ideas about art that he had developed and nurtured in the course of fifty years. Professor Petra Chu is…

Call for Papers | 33rd Conference of the Society for Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies

33rd Annual Conference SE-17 - Society for Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth Century Studies October 16-18, 2014 University of Western Ontario, London, Canada Conference Organizer Jean Leclerc, University of Western Ontario jlecler@uwo.ca Scholars from all disciplines are invited to submit abstracts in French or English (300 words maximum) for presentations relating to the session themes listed below. Please send abstracts by email directly to session chairs by March 7, 2014. Presentations will be of 20 minutes’ duration. 1. Economy and spending / Économie et dépenses Chair / Présidente de session: Nathalie Freidel Université Wilfrid Laurier nfreidel@wlu.ca 2. Center and margins / Centre et marges Chair / Président de session: Jean-Vincent Blanchard Swarthmore College jblanch1@swarthmore.edu 3. Old and New France / Ancienne et Nouvelle France Chair / Présidente de session: Marie-Christine Pioffet York University mpioffet@yorku.ca 4. Spaces and perspectives / Espaces et perspectives…

Seminar | Visual Manipulation and Auto/Biography | Sydney Intellectual History Network

Visual Manipulation and Auto/Biography The first seminar for 2014 in Auto/Biography and History series sponsored by the Global Sensibilities Group within the Sydney Intellectual History Network at the University of Sydney. Barbara Gaehtgens | 1643 or How to Represent the Queen’s New Power? Mark De Vitis | Madame as the Marquise: The Politics of Making a Mockery at the Court of Louis XIV This seminar will combine the work of two art historians researching the visual self-representation of royal woman at the French court during the seventeenth century. Dr Gaehtgens (an independent scholar based at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles) explores how Anne of Austria used multiplied images as visual propaganda to change her image from a widowed queen to a self-assured regent. In turn, Dr De Vitis (National Art School) considers the theatrical performances of Elizabeth Charlotte…

Short Course | The Age of Impressionism – France & Australia | Monet’s Garden

Presented by art and cultural historians this series of lectures will delve into the social and cultural world of the Impressionist era in Paris and will address how the Australian artists connected with their international contemporaries. In conjunction with Australian Impressionists in France exhibition.   Sat 3 Aug, 2pm From the Gare Saint Lazare to Giverny We will trace Claude Monet’s artistic and personal journey as he moved ever further from Paris via Argenteuil, Vetheuil to Giverny and became increasingly engrossed in the study of landscape and light. Speaker: Sylvia Sagona, Fellow, The University of Melbourne Sat 10 Aug, 2pm The word and the image Emile Zola, art critic and champion of the Impressionists, wrote a series of now famous novels on the districts of Paris represented in their canvasses, using a literary style inspired by their ideas and techniques.…

Melbourne Winter Masterclasses by Melbourne Uni and NGV | Making Sense of Monet

Making Sense of Monet The University of Melbourne in partnership with the NGV International The Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne is delighted to present masterclasses in Art History, Philosophy, Classics, Screen Studies, Creative Writing, History and Archaeology, with some our most celebrated teachers and public intellectuals. Making Sense of Monet (July 13 - 14, 2013) The Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne in partnership with the National Gallery of Victoria is delighted to present Making Sense of Monet, a weekend of masterclass exploring Monet and his time, with acclaimed historian Peter McPhee AM, philosopher Dr Anya Daly, expert in French Impressionism Sylvia Sagona, and curators from the NGV International. For details, see: http://arts.unimelb.edu.au/masterclasses/making-sense-monet For other Masterclasses, see: http://arts.unimelb.edu.au/masterclasses

Exhibition Review | Monet’s Garden at the National Gallery of Victoria. Reviewed by David R. Marshall

The latest NGV exhibition is, again, sourced largely from a secondary French museum (the Musée Marmottan Monet, henceforth MMM). Monet exhibitions have traditionally draw large crowds, and are much loved by gallery directors needing to feed the political machines to which they are beholden that equate numbers with success. But if ‘Monet’ is the brand of brands for art exhibitions, for organisers there is the problem of finding new ways to give a Monet show intellectual credibility and thematic coherence, while marketeers may feel the need to enrich a brand that runs the risk of becoming stale. And, given the economics of international exhibitions in Australia, the bulk of the works need to come from a single source. Hence Monet’s Garden.

‘Monet’s Garden’ is an idea rich in possibilities: it connects cultural tourism (a trip to Giverny) with high-art glorification of artistic genius. While previous NGV exhibitions have emphasised, through videos, places associated with the objects on display (notably the Musée Moreau in the Moreau exhibition and Malmaison with Napoleon), Monet’s Garden takes the place/artwork nexus one step further. I once taught a subject in art history on the history of gardens called Visions of Paradise: Art of the Garden, a title stolen from a picture book by Marina Schinz, and did a week on Monet and Giverny. One of the essay questions was whether Monet was a better gardener than painter. This generated some interesting responses. By asking this question one is forced to look at his Giverny paintings differently: as topographical painting, subordinate to the place represented, rather than a this-is-a-work-of-genius painting. It is quite intriguing, after studying the now well-known colour photos of Monet in his garden nearest the house (e.g. pp. xxiv-xxv of the catalogue) (Fig. 1), to be able to identity what the paintings actually represent. The strength of Impressionism was that it accepted the facts and went from there, so that its underpinning of visual factuality is there if you choose to look. A visit to the waterlily pond at Giverny makes you realise that his Nymphéas paintings are much more realistic than you had thought when you saw them in a gallery (Figs. 3, 14). This helps us to see Monet differently: as the last of the estate topographers, rather than as a wannabee modernist abstractionist.

Exhibition Review | The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Death and Disaster. Reviewed by Katrina Grant

The ‘Four Horsemen’ exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria draws together a rich, varied and evocative selection of images of death: the horseman crushing rich and poor alike beneath the hooves of his skeletal horse; the shadowy figure stalking the young and the beautiful; the horrors of war; the terrors of the final Apocalypse.