Showing results by publisher "Cv Publications" in Politics & Social Sciences

Here can be no doubt that the Chinese exhibition at the Royal Academy in London is more than a merely artistic event. It represents a new stage in the burgeoning relationship between contemporary China and the West. The opening, originally scheduled for January, was brought forward to coincide with a State Visit to Britain by the Chinese president, Hu Jintao. The "Three Emperors" of the title were the second, third, and fourth rulers of the Qing Dynasty, and their period in power spanned nearly a century-and-a-half, from the mid-17th century until the end of the 18th.

Forgotten Empire, the new exhibition in London devoted to the great realm that Alexander the Great destroyed, is an openly political occasion, designed to stress links in the present as well as to revive interest in a part of the past that has more or less sunk into oblivion. It stresses the fact that, despite the tensions that now exist between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Western Europe, a degree of cultural cooperation is still possible.

A recorded visit to Elizabethan Treasures during the press view at the National Portrait Gallery London. Inspect miniature portraits by Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver of Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Frake, Henry Wriothesley and others, and the celebrated icon of Queen Elizabeth I. 

"Citizens and Kings", the new blockbuster show at the Royal Academy in London, contains an almost overwhelming number of celebrated paintings and sculptures, even if one or two of them, such as Jacques-Louis David’s Marat Assassiné, turn out to be studio versions rather than the real thing. The show aims to trace the shift in attitudes towards the human personality that was set in motion by the American and French Revolutions and the wars associated with these great political and social upheavals.

The term avant-garde continues to be used, in my opinion with far too much frequency, in discussions of contemporary art. It derives, of course, from military terminology, and implies that the art to which it is applied is somehow ahead of the game. It’s worth taking a look at how this assumption works in practice. Essentially, Western and now world art has witnessed the emergence of a series of avant-gardes since just before the third quarter of the 19th century.

'Black British Style', the current costume show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, raises a lot of complex issues for someone like myself. I am not black, but I am undoubtedly West Indian. My family have lived in different parts of the West Indies for more than 300 years and in Jamaica for more than a century.

London is now a major centre for the international art world. The only other European city that houses as many studios is not Paris but Berlin. And Berlin does not have nearly as many galleries, public or commercial, which feature the latest developments in contemporary art. 

Thank God I wasn’t in Venice for the opening of this year’s Biennale, even though I had a number of artist friends who were exhibiting there. The crowds to get into the main shows are fierce, with queues at all the main national pavilions. So is the social competition. “Have you been invited to this?” “Have you got a ticket for that?” Elbows out. Armour-plated ego at the ready.

Byzantine art has a slightly odd reputation. It is regarded, on the one hand, as something remote, hieratic, and difficult. On the other hand, the word Byzantium has a very romantic ring - it lives in our minds as the name of a citadel of civilization, a place that preserved for posterity both intellectual and material treasures that would otherwise have vanished forever. The remarkable exhibition now at the Royal Academy in London touches on both of these aspects.

A good art collection is always much more than the sum of its parts. This applies with especial force to collections of contemporary work. A collection of this kind, whether the collector intends it to be so or not, is always a portrait - a reflection in the mirror of a particular epoch, and, willy-nilly, a self-portrait of the person who takes the trouble to bring it together.

From the earliest times, human beings have found it difficult to represent their own bodies in a straightforward way. The rare painted images of humans in Paleolithic art are much less naturalistic than the images of animals created at the same epoch. At the dawn of art, representations of the nude body were simply vehicles for statement about the need for fertility if the human race was to survive successfully.

Cv/VAR 66 interviews Dr. Michael Ryan of the National Museum Dublin recorded at the opening of the exhibition The Work of Angels at the British Museum in 1989. He describes pieces found at Derrynaflan dating from the eighth century including an ecclesiastical paten, jewelry, accessories, and domestic artifacts. It carries a detailed account of Celtic and Pictish craftsmanship and iconography.

An interview recorded with Dr. Christopher Brown, director of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, in which he describes the major renovation and expansion of Britain's oldest museum, adding 39 galleries to house its collection of Egyptian, Persian, Japanese, Saxon, and Indian artefacts.

Dr. Stephen Deuchar, director of the Art Fund, gives an interview to Cv/VAR, first published in Curators and Collections Volume Three 2010. He describes the history of the Art Fund, its foundation, aims and initiatives, and work as a major benefactor, enabling museums and galleries to preserve and develop their collections, including recently discovered treasure troves, and individual works saved for the future.

Pamela Roberts, curator of the Royal Photographic Society, Bath, gives an interview to Cv/VAR in 1994, which charts the development of photography from its primary innovation in the 1840s by Hill & Adamson, Fox Talbot, through Roger Fenton in the Crimea War, leading to Royal Patronage of Prince Albert and development of the society into the 20th century.

This book contains an interview by Sarah Batiste recorded in 1989 with Jill Dunkerton, senior conservator of Italian Painting at the National Gallery London. In it she considers works by Duccio, Jacopo Di Cione and other early Trecento painters from 1270 to 1370 exhibited in Art in the Making at The National Gallery 1989-90.

This book considers the work of the celebrated 17th century court painter Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) presented in a comprehensive exhibition at The National Gallery London from October to January 2006-2007. It follows the phases of development charted from rooms one to four in the Getty Wing, ranging from the initial scenes of workers in bars and domestic scenes to the paintings made at the Court of King Philip IV in Madrid.

First published as Journal of The Gallery London in 1993 with revised editions in 1998, 2001, 2008 and 2011, over 600 entries chronicle the life of the city: a powerfully driven arena of dysfunctional experience. Episodes record incidents and encounters: in the streets, the movement of shoppers and travelers, and scenes of social and internal life.