Our events are recorded and on-demand to ticket holders for a month. Proceeds from ticket sales benefit UK museums, galleries and other arts-based organisations.
Mathias Grunewald, Isenheim Altarpiece
We are surrounded by the air we breathe, the spaces we move in, and the light and colour travelling in constantly fluctuating waves through the spaces we inhabit. These core features of our physical world have been the same for millennia – and yet art down the ages has always interpreted them differently. These changes have gone unnoticed at the time, yet are obvious to us looking back.
This is the thought provoking theme of ARTscapades’ series of three talks by Hilary Hope Guise. Each lecture takes our exploration further, but they can be booked and enjoyed separately too.
Lecture One: Light
Europe was covered in thick dark forests and fears abounded, while light was found only in flickering tapers and oil lamps. Not surprisingly, physical light took on a theological or philosophical meaning. Dante interpreted light as the most profound spiritual reality. But as the Medieval age of Faith waned, shadows began to appear, thus confirming the physical source of light as being from the sun, and not from heaven. Sacred figures cast shadows for the first time. They lengthened as darkness crowds in, eventually leading to the extreme chiaroscuro of Caravaggio, reflecting the political upheavals of the late 16th century. Nihilism in the 20th century caused a plunge into total blackness in the all-black canvasses of Ad Reinhardt expressing a fear of light. But as light is the source of colour, and colour reflects emotion in art, this is a fundamental fear of human emotion. But we emerge into the 21st century with huge light installations, covering vast fields with coloured light, flooding buildings, churches, and landscapes. Since colour is about emotion, the Newtonian prism of colours is the source of great beauty in art because of that.
This is an online event hosted on Zoom which can be watched live with Q&A, or on-demand for one month afterwards. You will receive your link to access the event in your email confirmation and the on-demand link after the event ends.